Sari's Garden 2006, a bit about 2007 and 2008 dreams

[svalli]

Most pepper plants in garden have started flowering, only chinenses have no buds opening yet, which is natural for them. Some annuums and baccatums have nice size pods already.

This is a bloom in the plant which I have believed to be Black Hungarian. I collected seeds from last year's pods. The original seeds were sold as Purple Serrano, but the pods were not Serranos.


First Yellow Russian (C. baccatum) is getting ripe. The green ones seem to get dark on the sunny side really easily.


----------------------------
My Garden Journal

[svalli]

I had to eat the first ripe Yellow Russian. Really flavorful with nice baccatum aroma. This is much better than Lemon Drop. Heat was enough for me, my lips are still burning.

[svalli]

It is amazing what good rain and warm weather makes happen.  My Beaver Dam peppers have had quite many small fruits set and I was already worried that there had been a mix-up in the seeds, because the pods stayed small and quite round.  Yesterday evening I checked the plants and the pods had grown at least 5 cm in two days.

Beaver Dam is a small town north of us in Wisconsin. Beaver Dam pepper is a hungarian heirloom pepper, which was brought to Wisconsin by a hungarian  immigrant family. These peppers should be mildly hot and have good flavor. I can't wait to get the first ripe one.

This weekend should be really hot, so I hope the chinenses will finally spurt to growth. Saturday we should have over 35°C with high humidity and Sunday should be even hotter.

[Nike]

About that pic of the "Purple Serrano": how come it looks like there`s black lines drawn on the edges of the corona? Or does it really look like that??

[svalli]

I did not draw the picture, that is how the flowers are. They look pretty cool with the strong contrast of the dark purple and white.

[svalli]

Couple hot days and warm nights have made wonders for some of the peppers. Chinenses have grown a lot. I should have taken before and after photos.

There is a cooler air coming from north tonight, which will cause thunderstorms, when it hits this warm and humid air. Some of the thunderstorms could be severe. I hope we will be spared from the hail again. Week ago we had thunderstorms, which caused golf ball size hail in the town next to us. Some gardens were destroyed quite badly.

My homepage garden Journal

[svalli]

The thunderstorm passed us last night with just an awesome lightshow. We got no hail and no rain either. I did not water the plants in the evening; even they looked a bit wilted in the heat. I was certain that it would rain, but we did not get even a drop. So this morning I had to get up early and water the garden.

The excessive heat is now over but it is still plenty warm. Temperature should get close to 30°C, but not too much over.

[svalli]

Tomatoes have started to ripen. Todays harvest was quite modest, but these very first ripe tomatoes are the best. Ripe ones were Dwarf Gem, Jelly bean Hybrid, Opalka, Paul Robeson and Sun Sugar Hybrid.


I have been wondering, if it is normal for one year old plants to grow shorter and more dense than first year plants. I have Aji Cristal, Christmas Bell and Aji Omnicolor plants, which grew in garden last summer, now growing in pots. They were pruned fall time and spent the winter quite dormant in the basement. Last year these baccatums grew much taller and the leaves were bigger. Now they are thick bushes and all of them are full of flowers and have set some fruit too.
Link to photo

[svalli]

The heat is on again and it will just get hotter before we get any relief. On Monday we may get up to 37°C. We got heavy rain and strong winds during a really bad thuderstorm last week. Downtown of Waukesha flooded and there were a lot of trees down. Luckily our yard and garden did not have any damages.

Aji Cristal in the garden is looking really good. Lower part of plants has quite many mature size pods and the top part is blooming well.


Last year I grew three Purple Largo plants. One of them looked different and I saved seeds from that. The original plant had strawberry shape and size peppers and a bit purple on the flowers. The peppers were nicely hot and were good pickled. Now I have three plants growing from the saved seeds. One looks like a small purple bell pepper and the flower has purple edges. An other one of the plants has a bit original shaped pods, but larger and more ruffled. Third one has elongated pods and totally white flowers. The most mature pod has changed to reddish brown color.
The last years plant may have been F1 cross and this years plants show clearly what happens in F2 generation. (Photos behind the linked text.)

