Julian's 2008 Growing Journal.

24 August 2008

Over the last few years there have been some distinct trends in pepper grower's wish lists. A couple of years ago it was the naga that everyone wanted to grow. Then last year it was the Trinidad Scorpion and the 7pod. This year's trend has been more aesthetic - a rush for brown or 'chocolate' coloured varieties. Although they may have been around for many years, new to my ears this year are the chocolate bhut jolokia, the chocolate fatalii and the brown pubescens. Well at the risk of filling thechileman inbox with seed requests, take a look at what my wife managed to grow. A chocolate orange striped pepper! Actually it's just a regular fish pepper on its way to turning red. It only has a brown and orange phase for about three days.

17 August 2008

I recently saw an interesting theory put forward for the cause of the 'tail' on the Trinidad Scorpion which said the flower was responsible. The characteristic 'sting' on the Trinidad Scorpion isn't always visible and indeed the trait can often be seen in other super hot varieties such as the Naga. The right half of my photo shows a narrowing of the pod, clearly being caused by the flower. This is the Brown Congo variety. The left half of the photo however shows a Scorpion Morouga which clearly has a tail forming while the flower is out of the way at the tip. So is the tail caused by the flower, or does it form naturally? Feel free to let us know what you think.

12 August 2008

I know I promised an update on the over sized Turbo Pube pod, but it stubbornly refuses to ripen so I'll have to come back to it another time. So while I wait patiently for my 2008 peppers to start ripening, I find myself browsing the internet for interesting chilli sauces, jams and pickles and powders. It's not that I am lacking in chilli sauce, I have enough Snake Bite Private Reserve to see me though the winter, but there are some talented people out there who have the ability to make fantastic chilli products.

First up, I bought myself a jar of Wilf and Kathy's Chipotle Chilli Jelly. I have tried their jelly before so I knew I was in for a treat. The Chipotle has a nice warming, smokey flavour without being too hot. They advise it goes well with cheese or cold meats (two of my favourite things) so I sliced off a chunk of Manchego and ate dollop after dollop of this truly delicious jelly. Highly recommended.

If I am hunting for food products I will usually look at UK companies as this is where I live. I think I automatically think the postal service from anywhere else will make the whole buying process a hassle. But I have completely changed my opinion thanks to Beth at Peppermania.com. A few places in the world can probably claim strong associations with chilli, Texas certainly can, and that is where Peppermania.com are based. They posted my order on a Friday and I received it the following Wednesday, three working days to get from The United States to the UK! That's faster than most internal mail. Inside the package was a packet of La Reina's Texas Red, a secret blend of chilli and spices for the perfect authentic Texan chilli sauce. I haven't had chance to cook with it yet but it took me just a few seconds to open the packet and have a quick taste. It packs a nice punch. Also in the package was a fantastic shaker gadget for chilli powder which contains half pecan smoked Yellow Habanero and half Red Rocoto. I'm just sorry you can't scratch and sniff the screen because this powder smells good!

3 August 2008

The Brown Congo in the NFT is now in full flower and is a rather huge plant. The weight of the nutrient in the tank means I cannot move them out of the greenhouse if it gets too hot. It hasn't been a huge problem but I think it has caused a fair amount of flowers to drop. My friend Lee gave me some General Hydroponics Gro/Bloom/Micro to try. That went into the tank this weekend so it will be interesting to see how the plant reacts. Perviously I was using one part nutrients which have clearly done a perfectly good job at feeding the plants. The rest of the greenhouse is bursting at the seams with most varieties now having green pods. It won't be long before I can start showing some ripe pod photos. In my next update I will show you the Turbo Pube plant which has decided to put all its efforts into growing just a single pod!

28 June 2008

It is amazing how much variation there is in different varieties if you know what to look for. I can now recognize many species from the shape of the buds or the plant's habit. Lots of peppers have dark, almost black patches at the nodes. On the left side of the photo above you can see an Aji Benito with almost white nodes. And on the right of the photo is a Scorpion Moruga(sp?) which has the red veigns and pale green leaves typical of the 7 pod and scorpion varieties.

