Sulsa's 2023 Glog

Sulsa · Sep 16, 2023

Another week, another harvest!

Tinkerbelle · Sep 16, 2023

wow good haul Sulsa - what are you doing with everything?

Sulsa · Sep 17, 2023

Tinkerbelle said:
wow good haul Sulsa - what are you doing with everything?

That's exactly what i was thinking!

Some are used fresh, but most are bound for the dehydrator and freezer though.
Dried peppers are used for making all kinds of spicy powders and ofcourse all that jars full of colorfull dried peppers makes my kitchen look good.
The most beautyfull pods are frozen whole for use in stews and the rest is mashed into pulp and frozen. The frozen pulp is used to make all kinds of sambals, chutneys, hot sauces, salsas, etc. I also use the frozen mash in every day cooking when peppers are needed. This way i only get hunan hands and eyes a couple of times a year and not every time i cook spicy food!

Sulsa · Oct 1, 2023

ahayastani · Oct 1, 2023

Still producing then?

Sulsa · Oct 1, 2023

Plants are still loaded with green pods. If the weather keeps up like it did the past couple of weeks i will be harvesting until christmas for sure!

Tinkerbelle · Oct 1, 2023

Another good haul Sulsa :lol:

Mine have started flowering again :crazy:

Sulsa · Oct 8, 2023

CGN 21500 still loaded with pods!
Definitely a newly found favorite, beautyfull plants, awesome looking pods and great taste.

Unripe pods are dark purple with a touch of green

I believe this is why they are also known as sunset peach, beautyfull colors when ripe!

Another variety that doesn't seem to get it's allready October in the northern hemisphere is the Thai orange, still producing like crazy and still looking crisp!

Tinkerbelle · Oct 9, 2023

the colours on the sunset peach are gorgeous - like a tequilla sunrise

Downriver · Oct 9, 2023

Beautiful plants/pods @Sulsa. I've heard good things about CGN 21500. Nice to read you agree. I think I got seeds off the Seedtrain. I might have to give it a grow next season.

Sulsa · Oct 23, 2023

Weather finally catched up with the season. Temperatures dropped (often below 10C ) and perpetual rains has started!
Really had enough of the constant pepper processing so i took down most of the plants.
Harvested all the pods that showed any sign of coloring, most of them finished coloring by now.
Last serious harvest of 2023 (also had a big load of sweet peppers from the vegetable garden, but i allready processed those)

Plants remaining are thai orange (still looked way too good) a few cgn 21500 and a mako akokosrade i will try to overwinter and the monstrous rocoto rio hualaga on the pic below. Loaded with big green pods, but i'm afraid hardly any will ripen before the first frost.

Also a aji charapita Iquitos that was a spare and got planted on open ground at the vegetable garden.
It did quite well and is still loaded with tiny berries both green and orange and still flowering a lot.

Was looking forward a lot to the charapitas, but they weren't quite what i expected.
The ones i grew in pots had a decent chinense heat, but lacked flavor and the nice plant in the vegetable garden has no flavor or heat at all!

Sulsa · Dec 28, 2023

Time to close the 2023 season and start looking forward to 2024!
This season started out quite difficult actually. Spoiled by the mediteranean type seasons we had the past few years it sure wasn't funny having a normal dutch season. Cold temps in spring and lots of rainy periods followed right after, peppers didn't like that at all!
Also something went very wrong after transplanting to the final containers. I used a lot of compost to reboot the old soil, but i'm afraid the compost i used was way too salty and plants suffered a lot from that. Those good looking seedlings turned pale yellow in a matter of days and all sorts of lesions and other crap started to appear. It took at least 6 weeks of flushing the soil to get this sorted, but after that plants started to flourish again. Harvests came a bit later due to the circumstances, but were once again very abundant.
I also struggled healthwise during a big part of the season and after having all that fixed i had a enormous to do list to keep me busy.
All of that resulted in me being less present on the forum this year, but i still followed along with most of your pepper adventures though!

