Temptations

One of the Bolivian Rainbow sprouts moved into a proper flower pot after I had fallen into temptation and bought Prairie Fire seeds from the supermarkets fruit&vegetable seeds -stand. "No, I don't have room to grow them" reasoning lasted for about 2 days before the seeds found their way into dirt. Maybe I am a bit addicted but then again I'm only growing 3 variations and the two gifted ones.

Prairie Fire (C. annuum): Small and ornamental pepper that is ideal for window stills or growing on your patio. The plant gives plenty of small peppers that go from yellow to red when fully ripe. Seeds planted March 1st, first sprout visible on the 11th.

Early flowering

I have to say I wasn't expecting this at all. The Chichen Itza I got pregrown in January has just opened its first flower bud. Unlike my sprouts that have been getting some help from my desks study light during the dark hours it has been growing completely with the help of daylight. It's nice to see it do so well when you look at the sorry excuse of a plant growing next to it. With that in mind I've now stopped watering the scorpion to see if there's any change in the droopy look of the plant.

Sprouts

Just a brief update on how the plants are doing. Bolivian Rainbow did really well and all 3 seeds planted have sprouted. First two have their second pair of leaves visible and the third isn't too far behind. Bird's Eye is doing only slightly worse with 2 sprouts so overall I'm happy with the results as the goal I set for myself was to grow two sprouts each.

The reason why I chose to grow them in yogurt cups is that they act as poor mans bluggbox and when it's time to move the plants to a bigger pot I figured I could just cut the cups open instead of causing possible root damage while trying to spoon or fork them out.

Season 2013

Bolivian Rainbow (C. annuum): Ornamental pepper with small pods ranging from purple when raw to yellow, orange and red when fully ripe earning its name "Rainbow".
Seeds planted January 29th, first sprout visible February 7th.

Bird's Eye Baby (C. annuum):  Small, very pretty ornamental chili plant with tiny leaves and pods.
Seeds planted January 30th, first sprout visible February 9th.

Chichen Itza (C. chinense): Strong growing plant with fiery orange habanero -type pods.
Pre-grown sprout that seems to be doing well. It's the one in the white pot.

Trinidad Scorpion (C. chinense):  Tall plant with pods with characteristic shape which sees a two or three inch pendant which tapers to a sharp point, "resembling a scorpions tail".
Pre-grown sprout that is clearly suffering from the dark nordic winter. If you compare the recent shot with the one in the previous post you'll notice it hasn't grown at all.

False start

Season 2013 seems to have taken a false start as the word of my hobby has reached some of my relatives. As a result I got two healthy looking sprouts on my birthday. This will lead to some special arrangements on my behalf as I was already conserned with the tight space on the ones I plan to grow this season and now I have two extra plants.

Chichen Itza and Trinidad Scorpion are both supposed to be really hot and they're quite far from the usual mild-medium heat ones I've grown so we'll see what I will do with the fruits. I'm going to plant the first seeds of season 2013 in 10 days.

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.