15 June 2008

Just a small update on the NFT plants. The Trinidad Perfume has quite a few buds showing and should soon be in flower. The Brown Congo meanwhile is still concentrating on growing foliage and is now like 3 plants in 1 with two big side shoots coming off the main stem. It's also one of the thickest stemmed varieties I have seen. The soil version is the same so it's not just because of the hydro. If these plants keep doubling in size every two weeks I'm going to need a bigger greenhouse! The rate at which they are drinking the nutrients is also more noticeable. I started off changing the nutrient every two to three weeks. That meant draining more than half of the 40 litre tank and refilling. Now it is taking them a week and a half to drink around 20 litres. If they start demanding 40 litres of nutrient a day they had better give me plenty of peppers in return :)

7 June 2008
As well as the hydroponics, I have around 30 varieties growing in soil. Well, it's actually a mix of peat free compost, worm cast, perlite, vermiculite and bat guano. Most of my plants are now in their final big pots so I have also mixed in a bit of blood fish and bone fertilizer. I want to avoid a mistake I made a couple of years ago when I grew the best looking chocolate habanero you'll ever see (maybe). It was in a good sized pot but I got a bit carried away and moved it to a huge tub and gave it lots of fertilizer. It really grew into something approaching a tree, which, for a chinense, is pretty unusual. I was sure it was going to be covered in fruit. But the summer ended too soon and the plant never managed to set fruit. After that I have always been a bit cautious about giving my plants too much room to grow. I should probably keep a record like Lluis which would make it easier to plan potting up the following year. The pepper in the photograph is the infamous 7 pod. This morning I have potted it up but only into a slightly larger pot. But the first buds are already starting to appear.

3 June 2008
Three weeks after the two Chinense plants went into the NFT, the progress can be seen in the photo on the left. Compared to the photo below you can see how well they have grown. The second photo shows the NFT plants compared to their soil planted equivalents (all were germinated at the same time). I was interested to see that Wilf at Chillis Galore is showing almost identical results at 25th May. Wilf is also using the Greenhouse Sensation NFT system.
It's clear the NFT is a much more efficient way of growing, allowing the plants take exactly what they need in terms of nutrients to get the optimum rate of growth. I will update again in a few weeks and show you the staggering root growth that is going on in the NFT system. If I tried to take the plants out now and put them into soil, the root system would probably almost fill a plant pot without the need for soil. I have also added a third plant to the NFT - an Aji Benito.

17 May 2008
This year I have started growing some chillies using hydroponics. That is to say, growing plants in nutrient-enriched water rather than in soil. The concept has always fascinated me but it sounded very technical and far more complicated than my usual method of just sowing some seeds in compost. Last summer our friend Tony Ford wrote an excellent hydroponics guide for us here on thechileman. He made it sound less complicated and that got me even more curious about the technique. If you are wondering about hydroponic growing but you think it is too difficult, then you might want to read on. First let me just say that I am not very experienced when it comes to DIY. I am always rather impressed with myself if I so much as change a light bulb or paint a window sill. So if I can get peppers growing using hydroponics, then you definitely can too.

I realised that building a hydroponic system from scratch probably wasn't for me, until I understood how it all worked, so I got some fantastic kits from Greenhouse Sensation. To start off my plants I have been using their hydro propagator. The propagator is actually mid way between hydroponics and something called aeroponics as it uses a fine sprinkler system to spray the roots of the peppers with the nutrient solution. Once the plants were large enough I transferred them to the NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) hydroponic system. I calculated the running cost for the hydro propagator (UK) as £1 per month and the NFT as £0.40p per month. This is based on the pumps running for 24 hours a day at 14 watts and 6 watts respectively and this calculator. Let's look at the two hydroponic systems in turn.

Hydro Propagator:
The Greenhouse Sensation kit contains everything you need to grow your chillies, including full, easy to understand instructions for people like me. The basic principal is you fill the big black plastic tank with water, mix in the nutrients and use the pump to spray the nutrient solution at the base of the plants, which are dangling above the nutrient solution in little mesh pots. It really is that simple and yet the results are just amazing. The advantages of hydroponics are that the plant is free from soil borne disease, and they have constant access to all the nutrients that they need to grow.

I originally started the majority of my plants the traditional way, in soil. They were slow to get going and a few of them didn't get past the first true leaf stage before they started to look very yellow, thanks to some poor quality compost. Rather than give up on the plants, some of which were rare varieties that I really didn't want to lose, I removed them from the soil and gave the small, decayed root system, a rinse under the tap to remove the soil. I then put them in the hydro propagator and within two days the leaves were back to life, and healthy, white roots were forming (as you can see in the photo). Plants that were as good as dead in the soil were able to recover and flourish in the hydro propagator.

