Season's greetings

The day grows short before getting longer again. At the moment the lenght of the day is 5 hours 47 minutes and that is showing on the progress of my bonchis. Pepper has some wrinkly leaves and has nearly stopped growing any new ones. Salt is doing slightly better thanks to a daily dose of artificial light from my desktop study light. The start of grow season 2013 is getting near so my next update will propably be about ferminating the seeds. I haven't yet decided what to do with these two once I need the space and pots for my new sprouts.

Salt & Pepper

A small status update on my project. I've removed the copper wiring from "Pepper" and it seems to hold the wanted shape quite well. The wiring left some shallow marks on the stem and I fear the copper wire I bought is too thin for this purpose so I might experiment with tin solder next. The top is near the intended height of the plant so I plan to start trimming it soon to see if I can get it to grow more bushy. "Salt" has some nice growth after I cut the remaining larger leaves.

Wiring

The bigger plant I had growing in the larger pot got the axe last night and joined my bonchi experiment. It seemed like the stem wasn't getting any stronger and the plant just kept hogging all the space without producing any crop since there's so little light. I finally tried some wiring with the aim of getting the brach to bend down a little and to fill the larger gap "behind" the plant. I chose 0.6mm copper wire which is a little tough to form but holds it nicely when you get it done. 0.4mm may shape better but I'm afraid it would be too weak to hold the branch in place.

I find naming plants to be a silly thing but for future reference I shall call them Salt & Pepper based on the color of their pots.

Reading

I was reading some wiring tips from Fatalii's Growing Guide last night and decided to post an update on those small leaves branching out from my bonchi tree. There is no rules on how to do it but to my understanding the main point of wiring would be to get the branches to take a more tree like shape instead of just growing upwards. It's still a bit early for that but planning ahead never hurts and wiring will be the next stage in the project if everything continues to go as planned.

Overview

I find it a bit funny that all this time I've been talking about the growth season being over while my other plant is not showing any signs of slowing down its growth. While the other plants grew tall and reached the top of my window this one seems to be growing like a mural and slowly spreading along my window still. It might have something to do with the fact that it doesn't have to compete for the light with other plants or it will just grow differently because it's grown from the top of my bonchi project tree which is doing nicely in the middle.

Branching out

It's now been 8 days since I cut my bonchi -project tree into a "stump" and it looks to be taking it really well judging from all those new branches showing up from the base of the existing leaves. I haven't tried anything fancy with the roots since this is only a trial plant. Trimming the roots and exposing the top ones only make sense if I was planning to move it to a shallow bonzai pot. I read that placing round stones under the roots would be a good way to grow some really good looking roots on your bonchi. So far so good

So it begins

There it is, my first bonchi prototype cut short today. The stem is a bit thinner than I'd like it to be but it'll do it's purpose on finding out how the plant survives through winter just fine. I decided to keep some leaves on it to make the shock of being cut down a bit lower if possible. The other plant is still growing strong on the bigger pot despite the clearly shorter daytime.

Autumn preparations

A week ago I turned my freely grown plant into compost after getting the last pods from it. The cut one currently has 12 red pods, 2 orange ones and 4 green ones that are showing tiny signs of color change. After the final harvest I plan to cut down the plant drastically and see if the stem survives the winter. This and the stem of the plant which currently grows in the bigger pot will be my first try to grow my chilis into Bonchi (Bonsai Chili).

Seeds!

I got the chili seeds in the mail today with a nice surprise. Fataliiseeds had put in the envelope a variety of other things in addition to my order. Either I managed to completely miss that while placing the order or they did it as a surprise. A really nice gesture and some quality customer service on their part.

The package:

• the actual seeds neatly packed in a small minigrip bag with 5-7 seeds/bag.
•  mustard plant seeds and "surprise chili mix" as extra content
• 3 large stickers and 2 smaller ones
• a chunk of Naga Morich - taffy
• simple grow quide and small introduction to chilis
• letter from the owner telling to contact him in case you have any questions

The surprise chili mix has only the title and a questionmark on it so the only way to know what you got is to grow them. It's a clever idea and made me smile.

Placing an order

Growth season 2012 seems to be slowly grinding to a halt so I've been cutting excess branches and small pods off my plants in an effort to make the promising looking pods mature more quickly. Some of those pods had been weighing the branches down and the plants were starting to lean inwards from the window still. My late growth experiment is starting to look like a proper little bush with plenty of leaves so I might get another one of those bigger pots for next season.

Placed an order for "Birds Eye Baby", "Bolivian Rainbow" and "Peito De Moca" today with the intention of trying the first two next season and having the third one as a reserve due to lack of space. My order also had room for some "Super Chili" and "Black Scorpion Tonque" seeds for a friend.

Planning ahead

My chili yeild is doing well so I've been looking for other variations to try out in the next growth season. A local grower has a minimum order limit of 15€ on seeds so I've been trying to get together some friends that may be interested in trying to grow their own and place a group order since that would get me way too many seeds if I were to order just for myself. So far I've found C.annuum 'Bird's Eye Baby' and C.annuum 'Bolivian Rainbow' to be the two variations that interest me the most.

I've decided to only try two different variations because of the limited growing space I have. Even these 3 plants have pretty much taken over my window still and I plan to make it 4 next year.