2023 variety review:

Aji charapita Iquitos (semillas)
Not quite what i expected. Don't know what went wrong but they grew nicely and produced plenty of berries, but they all had a very acrid taste and hardly any heat. No chinense flavor at all! The plant grown on open ground was a very nice plant but had absolutely zero heat and plenty of that nasty acrid taste. Will not grow again from these seeds, but maybe will try another time with another seed source!
Also found out that i'm not a big fan of tiny berrie picking!

Perola laranja (semillas)
Nice bushy plants and very good and strong chinense flavour in these berries, still not a fan of tiny berrie picking though!

Mako akokosrade (semillas)
Compact plants loaded with quite small pointy pods with good chinense flavour and proper heat. Pods are very soft and moist compared to other chinense wich is nice for eating but it sucks for deseeding!

Goronong (semillas)
Exactly the same as Mme Jeanette to me, both in looks as in taste.

Lemon starrburst (semillas)
Nice plants with plenty beautyfull shaped pods. Good citrussy flavor when eaten raw, but i struggled to come up with a good culinary use for them.

CGN 21500 (semillas)
Awesome variety! Dark branches and leaves. Pods that look like candy and they also have a very good taste and not too hot!
Definitely one of my all time favourites!

Fatali ( SineNomine)
Great smell and taste as expected, healthy uniform plants and good fruit set. Heat level on the edge of my tolerance though... HOT!!!

MOA Scotch bonnet (SineNomine)
Great tasting bonnet, healthy plants. Sadly pods didn't have that typical bonnet shape. keeper nontheless!

Papa dreadie Scotch bonnet (SineNomine)
Big pods with great taste. Also not much off the typical bonnet shape but they had a lot of spikes all over the pods wich i liked a lot!

Papa Joe's Scotch bonnet (SineNomine)
100% perfect bonnet pheno on these pods. Only had one plant and it was quite susceptible to all kinds of plagues. Taste was the least fruity of the bonnets i grew this year.

Bahamian goat (2022)
Once again the most prolific chinense i have grown and i sure like the flavour. I have so much of them in stock i probably will not need to grow them for a few years now....

Bonda ma Jacques (2022)
Once again productive and uniform. A very nice tasting pepper.

BMJ x Adjuma F1 (hand pollinated cross i made last year)
Big plants loaded with pods! Very uniform as expected in this F1 stage. The pods in this cross kept the shape of the BMJ mother but gained some shoulder width and overall size of the Adjuma father. The awesome floral/fruity flavor off both parents were lost a bit in this stage though. Still good chinense flavor. Will have to decide if i will continue with this cross or not!

Trinidad perfume (semillas)
Nice plant, nice pod shape but sadly flavorwise it did not do much for me.

Habanada (semillas)
Wow! Nice plants loaded with nice shaped pods. I was sold the moment i tasted the firtst ripe pod. Great flavor!
When cooked the flavour disappears fast so best eaten raw or with a very short preperation time. I came up with a Habanada/CGN 21500 relish that is quite addictive to me (going trough a jar per week!) This stuff is great on everything! Definitely a staple from now on!

Thai orange (semillas)
Compact, bushy plants with a lot of fruit set. At first i wasn't very charmed by their flavor compared to other thai peppers i've eaten, but after drying them i discovered that they taste great when dried. Using them a lot lately in the kitchen!

Cayenne #1 (2022)
Still my number one go to pepper to spice up pretty much everything! Uniform, strong and healthy as always!

Thunder mountain longhorn (semillas)
Nice rarity to grow. Lanky plants with incredible long curly pods. taste and heatwise not very special.

Jalapeno biker Billy (semillas)
Maybe not the real Biker Billy? Plants did great and produced a lot of big pods, but taste was quite bland.

Buena mulata (semillas)
Another beauty! dark branches and leaves, purplish flowers and dark purplish/black pods that slowly turn red. Good heat and good taste.

Piquillo (2022)
Still one of my culinary favourites! Grown so much of them the past few years, no need in growing them next year.

Kapia (2022)
My #1 sweet pepper. Great taste, early ripening and very strong plants for open ground growing. Over the years this pepper gained a lot of thickness in the flesh, almost the same thickness as the Piquillo now compared to crispy thin flesh when i started growing these. Piquillos have been growing close every year so maybe there has been some cross polinating going on, but the taste and overall looks stayed exactly the same.

