stickman said:
Very cool cross Gary! It reminds me of an unplanned cross I got a couple of years ago between a King Naga and a Tabasco. The pods were twice the size of a normal Tabasco and looked vaguely like the Naga, but your description of little bags of tasty, fiery red juice and seeds was spot on. They made a great Louisiana-style hot sauce when fermented with sweet white wine and salt, then finished by cooking to stop the ferment and added rice vinegar to lower the pH and make it shelf-stable. I still have a pint of it in the 'fridge that I use for Jambalaya and Red Beans and Rice.
Unfortunately, I didn't get those genetics from the seeds I saved from the cross. Oh well... it's hard to hit a moving target, eh?
Beautiful shots of the Smiter-Q Pequins! +1 on Chuck's comments. I don't think they'd readily volunteer this far north, but think you'd be interested in a seed swap for some of those? I'd purely love to grow them next year and save the seeds for successive years! Nice pics of the BOC too... Your plants must love the climate in the NW corner of Louisiana! Pretty sandy soil there too as I remember, but the water table was very close to the surface. Have you gone hunting for "Mud Bugs" lately?
Thanks Rick! Your Naga/Tabasco cross is certainly compelling...It's also interesting how readily
C. frutescens seems to cross with chiles of other species...And that Louisiana-style hot sauce sounds perfect!
If you like, last year I air-dried some of those SmiterQ pods at room temperature, to ensure viability of the seeds...But I don't mind going down to the garden and picking you several hands full of fresh pods, either...They need to be picked badly, as you can see by the photos!
For some reason BOC seems to really flourish here, which seems unlikely considering where they were bred, but then again both of the parent varieties are from very warm climates...
As for the soil in the Red River Valley, or any other river valley, it really depends on what part of it one is considering (Hope you don't mind my geeking out on alluvial geology for a bit): The grain size of the sediments decreases, generally, with increasing distance from the main channel. The land right next to the river is the highest in the valley, and is quite sandy. My home is at the very western edge of the valley, a couple of miles from the river, so what we have here is very dense, sticky, dark-reddish-brown clay. When we first moved here I bemoaned my poor choice of real estate, but after I built my first clay-and-RCW (shredded hardwood) beds, I realized that this is really wonderful soil, very rich in minerals compared to sand, which is chemically inert, and light and porous from the addition of the wood chips and the constant re-working by the earthworms. The worms really love the forest soil, and my beds are basically worm palaces. Never mind worm tea or castings, those dudes are producing more than one could possibly imagine, right there in the beds where the chile plants live....
You may have heard me speak of RCW soil elsewhere, I don't know. If you are interested to know more, let me know...