Tasting

I'm happy to say that today I tasted the very first pod of my future harvest. The other pods haven't shown signs of color change yet. The taste was mild and surprisingly sweet pepper -like. It's certainly one of the mildest chilis I've ever tasted which is a good thing since I don't consider myself to have a taste for really fiery foods. "The top" -plant is growing strong but I wonder if it will make it before the days grow too short. I have big plans for that plant. There's also a batch of 60+ seeds harvested from the pod I'm trying to dry out and store even though I might end up ordering seeds to try different plants next season.

Pods

When I started my chili growth project in March I had my goal set to producing at least one pod so I can harvest the seeds and try again. I'm very happy that this goal was met with great success. So far my uncut plant has 13 pods and the very first one is just starting to show signs of a slight color change. The more bushy plant is still flowering strong and has 20 pods. "The top" -plant is so far behind that I'm going to try picking the flower buds off so the plant will gain more strength to the growth instead of producing crop. I'm hoping to get to taste my very first pod soon.

Trial&error

The final learning experience or experiment of this growth season is going to be this. This is the top of my other plant that I cut off and succeeded to re-root quite easily. After it had grown to a good 20cm height I finally gave in and got a bigger pot to plant it in. Roughtly estimated it is 3-4 times bigger than the ones where I have my other chilis growing. The pot also has one of those pipes that allow you to pour water straight into the roots instead of the bottom of the stem. It will be interesting to see how that plant grows compared to the others. If it grows a strong thick stem I might try growing it to a bonchi but I'll make another post about that later.

Progress

As my chilis got bigger it got more and more evident that I have them in way too little pots (again). On warm sunny days they require watering once in a day or the leaves start to hang. After the heatwave was gone we got hit by 14 days of colder and more rainy weather. Not realising this in time I was still giving the same amount of water to my middle plant which reacted by quickly dropping 2-3 of the biggest leaves it had grown. This was a wake up call and I stopped giving it water as long as the dirt felt moist. My cut and now more bushy plant was having more flowers to support so I tried giving it small amounts of fertilizer in the water. The result was a double edged sword as the flowers did bloom nicely but at the same time the growth exploded.

These two shots have around 25 days in between. 

Doing better

Few weeks after the last shot was taken both of my chilis were busy producing flowers. Shortly after the uncut one was first to produce a pod right in the middle where the plant had started to spread it's top. This was the clear indication I had been hoping for to show me that I was doing better than with my failed sweet pepper experiment.
During the few growing months I had been trying to read other peoples experiences on growing "Jamaican Bell" but didn't find a whole lot. The seed bag didn't have a latin name for it, used quotation marks around the name and had a rather scetchy marking of  3/5 Scoville°. After seeing the flowers and the pod I'm now convinced that I have been growing either C. baccatum var. 'Starfish' or some other variation of it.

Experimenting

While my sprouts were growing I had some time to read up on some beginners tips&tricks from various sources. This was propably a good idea but at the same time it really got to me how little I know about the world I've just stepped into.
I decided to keep it simple and experiment as much as I can so I know better what to do next season. Hydroponics sounded a little too fancy for me so I decided to go with the traditional growing method even though it was said to be slower. Reading up on pot sizes it dawned to me again that I'm propably going to end up with too small pots. I'm growing my plants on my windowstill and it can fit pots that are somewhere around 2 litres and here I am reading some guys tips "...but I've found out chilis can grow just fine in a relatively small pot of 8 litres".

After 2,5 months of growing here's what I had:
The middle sprout is one that I let grow freely just to see how it grows. The one on the left is my first "experimental" sprout that I cut the top of after it had grown a good 20cm to see how that effects the plant. You might also notice that I now have 3 sprouts while I claimed only 2 germinated. The one on the right is actually the cut off top that I had growing roots in a shot glass before planting it down.

New beginning

"Jamaican Bell" Sprout

In late May 2012 I finally made the call to plant a new batch of seeds. Ideal planting time would have been in Jan or Feb but I figured it still wasn't too late. I got the final push to try growing again while visiting a local gardening expo. To my surprise some local chili growers were there giving out tips and selling chili sprouts. While I didn't want to cut corners by buying sprouts from them I got two small leaflets telling me the basics about chilis and how to get growing. So on the following week I got my hands on some "Jamaican Bell" seeds. Taking care I wouldn't repeat the mistakes I made with the peppers I planted the seed on separate pots. A few days later I was happy to notice two of the three seeds (Lord Nelson had been a little cheap with the amount of seeds in one bag) had germinated.

The sales speech:
"Jamaican Bell is a tasty and mild chili with beautiful bright red bell -like pods. Not too hot in a stew but a culinary delight when prepared in the oven with cheese. Grows strong and about 100-125cm high."

How it all began

My chili growing project took its baby steps in the summer of 2011 when I planted my first seeds. I had just gotten my hands on some pointed sweet pepper/paprika seeds and was eager to try out. Little did I know my trial was doomed from the start.
It was June and the plants should have been flowering at that stage of the growth season and I was only just planting the seeds. After some time I had 3 sprouts growing in a pot I now know is way too small for even one to grow properly in. As daytime grew shorter and winter was slowly approaching my plants produced only one flower before dying shortly after.

The plants died but my enthusiasm did not. I decided to try again after the winter had passed.