----------------------------
My Garden Journal

[svalli]

Today should be the last day of this extreme heat for now. We may get some thunderstorms later this evening before the refreshing cold front. For three days temperature has not dropped below 25°C and it has been really humid.

The first of my Purple Largo hybrids had ripen to red and it was time to taste it. It looked like small marconi pepper. Walls were thin and there were quite many seeds inside. I cut the placenta and ribs off before tasting. The tip of the pepper was already quite hot, so I did not take a bite of the stem end until doing a little trick. I know that this sounds like cheating, but I rubbed a bit of Orajel (benzocaine cream used for toothache relief) on my tongue and inside mouth. It numbed my mouth so that I did not feel the heat of the chile at all. Taste of this chile is average with some sweetness. These could be good for smoking and drying.

I wonder if the bell pepper shaped ones are also hot.

[cornell]

I have been wondering, if it is normal for one year old plants to grow shorter and more dense than first year plants. I have Aji Cristal, Christmas Bell and Aji Omnicolor plants, which grew in garden last summer, now growing in pots. They were pruned fall time and spent the winter quite dormant in the basement. Last year these baccatums grew much taller and the leaves were bigger. Now they are thick bushes and all of them are full of flowers and have set some fruit too.

Looks like you have managed to create some kind of bonzai effect... those are really dwarfs... constant prunning may create similar symptoms in my experience... heavy prunning, transplanting to the pots and basement dormancy maby made the plants to switch on the survival mode... smal leafes and fruits to make few seeds... just a gues

Sounds pretty warm there... we had only + 4 C one night in garden (mid-Finland)... you may have been heard thet it's been very dry summer here in Finland... only gravel in our garden well...

I think you are right about the hybrids beeing f2's... but that would mean the parent plant of yours was f1... did it look like the variety should?

would be nice to see some pictures more from the outdoor chiligarden...

looking good

[svalli]

.. smal leafes and fruits to make few seeds... just a gues

An interesting thing is that the pods are not smaller. Aji Cristal for example has couple of monster ones, compared to the new plants in the garden. I'll take a picture of that soon.
Christmas Bell is still growing its fruits, so I do not know what size they will end up being.

would be nice to see some pictures more from the outdoor chiligarden...

I have to go out to the garden and snap more pictures. I hope to have time for that this weekend.

Temperature overnight should drop to +15°C, finally we can sleep windows open. Day time temps are still close to 30°C, but that will feel refreshing after the hot and humid days. For the whole year we may also be behind from normal rain amounts, but lately we have had so many storms, that I have not had to water the garden much.

[Aji Inferno]

It's kind of interesting to compare the weather conditions... I lived for some time in Atlanta, GA, USA, getting used to almost daily, magnificient thunderstorms - and sometimes even tornadoes. To tell you the truth, I really missed them back here in Finland! Here in Vantaa, close to Helsinki, there has been no single storm during the whole summer. Zero. The rest of Finland has been blessed (?) with rain and storms, but for some reason, the Helsinki area seems to be "storm-free" area. Some people might think that's just great. I think it just sucks. Why? Because there's nothing like a truly mighty thunderstorm approaching - and making you realize how mighty mother nature really is!

This is bloody BORING, if safe as well... ;-)

[Tupakka]

I'd say there haven't been a single big storm in finland, at least what i've heard. A couple of tornadoes, or should I call them trombies, have passed but that's it. Well it is well known that we're experiensing a very dry summer here in Finland. I believe there will be hardly any mushrooms or berries in the forest. Damn.. I just love those rouskus(in english??).

Storms or not outside of the capital city area, there haven't been even any proper rains inside. I don't remember hearing the thunder anymore than once. The temps have also been abnormally high.

Just weard. I wonder does this drought have anything to do with the global warming. But should it effect this quickly? I hear that in famous country of rain, in UK, there haven't been very much that rain either. Any other country having droughts? If so, it would really give some proof for the global warming. I guess we will just have live with it. Let's just hope that The Summer of 07's will be rainier or at least a little bit cooler.

