Topic: Pepper re-do

[Vetivert]

For reasons unbeknown to me, my little habaneros are dying. I'll have to re-sow them but is it now too late?

[JanG]

I think habaneros are slow growing so I’d be doubtful you’d get any fruit this year.
It might be worth trying with a view to overwintering the smallish plants for earlier production next season?
I’ve had one or two little pepper plants fade away too this year without quite knowing why.

[Vetivert]

Thank you JanG, that's a good idea, I suppose there is no harm in experimenting :)

Last year I sowed tomatoes in May and got a crop. Not a great one, but something.

Sorry to read that some of your little peppers succumbed, too. Strugging somewhat with the peat-free composts...

[galina]

Sorry to hear about your Habaneros Vetivert. 

I am convinced that peat free composts often have ph values that are far from ideal for tiny plants.  Depending on what substitutes are being used.  This could account for some seedlings perishing.  We don't normally measure the ph of a bag of peat free compost, but maybe we should.   A speedy repot in different compost may be worth a try for the remaining ones.

An alternative would be to wrap the rest of the Habanero seeds well, put them in the freezer and start early next year.   

[Tee Gee]

Sorry to hear about your Habaneros Vetivert. 

I am convinced that peat free composts often have ph values that are far from ideal for tiny plants.  Depending on what substitutes are being used.  This could account for some seedlings perishing.  We don't normally measure the ph of a bag of peat free compost, but maybe we should.   A speedy repot in different compost may be worth a try for the remaining ones.

An alternative would be to wrap the rest of the Habanero seeds well, put them in the freezer and start early next year.   

As some of you may know since the " no/reduced Peat movement I have been making my own compost and what I am finding with my current recipe that I am losing a few seedlings but my main concern at the moment is the ones that are surviving don't seem to be developing very quickly and I am not quite sure what is causing this. I did a quick pH test on my current batch and I was recording a reading of around 6. But then again it could be a bit of impatience on my part due to me looking at the seedlings every day.

Today I am going back to my chemistry set do more pH testing.

On first impressions my current recipe has better moisture holding abilities so I am on a new learning curve with my watering procedures.

I have bought a few pH /moisture probes and found that most of them are very inaccurate so I have gone back to litmus paper testing and even here a lot of these are inaccurat.

I did a lot of looking around and found a company who makes them and phoned them up and had a word with one of their chemists and he guided me in the direction of what he would use to test my compost, so I bought some strips.

As a result of using these this is when. I found my probes were inaccurate in fact the one I use now is around one pH unit out. So when doing a quick test with the probe which is more convenient than doing a litmus test, I accept a reading of 7.5 on my probe dial to achieve the 6.5 I want.

I hope you find this information interesting but let me clarify I am no expert in this department.


Now. I am off to get my chemistry set out and test my current batch of Ji 2

[Deb P]

Interesting comments about the pepper germination, I sowed in a controlled heated propagator mid Feb and got very patchy germination with all of my chillies and peppers. I resowed  some more of the no shows four weeks later, with more vermiculite  in the mix of peat free multi purpose compost and most seeds performed better this time
I have just purchased four plug plants chillies from an eBay supplier to fill the gap which arrived today and are potted on, and I also got three cuttings from them as they were taller than expected!

[peanuts]

Interesting re germination of peppers - I bought a plant four years ago. It has small perfectly formed little round pointed chills, they're not long, and not creased like the habeneros ones, but I've no idea of the name.  The first year it produced loads of beautiful little quite hot peppers on the open veg patch.  Come October. because it looked so healthy and still had a good crop coming, my husband, who isn't the veg gardener (!), suggested I  pot it up and bring it into the house for the winter.  It continued to produce all winter, and was full of flowers in the early spring. 
I kept seed,  but have had difficulty in germinating it.  Two years ago I managed, but last spring and this year i've had nil germination.   I've only just thrown out the original plant, in its fourth year, as it finally died!  I've managed to keep the second, so will have a corp this year.
Just a thought - I don't freeze the seed, and I no longer have a heated propagator, so I just try in the warmth of the house.  It's also difficult to find a good compost here.

[Vinlander]

Going almost completely "out of the box", now is a perfect time to sow perennial chilli peppers (Capsicum pubescens aka. manzano, rocoto, locoto, "gringo killer" etc.).

That's because its possible to get them growing really fast with the current temps and daylight - you will still need a sunny windowsill until May but they are also much better at shrugging off occasional chills (they can even survive 0C - especially if they are 9 months old, but not -1C).

More importantly this October you will have plants that will still fit on a windowsill - (because they don't mind a bit of pruning at this point).

If your sunny windowsills are really narrow (and you don't have any kind of sun room - or even a glazed porch) then it's worth making a sowing in May or June so they will fit.

You might just possibly get some green chilli fruit this October - you should use all of them straight away - they can make any stew taste like it's got loads of black pepper in it - very different from the ripe fruit that are hot in the normal way.

More importantly, know that none of this species produce fruits that will dry out - even the ripest ones will go mouldy in a week unless used or frozen - they are just too fleshy to dry (unless you slice thinly and dry in the oven).

They will always survive on the windowsill (unless you don't have double glazing and turn the heating off).

There are plenty of websites for more information but I'm interested in how they can be more reliable than the other C. species. 

These are properly perennial, they don't sulk through the spring and get overtaken by seedlings (like C. annuum do). They will hit 1-2m in their 2nd year and have a yield to suit.

You must sow more in April '25 so you always have 1year plants the next spring - it's much easier than keeping them for year 3.

For year 3 you have to to grow them on a succession of pots and as soon as a 25-30cm pot isn't too silly, you bury the whole pot wherever it will do well - then you can lift the pot in Sep, remove all the ripe and green fruit and trim it to fit in somewhere above 4C. In my sunroom with a frost-stat I get over 70% survival after the 2nd winter and 50% in their 3rd.

Plenty of websites sell seeds but next year you might want some more exotic ones - semillas.de have about 30.

Cheers.