Topic: Chilli grow 2020

[Robbo141]

Great harvest livo
I think next year I will focus on Thai bird eye next year. I use them the most in my cooking and they?re just more versatile for me than habaneros, which I still have a ton of in the freezer, even after smoking a bunch and grinding to chilli powder.
If I can find naga seeds I may give them a go too.

Robbo

[livo]

I could post you some of my Purple Naga Jolokia seeds.  Perhaps your birthday is coming up soon.  Mine is.  I'm an Aquarius.  Of course I would treat the seeds with an anti-bacterial and complete drying treatment before posting.  I fully understand international quarantine and bio-security.  Full declaration would be made so it would be up to US Customs if you receive or not.  I doubt it will cost much.

The Thai Birdseye are just so reliable and apparently very popular in the sub-continent, which I didn't know until recent intensive research into Indian Chilli farming and marketing.  They are a very hardy plant and resistant to many diseases that afflict other more finicky cultivars.  My big, old plant out front is simply amazing.  I now have 3 different Thai Birdseye in progress.

Apparently a very popular variety in India is the one that goes white upon maturity.  Indian Chilli is a hard thing to comprehend.

Chillis are a very unusual plant.  I have 4 plants from locally acquired seed out of the same pod.  3 of them are growing pendulous pods while one is growing upright.  I have 3 Indian Lal Mirch plants of the same variety from the same seed batch (same pod, not sure) that are all different in growth pattern with the exact same post-germination conditions.

I have a rare occurrence of 2 Rajah plants germinating from a single seed.  They are notably smaller than the same plants that germinated normally, but I have kept them separately and labeled them as Rajah Twin.  I was able to carefully separate them after an initial time in the propagation media.  It will be interesting to see if it is a genetic trait passed on to the next generation.

[Robbo141]

Very kind of you livo.  I noticed my supermarket has dried Bhut Jolokia for sale.  Are they the same as naga?  I?m also aware of the US Customs regulations. Me and the missis visited Thailand last year and a tour guide showed us a plant and said you can pick a leaf, store is between the pages of a book, take it home and just lie it face down and it will grow a new plant. So of course Mrs Robbo took his suggestion and bingo, we have a 2 ft high plant now in our back yard.

Robbo

[livo]

The naming of chillis is a bit random. According to wikipedia Naga and Bhut,  Jolokia and Morich (mirch) are all closely related or possibly the same. These things cross so readily that it's difficult to say for sure.  All I can really tell you about the one I have is that my seed seller has one he calls Purple Naga Jolokia.  I'm pretty sure I ended up with a rogue seed in a pack of Rajah I bought.

The seeds I've already germinated from my first pod are varied. Most are green seedlings but 2 have come out of the seed completely purple from the start. The parent plant is dark green but the unripe pods are purple, nearly black, although a couple have very patchy green mosaic when you look closely. The flower is also brilliant purple as opposed to white.

I fermented the next 5 pods for 48 hours and have begun drying the seeds. I have 300 from 5 pods and still 30 from the first one after I planted half, so they are consistently producing 60 seeds per pod.

I'll post about the Kashmiri plant from the same seed supplier in the relevent thread.

[livo]

Here's a couple of pix of my first ripening chillis.  Aussie Red, Rajah and more of the Purples. I've already picked about 9 or 10 of the purples after they ripened. They were very quick to produce pods and ripened before anything else planted at the same time.

[livo]

Pics of Chilli grow progress and other.

The first 2 pics show recent bird damaged pods and whole branches broken off.  These and other pests are wiping out 75% of my crop but I've still got plenty.  As mentioned in the Kashmiri thread, I lost 40 pods from 8 plants in one night a few weeks ago to rats after I'd moved the pots indoors.  Next thing is to construct a chilli cage but probably not until next year.  The birds love the Cayennes and the Aussie, which is very similar and has a sweet capsicum like flavour, but they will eat anything that is red.

Then there is a progress pic of my mystery purple pod. Hot little buggers and a really pretty plant with purple flowers instead of white.

The last photo is of some ripening Rajah.

[Garp]

Shame about the wildlife attacking your plants mate. I guess that's one disadvantage to living with a climate where you can grow chillies outside.

[livo]

Being in the Southern Hemisphere, I wont start a new thread which has any implications to your seasons.  The 2021 winter days here are getting longer but the temps have been quite cool.  Luckily for me, we no longer get frosts or temps below 0'C.  The coldest nights so far at my place have been around 4 - 5'C and it has kicked a few of my plants around.  I've lost about 10 but a quick count this afternoon shows about 250. If I get 200 survive, I'll be happy with a good head start.  I need some pots and dirt.

Today I planted my first 100 seeds in the heated greenhouse.  Bayadgi (or the actual Kashmiri Chilli that you buy).  I ended up with one very nice plant which produced good pods and I was able to save a good one from the birds which gave me about 120 seeds.  These plants are the mild Kashmiri that aren't from Kashmir.  Delicious flavour and bright red colour but very little heat. The plants that I have which are supposedly Kashmiri of different varieties are completely different.

I have been very selective on keeping seeds from healthy and prolific plants, and I have also kept some from plants that were obviously rogue seeds from what I thought I was buying.  There is one really nasty little thing that burnt my face off after handling it to harvest seeds.  Really odd shaped pods that are bright orange in colour and dangerous.

A few of my unusual Indian varieties have produced just enough for me to salvage some good seed so I'm hoping for a better grow this year.  Some varieties just grew without any problem so with those as the back up I should have a bumper crop this year.

I've been using the dehydrator and grinder to make some really good powder.

[Garp]

Moved.

[livo]

I'll include my future posts in the 2021 thread but here is pretty much the last of my grow from 20/21 season (although some plants are still going). 

Here are pictures of 2 separate weekly harvest days which ended up in the dehydrator to be kept dried whole with some ground to powder.  I didn't photograph every week and I already have 2 takeaway containers full of powder which my wife has been bagging up to put out front for passing neighbours to take.  Lot's of lockdown walkers up and down the usually quiet road at the moment.

I've also been picking some fresh to use in dishes as required and I must have given at least 1 kg or more of fresh chillis away to various people.  The birds and other animals accounted for just as much which I'll have to work on.

A few of my plants were banged up pretty good over the weekend with gusty 90 - 120 km/hr winds lasting for two days.  The cold is starting to knock a few around but hopefully it will warm up soon.