There are a number of ways to grow peppers in this propagator. You can grow from seed, from a newly germinated seedling, from an established small plant, or from a cutting. The photo on the left shows a 7 day old cutting already showing some very strong root growth. And when you are done with propagating chillis you can also grow any number of herbs, vegetables and flowers in there. I really cannot recommend this hydroponic system highly enough.

To get the most out of my hydroponic experiments I have invested in an EC meter and a Ph meter. Without getting too technical, the EC meter measures the amount of nutrients in the water. There are lots of opinions about the best level of nutrients to use, but the consensus seems to be somewhere between 1.4-1.6 EC. Without an EC meter it is impossible to tell the amount of nutrients in your water. Also important is the water's Ph value. On a scale of 0-14 with 0 being acid, 7 being neutral and 14 being alkaline, the recommended amount for peppers is somewhere between 6.5 and 6.8. There is a graph in Tony's Hydroponic Guide that shows you the effect the Ph of the water has on the plant's ability to take in the nutrients. So while your nutrient levels may be correct for perfect pepper growth, if your water's Ph is well below 6 or well above 7 then your plants aren't going to be able to make good use of those nutrients. Once I realised this, the EC and Ph meters were an essential purchase.

NFT hydroponic system:
Rather than suspend a grow light above the NFT hydroponic system, I decided to locate it in the greenhouse and let the sun do the work for me. As with the hydro propagator, the Greenhouse Sensation kit came complete with everything you need and full instructions.

The NFT is similar to other hydroponic systems in that it is based on having a large reservoir of nutrient enriched water that is pumped to the plants. Where the propagator uses a fine spray of nutrients to keep the roots moist, the NFT pumps the nutrient along a gently sloping enclosed channel in which the plants are sitting. The closed channel means that the roots are not exposed to the light and the relative humidity is 100% which prevents them from drying out.

First into the NFT was a Brown Congo chilli plant which had been given a decent root system by the hydro propagator. As an experiment, the second plant into the NFT was a Trinidad Perfume which I had started in soil. I washed the soil from the roots first to make sure particles that could be damaging to the pump were not washed down into the nutrient reservoir. The NFT currently receives direct sunlight from 8am until 2pm. Even with the window, door and louvre window open the temperature has been touching 40 degrees at midday. During the first week the plants wilted slightly in the middle of the day but once the roots had grown into the flowing nutrient channel they were much stronger. The photograph shows the plants on the day they went into the NFT. I'll keep you updated as the plants grow.

17 May 2008
Sorry for the lack of updates. This year has started very slowly compared to last year. In 2007 the whole of the month of April saw hot temperatures and unbroken sunshine and my peppers were already starting to flower by the end of the month. 2008 however has been a completely different story. April saw night time temperatures below freezing for much of the month, and even a few days of snow. It wasn't until May that the sun finally made an appearance and my peppers started to grow. The photo shows and over wintered fish pepper and a turbo pube enjoying fifty degrees centigrade (122 farenheit) in the greenhouse.

13 January 2008
First project of the year is a cold smoker. As you can see from the photo I don't actually have any fresh peppers at this time of year so I tested the smoker with cheese. The other continuity error you'll notice is that the first photo shows a tin can whereas the second photo shows a packet of silver foil. All you need is a soldering iron (£3.50 from ebay), a bag of wood pellets (£4.99 from planetbarbecue.co.uk), tin foil, a cardboard box and some cheese.

Instructions: make a tin foil parcel filled with a small handful of wood pellets (I used pecan wood, which is like hickory, but less powerful). Put a small hole in the top of the foil packet and insert the soldering iron into the side of the packet. Switch on the soldering iron. Place a piece of cheese (garlic bulb, peppers, whatever) next to the soldering iron and cover both with a cardboard box. The box will fill with smoke. Leave for a couple of hours.

I'm still testing different amounts of smoke, placement of food and time. Hopefully by summer I'll be making perfect chipotle (smoked Jalapeño) for some delicious smokey and spicy sauces.

28 December 2007
Another chile growing year begins! I like to start germinating the longer season varieties between Christmas and New Year, so here we are 28th December, the table is covered in seeds and I am about to clean my heated propagator ready for the first batch of seeds. First into the soil are the Chinenses. I currently have five that I want to grow: Beni Highlands, PI257166, PI439449, Brown Congo and 7 Pod. I have set four seeds of each variety. I would guess they will start to show after a couple of weeks.

It is a bit too early to start anything else as I don't want them to get too leggy before the daylight hours improve. I am going to grow varieties from each of the five domesticated species: Annuum, Baccatum, Chinense, Frutescens and Pubescens. You can view my full list for 2008 here.