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.