Sunday, November 9, 2008

Plant Update

Since at the moment I am living a few hours away from home, due to the current job that I have, I am also away from most of my plants. I do, however, have a whole bunch of chillies with me, mainly because they will fit in the car with me for the drive back to Perth. Im finding it quite relaxing to have something to look after, which I guess is the reason I got into gardening in the first place. Im trying to become a paramedic, and I figured I should work on stress relief before its needed, get a system going if you will. Anyway, enough rambling, now for the plants:
My Black Pearl, not to be confused with cheap trash of a similar name, I picked it for its ornamental value, plus the fact that I hadnt seen one before. It is a hot variety, apparently around 30'000 scoville units (read on for more), with black fruits ripening to red. A tad smaller than what I would like, will wait and see how it goes.
Red Cayenne Chilli Pepper. An impulse buy, but really, they were all impulse buys. I figured I love cayenne pepper, so why not the plant that provides the raw ingredients! Just got it home yesterday, repotted it last night, sprayed with food today.



My mini sweet chocolate capsicum, not actually a chilli variety, but bought once again for the appearance, it comes from Digger's Heirloom range. The fruit ripens to a 'chocolatey' colour, with a sweet taste. This is the first of my plants to set fruit, with one solitary fruit hanging off of it near the top. It has a couple more flowers on it, so hopefully there is more to come. My orange Habanero plant, hopefully this one gives me lots of fruit, as Im hoping for big things from this one. Just to be sure, I bought another two a week ago, they are in Perth with my other plants, where my better half is taking care of them for me. This one was bought two weeks ago and seems to have droopy leaves, not sure why, but hopefully repotting it into something bigger, as well as adding a lot of compost does the trick. This one, if grown properly, will have fruit with a scoville rating of around 200'000-300'000. To put this into perspective, a rating of 0 means no heat, tabasco sauce is around 2000, serrano peppers come in at 20'000, tabasco chillies are at 30'000-50'000, and the hottest recorded ever is the naga jolokia, which comes in at around 1'000'000 scoville units. That one is on the wishlist for next year. More about that to come...This is my chilli serrano, bought when I didnt think there was much selection around, so I had to buy what I could. Since then (all of 2 weeks ago), I have found that it is regarded as a medium to hot chilli, producing an average crop of fruit. More on this one in upcoming editions.

All of the plants that are on the table in the photos above were just repotted last night, some because the old pots were too small, others because the pots werent mine. I left them in the shade today, tomorrow they will go back in to sunlight again, plus they were all watered with Seasol before transplanting, which is said to lessen the transplant shock. Im using coir mulch to stop too much evaporation, which seems to be working quite well. After two days without water, in 20-25 degree days, the soil is still quite moist a couple of centimetres down. An added bonus, hopefully, is the increased humidity they give off, which should help make the plants hotter.

1 comment:

Wolf said...

You really have the advantage to live in Australia. I am in Germany and last year I tried to grow chili but I only get a green plant and no fruits.
Here it is to cold and the summers are to short.
Wolf
A garden friend from Germany
http://www.garten-anders.de
http://www.garten-anders.blogspot.com