Ancho mulato (semillas)
I like the dark anchos for their flavor when dried. This variety was way better (healthwise) and more productive compared to the ancho negro i grew last year.

Goccia d'oro (Franchi sementi)
Huge elongated bell peppers with crispy flesh and good taste. Not very suited for outdoor/open ground growing, suffered a lot of BER type lesions on the fruits. productivity was good though.

Giallo d'Asti (Franchi sementi)
Big and heavy pods, taste was great also. Same issues as the Goccia d'oro, not very suited for outdoor abuse.

Peperone Lombardo (Franchi sementi)
Extremely productive pepperoni, taste was good and definitely way better than other pepperoni varieties i have grown before.
Strong compact plants in the open ground grow.

Rio Hualaga (2022)
Plants became huge this year loaded with pods late in the season, wich resulted in me harvesting about only 15 of them and the rest (again) were lost in gnarly cold weather. Good heat and taste was good, but not quite my taste.

Prik khee nu (semillas)
Strange plants! One massive stem growing quite tall before starting to flower. Pod set was minimal and started very late in the season. Only managed to harvest a handfull of ripe peppers. Those little bastards are mean though, dang! Pretty much the most nasty heat i ever experienced!

Now it's time to start planning the next season. Since i have huge stock on the peppers i grew the past few years i will really have to give the 2024 growlist some serious thought!

Here's to yet another great season :cheers:

thamiz · Feb 15, 2024

Sulsa said:
Time to close the 2023 season and start looking forward to 2024!
This season started out quite difficult actually. Spoiled by the mediteranean type seasons we had the past few years it sure wasn't funny having a normal dutch season. Cold temps in spring and lots of rainy periods followed right after, peppers didn't like that at all!
Also something went very wrong after transplanting to the final containers. I used a lot of compost to reboot the old soil, but i'm afraid the compost i used was way too salty and plants suffered a lot from that. Those good looking seedlings turned pale yellow in a matter of days and all sorts of lesions and other crap started to appear. It took at least 6 weeks of flushing the soil to get this sorted, but after that plants started to flourish again. Harvests came a bit later due to the circumstances, but were once again very abundant.
I also struggled healthwise during a big part of the season and after having all that fixed i had a enormous to do list to keep me busy.
All of that resulted in me being less present on the forum this year, but i still followed along with most of your pepper adventures though!

2023 variety review:

Aji charapita Iquitos (semillas)
Not quite what i expected. Don't know what went wrong but they grew nicely and produced plenty of berries, but they all had a very acrid taste and hardly any heat. No chinense flavor at all! The plant grown on open ground was a very nice plant but had absolutely zero heat and plenty of that nasty acrid taste. Will not grow again from these seeds, but maybe will try another time with another seed source!
Also found out that i'm not a big fan of tiny berrie picking!

Perola laranja (semillas)
Nice bushy plants and very good and strong chinense flavour in these berries, still not a fan of tiny berrie picking though!

Mako akokosrade (semillas)
Compact plants loaded with quite small pointy pods with good chinense flavour and proper heat. Pods are very soft and moist compared to other chinense wich is nice for eating but it sucks for deseeding!

Goronong (semillas)
Exactly the same as Mme Jeanette to me, both in looks as in taste.

Lemon starrburst (semillas)
Nice plants with plenty beautyfull shaped pods. Good citrussy flavor when eaten raw, but i struggled to come up with a good culinary use for them.

CGN 21500 (semillas)
Awesome variety! Dark branches and leaves. Pods that look like candy and they also have a very good taste and not too hot!
Definitely one of my all time favourites!

Fatali ( SineNomine)
Great smell and taste as expected, healthy uniform plants and good fruit set. Heat level on the edge of my tolerance though... HOT!!!

MOA Scotch bonnet (SineNomine)
Great tasting bonnet, healthy plants. Sadly pods didn't have that typical bonnet shape. keeper nontheless!

Papa dreadie Scotch bonnet (SineNomine)
Big pods with great taste. Also not much off the typical bonnet shape but they had a lot of spikes all over the pods wich i liked a lot!