Ofcourse we, especially we, should think of the bright sides. Our lovely plants, must be mostly loving the weather. Sun, sun, sun and only sun.
So, tell me, have the outside and greenhouse plants grown any quicker because of this sunny summer? Too bad I don't have any memories to compare my plants with as I still am a first year grower.

Well, it certainly was a perfect year to start this hobby!

EDIT: Sorry for the misspellings but I just don't have the patince to hunt them down right now. And I'm pretty tired too.

[svalli]

I think you are right about the hybrids beeing f2's... but that would mean the parent plant of yours was f1... did it look like the variety should?

The original seeds were for Purple Largo and the plant I took the seeds from looked different than other two, which looked like the description on the seed packet. So I must have collected the seeds from a hybrid plant.

[svalli]

I lived for some time in Atlanta, GA, USA, getting used to almost daily, magnificient thunderstorms - and sometimes even tornadoes. To tell you the truth, I really missed them back here in Finland!

I have to admit that the storms may sometimes be exiting to follow, but when there is a threat of golf ball size hails or strong winds destroying my garden or a tornado sucking up our house, it can be quite frightening. So far we have been lucky, even there has been destruction few kilometers away.

[cornell]

The original seeds were for Purple Largo and the plant I took the seeds from looked different than other two, which looked like the description on the seed packet. So I must have collected the seeds from a hybrid plant.

jep, i see... you had already answered my question in your original post...
Crosses are an intresting source of variation indeed... i'm just wondering is it posible that same pod has self and crosspollinated seeds?

Some super size hails rained over Savo -area in july... i'm happy it's not more common around here... i remember your storm reports from previous growing season... huh...

One good thing about drought is that the f***ing mosquitos aren't able to multiply... it's really nice to lay in the hammock without netting!!!
The other is that humidity related plant diseases are not problem this year... there it might be otherwise...

have you fertilized your bonzais? would guess that they start growing with extra N ... or not...

[luca]

Any other country having droughts? If so, it would really give some proof for the global warming.

In my hometown in Brazil (and the rest of the south of Brazil), it has been very dry too.  The fields and crops are suffering very badly.  Even the migthy Iguassu Falls has dried out almost completely! I've seen some pictures that are actually hard to believe...

In any case, these draughts are a common periodic occurence in the South of Brazil, called La Niña.  This phenomenom is the opposite of the famous El Niño.  It causes droughts in the South and floods in the North of Brazil, while the latter causes flood in the South and draughts in the North...

[svalli]

As growing medium for the overwintered plants I have used mixture of peat, coir, perlite, bat poop, worm poop, kelp meal and tomato fertilizer. I have been fertilizing them with sea weed extract, fish emulsion and a bit of liquid tomato fertilizer. The plants are located by a south side wall where they get a lot of sun. Leaves look paler than in the plants on east side of the house; all of them are fertilized same way so I suspect that more sunlight makes them light green?

This is the Aji Cristal

This is one of the pods on the Aji Cristal. I noticed that the new plants in the garden have some same size pods, this one just looked so huge.

Christmas Bell will soon be filled with dangling bells.


I took some pictures from garden and now I have to figure out how and where to publish them. I do not want to put too many picture files on this forum because it may slow down the download. I have to find out how to make better gallery on our home page.

Global warming seems to come up on many discussion forums and lately there has been quite many TV documentaries about the issue. In my mind earth's climate is definitely changing and part of it may be results of increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere due to burning of the fossil fuels, but main reason for the changes may be that the earth is constantly changing and going through cold and hot periods. Our actions may just speed up the natural process.

[svalli]

Here you can see some pictures of my garden in slideshow format:
http://home.wi.rr.com/vallinmaki/photogallery.htm

I am not a Java progammer, but I was able to copy and modify some code, which does a slideshow. This way I can put slidshow of selected pictures hosted by Photopucket on our home page. I was trying to add caption, but could not figure out how to make it visible. I would like to have array of text strings, which would show under the correct picture. I am an old ansi C programmer, so this Java stuff is new to me.
If someone knows how to add the caption texts, without adding them to the picture files, I would greatly appreciate any hints.