Thinklikeh20's 2011 Norcal grow log.

Hello everyone, I have decided to try and document my pepper season this year, and although I am a full time culinary student, I will do my best to update.
One of the weird things I have to deal with growing peppers in a place like Santa Cruz CA is our extremely mild climate, and our excess of microclimates. Due to this fact I will be growing very few Chinese's at my house and will focus on the Pubescent and Annum species, while all my superhot's will make their way around town to several warmer locations. Like a ranch in Scotts valley CA, And also my student garden in Aptos. I did get an early start however due to the mild weather as most of my seeds were sowed in late dec.
I will update with a genetics list once I count em all. Im also planning one more 72 seed flat before things really get started. Here is a picture of some of my babies enjoying the early February sunshine. They have been slowly hardening in the sun and spend every night inside.

up front is a Trinidad scorpion mourouga blend, middle is a Naga Morich, and last is a Barrackpore 7pod. All sourced from Judy at www.pepperlover.com . I am growing other genetics, but as mentioned before it will come a little later when I get my seed list together.

 

[wayright]

Those are some nice looking plants there! When were they started? Great work!
Kevin

 

[thinklikeh20]

All of them were started before the new year, about a week before Christmas. They had a little slowdown in poor starting medium but I have since switched gardening stores and have had better growth rate. Thanks for the comments! Another cool fact is I have given an organics and hydroponics store some of my seeds as well, they have been started early too and will be having a competition to see which store can grow the hottest pepper with hydroponics. So pictures of that will be included in this documentation as well.

 

[richoso12]

Thanks for sharing some great pics. When did you plant those peppers? I planted late in December. and even though my peppers are now outside 24-7, they don't look anything like yours. Great looking, congrats. Ity's all good my friend.

 

[thinklikeh20]

If it helps at all I have been growing them indoors under a 4 foot fluorescent shop light. I think the mixture of constant floro lighting and mild sunshine have helped them allot. I have also noticed a huge difference when I transplanted them into this soil.

 

[lazienfat]

Right on they look great!

 

[thinklikeh20]

Here is a shot of my ghetto setup, the new starting medium Im using that works really well. And a baby C. pubescens (locato)

 

[PepperLover]

nice looking plants

 

[Silver_Surfer]

Nice tight growth, great lookin' plants.

 

[thinklikeh20]

Thanks Judy! It's partly your fault because these came from your seeds! And thank you silver_surfer as well! It is very encouraging to have the more experienced growers appreciate the hard work us noobs go through! Haha just kidding, but really thanks to everyone. This forum is great. Stay tuned for more updates!

 

[logchief]

Great lookin little plants. Nice to see from another CA grower

 

[thinklikeh20]

Here are two quick shots of a interesting pepper, Cobindo-NMDUC. I have two growing, one is a slow grower and has a thicker, tougher stem. While the other one is like a vine. So I decided to do an LST (low stress training) exercise on the vine like one. And just like I learned in my Horticulture class, when you lower the main growth shoot of a plant past itself the growth hormones are redirected. Crazy plants.


Here you can see my string method. I place a rubberband around the pot and use knotted string to manipulate the plants. I Tie this thing down about every 3 or 4 days, and the growth is much more noticeable on a day to day basis using this method. Im not sure how familiar people are with this, but I prefer it over topping. Has anyone else here heard of the FIMMING method as well?

And here is a somewhat out of focus shot of new growth coming from the bud in between the petiole and stem as a result of the LST

This plant is inside next to a window that receives minimal light at best. So the seeds are growing as advertised. The stem of both plants looks thin but are quite strong. Im just wondering when and how it will flower. Pretty cool nonetheless, these have defiantly sparked my interest in different and more wild varieties.



hope you enjoi.

 

[robbyjoe01]

Nice healthy plants . Interesting what your doing to the Cobindo. Do they normally vine or is that just a throwback to it's wild state?

