turbo said:
Like I said earlier, she is a big girl. She and her husband love hot foods and they want to grow ghosts. We'll see how well we can do this year. If this is a nice season for chilies, we'll get to test them against past crops of Savinas. I didn't find the ghosts to be all that snarly. In fact, they were sweet and rich-tasting. I hope she gets a nice crop of the "babies" so we can split them and plant them in our gardens. I hope to use container-planting on my back deck to jack up the heat as much as possible, and we talked about that today, too.
If you deck is made of composite, the absorbed heat may be "too much for them" that's what happened to me last year, the roots were being cooked by the heat given off by the desk. You could stand them on top of a small shelf and they would be fine. Just a bit of advice, especially if you are away for more than a day without watering them.
Now on to transplant day.
The first two shots are before transplant. I decided to try Baker's (on the hot pepper forum) suggestion and bought a bag of pine bark mulch and added 30 - 40% to the bottom of each transplant pot (not blended btw), except one to see if there was any difference. I also took my healthiest trinidad scorpion and put it in the biggest pot to see if I would get more growth out of it. I transplanted trinidad scorpions, chocolate bhut jolokia's and regular bhuts. You will notice some plants are well alone, over three months, while some about a month and some just started. I want to see if I can get peppers from all of them and in what time frame. If we have a hot spring, and above average summer as far as heat I imagine they will produce early. I have been taking flower buds off of them regularly. After transplant, I hit them with a weak solution of miracle grow. All of the pots have bark mulch in the bottom, only the cups are potting soil.
The last four shots are after transplant you can see the size width difference of all of the large grey pots ( all trinidad scorpions, BTW ), the others in the smaller pots in the plastic container are bhut, chocolate bhut and trinidad scorpions. The tiny little cups are the same with the exception being that I have a pair of white bhuts (I hope), and I tried pairing some of them together to see how they grow, to see if slower or about the same as a single plant. Only time will tell, that's it for now, they will stay in those pots until harvest. I may up-size pots and soil on some if they appear they are still growing. No bugs, fungus, aphids or insects on anyone of them thanks to malathion (which I hate btw) but it works. Let's see what happens with these in a couple of months. I fluffed the soil as much as possible before planting and plan to water from the bottom for best root penetration and to keep insects down. They like the damp top soil I guess. A couple of my scorpions in red cups went into shock, none of the others did, I have them under a light, and have not a clue as why only two did and not the others, they came out of clear cups to the larger red ones, that was the only difference I could see. Very odd to say the least. Lastly, what should I be shooting for as far as PH goes ? I plan to buy a meter soon, what is a decent brand and price ?
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/627/transplant1.jpg
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/9083/transplant2.jpg
http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/2622/transplant3.jpg
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/2562/transplant4.jpg
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/8045/transplant5.jpg
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/5318/transplant6.jpg
Rhody...