Papa Joe's Scotch bonnet (SineNomine)
100% perfect bonnet pheno on these pods. Only had one plant and it was quite susceptible to all kinds of plagues. Taste was the least fruity of the bonnets i grew this year.

Bahamian goat (2022)
Once again the most prolific chinense i have grown and i sure like the flavour. I have so much of them in stock i probably will not need to grow them for a few years now....

Bonda ma Jacques (2022)
Once again productive and uniform. A very nice tasting pepper.

BMJ x Adjuma F1 (hand pollinated cross i made last year)
Big plants loaded with pods! Very uniform as expected in this F1 stage. The pods in this cross kept the shape of the BMJ mother but gained some shoulder width and overall size of the Adjuma father. The awesome floral/fruity flavor off both parents were lost a bit in this stage though. Still good chinense flavor. Will have to decide if i will continue with this cross or not!

Trinidad perfume (semillas)
Nice plant, nice pod shape but sadly flavorwise it did not do much for me.

Habanada (semillas)
Wow! Nice plants loaded with nice shaped pods. I was sold the moment i tasted the firtst ripe pod. Great flavor!
When cooked the flavour disappears fast so best eaten raw or with a very short preperation time. I came up with a Habanada/CGN 21500 relish that is quite addictive to me (going trough a jar per week!) This stuff is great on everything! Definitely a staple from now on!

Thai orange (semillas)
Compact, bushy plants with a lot of fruit set. At first i wasn't very charmed by their flavor compared to other thai peppers i've eaten, but after drying them i discovered that they taste great when dried. Using them a lot lately in the kitchen!

Cayenne #1 (2022)
Still my number one go to pepper to spice up pretty much everything! Uniform, strong and healthy as always!

Thunder mountain longhorn (semillas)
Nice rarity to grow. Lanky plants with incredible long curly pods. taste and heatwise not very special.

Jalapeno biker Billy (semillas)
Maybe not the real Biker Billy? Plants did great and produced a lot of big pods, but taste was quite bland.

Buena mulata (semillas)
Another beauty! dark branches and leaves, purplish flowers and dark purplish/black pods that slowly turn red. Good heat and good taste.

Piquillo (2022)
Still one of my culinary favourites! Grown so much of them the past few years, no need in growing them next year.

Kapia (2022)
My #1 sweet pepper. Great taste, early ripening and very strong plants for open ground growing. Over the years this pepper gained a lot of thickness in the flesh, almost the same thickness as the Piquillo now compared to crispy thin flesh when i started growing these. Piquillos have been growing close every year so maybe there has been some cross polinating going on, but the taste and overall looks stayed exactly the same.

Ancho mulato (semillas)
I like the dark anchos for their flavor when dried. This variety was way better (healthwise) and more productive compared to the ancho negro i grew last year.

Goccia d'oro (Franchi sementi)
Huge elongated bell peppers with crispy flesh and good taste. Not very suited for outdoor/open ground growing, suffered a lot of BER type lesions on the fruits. productivity was good though.

Giallo d'Asti (Franchi sementi)
Big and heavy pods, taste was great also. Same issues as the Goccia d'oro, not very suited for outdoor abuse.

Peperone Lombardo (Franchi sementi)
Extremely productive pepperoni, taste was good and definitely way better than other pepperoni varieties i have grown before.
Strong compact plants in the open ground grow.

Rio Hualaga (2022)
Plants became huge this year loaded with pods late in the season, wich resulted in me harvesting about only 15 of them and the rest (again) were lost in gnarly cold weather. Good heat and taste was good, but not quite my taste.

Prik khee nu (semillas)
Strange plants! One massive stem growing quite tall before starting to flower. Pod set was minimal and started very late in the season. Only managed to harvest a handfull of ripe peppers. Those little bastards are mean though, dang! Pretty much the most nasty heat i ever experienced!

Now it's time to start planning the next season. Since i have huge stock on the peppers i grew the past few years i will really have to give the 2024 growlist some serious thought!

Here's to yet another great season

I appreciate the mini review. Lots of varieties I've not seen!