 

[thinklikeh20]

So here is a long past due update. I have a few new pictures as well as some questions.


update on the locato

the new babies

pepper joe sport pepper

Here is my sick plants. Anyone have any ideas? I know this started as aphid damage but that was taken care of, then they started dropping leaves and turning ugly colors as well as distorted growth.

sick yellow 7

sick scorpion

 

[thinklikeh20]

Another update



www.pepperlover.com douglah up front, with some 7pods in the back

check out the weird growth on this pepperoncini. It is just as old as all my other plants but never grew anything but big cotyledons

here is a side by side shot. It does not look unhealthy, just not growing anywhere

here is another weird one. It looks like a triple cotyledon that fused together into one. This is a unknown white Hab from aji joe

and here is the current growth, kinda weird how it only grew this one cotyledon then branched out to the side.

here is a bunch of soon to be transplanted teenie bopper plants.

any questions or comments? I am going to post an update on that Cobindo-NMDUC pretty soon as well

 

[ZanderSpice]

Looks like some spider mite damage on the sick plants. The second one even looks like it has a web. If you still have seeds, I'd consider tossing them and trying again next season. Mites are so hard to eradicate, and you don't want them spreading. There might be some slugs or snails munching too. Do you ever see any of them hanging around?

The rest of your plants look great and very healthy.

 

[thinklikeh20]

Looks like some spider mite damage on the sick plants. The second one even looks like it has a web. If you still have seeds, I'd consider tossing them and trying again next season. Mites are so hard to eradicate, and you don't want them spreading. There might be some slugs or snails munching too. Do you ever see any of them hanging around?

The rest of your plants look great and very healthy.

My front porch seems to have allot of spiders around, our furniture, and plants get the webs.
Some of that damage may have been too much love as well. I will take your advice on trashing them though, they have been sickly for 2 long.

Slugs and snails leave trails, and I see them everywhere. Where I live college students are slugs. And slugs live everywhere here... My raised bed seems to take care of them for the most part, as well as sluggo. I use salt liberally.

 

[thinklikeh20]

More updates. The weather here is getting really nice, but our night temps are still low 40's. Im hoping it warms up soon





Chicago Sport Pepper (pepper Joe)

Fresno (peppermania)

African Devil (Aji Joe)

This is a Pepperjoe plant that im guessing is a Thai variety or something, supposed to be a big producer in a small pot I'm looking forward to seeing what this does. name is Hot Firecracker

here is some of those plants under my ghetto shade awning that I hope will help with the hardening off process. It is SO time consuming! it makes me think my plants will never see full sun, but patience I have so on the process goes....

 

[thinklikeh20]

Imma keep updating because everything keeps growing!


here is the windowsill Cobindo-NMDUC. don't let the vine like growth fool you, these stems are tough! The LST has taken ahold nicely. Im just wondering when this thing will start flowering..

Judy's douglah is getting big, one of my fastest growers.

Here is 2 Peach scorpanero's, one is super healthy and the other not so much. Ill keep it around in hopes of it being a mutant superhot. Im guessing some of these crosses will lean around as far as genetic traits, hopefully there will be a gem hidden in here somewhere.

Here is a comparison of two crosses, one is a yellow habalokia, the other is a yellow scorpanero. Same rate of growth but im starting to see the difference in Bhut leaves and Scorp (trinidad type) leaves.

here is haba

here is scorpa

Last but not least is the Joloro. This is a pretty cool looking plant, I hope the jalapeno's really turn out yellow!

 

[thinklikeh20]

Here is a longtime coming update. I have been struggling all season with insects but it seems allot of my plants are getting bigger and a little stronger. Many are flowering and a couple are growing fruit.



HAb X arbol. This thing is friggin taller than any of my other plants and is still shooting up. Over 3 feet.

Here is a shot of my outdoor bed. I only put plants in here that do well without extreme heat. It doesn't get very good sun and was hastily installed, but it has drip irrigation and any annumm does well here.

This is a mystery plant that popped up in a superhot spot but is clearly not. I like the pruple stems so I kept it around, it is growing straight skinny fruits that start green and just turned dark purple/black. any ideas?

Closeup of fruit. flowers also have purple edging on the petals.

My pride and joy Locato. The seeds were purchased from pepperlover and this is one of my best plants. I know some people have trouble with pubescens but this was one of my fastest growers and looks like it will produce huge on its first year. This is my only plant in the ground besides the bed but its located on a shady side of the house that is fully landscaped with a fountain and rock garden etc. The soil here is drip irrigation and gets full sun for only a couple hours a day. Im really hoping this will do ok in my mild climate year around.

fruit

flowers

It would take me all day to count the flowers and buds on this thing. Not many dropping either so Im planning on supporting this one

Here is a shot of what I have indoors. Im a little worried about if Ill be able to harden these guys off before my seasons over. But our summers here can go late into september with lots of sun and mild temperatures.