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

[svalli]

I did little searching on the web and found some code I was able to learn from and create the captions on the garden photo slideshow.

I tasted now the other Purple Largo hybrids and all of them are hot. Anyone interested on seeds of a hot bell pepper? Naturally there is no guarantee that the F3 generation will produce silmilar shape or hotness.

[svalli]

I know that this is not a chile, but I am so excited about our large pumpkin that I have to brag about it here. This is not yet any competition size pumpkin, but for a novice grower like me it is an achievement. You can see my toes below the pumpkin for size comparison.

Last year we lost all of our pumpkin plants to bugs. This year we have three different kind of pumpkin plants and all of them have survived and have fruit growing on them. The big one is Prizewinner Hybrid. The pumpkin has already started to change color, so it may not grow much anymore.

I found just two ripe peppers today; one Hot Large Cherry and one Dedo de Moca. Ripening seems to be really slow. The plants have grown, so that they need more support. I had to lift Chile de Arbol branches up and was amazed by the pods it is growing. They are like green beans, hard to see between the stems of the branches. It is interesting how the plant looks totally different than other annuums; leaves are long and narrow and it has much more branches, it almost reminds me of some baccatums. I got the seeds in a trade; originally they came from Mexico.


Sorry for the bad quality of my photos. DH is three weeks in Finland and took the digital camera with him. I was already going to buy some cheaper     camera to take pictures with, but then I remembered that our digital camcorder can take stills. I just forgot how bad resolution it has...

[svalli]

I found something quite unique and strange today. I was checking the chile plants in garden and took a closer look to my second Chile de Arbol, which grows in the middle of other plants. It has been hidden by the bigger Chile de Arbol, which is really bushy. I was looking if the smaller one had yet any pods and when I looked at the flowers I noticed that they were double. All of the flowers in that plant have double petals, like there is a one flower inside an other.

Flowers are creamy white, not such bright white like in the other Chile de Arbol. The stamens inside the flower are tiny and twisted.  I could not see the pistil at all and I could not see any parts which would clearly had pollen. I searched for pods, but could not find any. There were two flowers, which had faded and it looked like there could be a pod forming.

Stems of this plant are purple and leaves have purple veins and there is thin purple line on the outer edges of otherwise green leaves. The leaves are quite narrow.

Has anyone seen a double Capsicum flower? It really looks strange, when I am used to all of them being single.

I wish I had the camera, so I could take photos of the flowers and the plant. Hubby will still be gone for two weeks, so the proof of my observations has to wait, unless I can borrow a good camera from someone.

[maxpowa]

I noticed a double flower today, it already lost its petals, has two pistils and two starting pods emerging from one flower, I'll take a picture and post it here later today

Here it is, sorry for the bad quality, the pod(s) is located in a hard to reach spot on the plant.



This is on a Habanero Caribbean red by the way, from commercialy bought seeds. There are a few other odd shaped flowers on this plant, so it might be something genetic.

Steve

[svalli]

Steve,

You have cool siamese twin pods forming there. I have seen tomatoes doing a lot of that and this year I had one summer squash, where two squashes grew from one stem. My double flowers in the Chile de Arbol are a single flower having two layers of petals, like in the fancy petunias or some other hybridized flowers. If they produce fruit there should be only one pod forming.

[maxpowa]

I see,

would like to see a picture of that, sounds very intresting

Does it have a full set of stamens? I read somewhere that there are flowers with a genetic fault (developed on purpose) that causes stamens to develop into petals, thus giving a double (or triple or etc...) row of petals.

Steve

[svalli]

I borrowed camera from the office and took photos of the double flower chile.

Here is a flower bud:


Flower from the side:


Flower from the front:


Tiny pod forming:


Leaves on the top have more purple:


I can not take a picture of the whole plant because it is in quite tight place. Now I saw in the photos that the stamens have pollen and there is a pistil, so these should be self fertile. I will try to root cuttings of this plant because I want to keep it growing over the winter and maybe the seeds will not produce similar plants.

Has anyone seen or heard about this type of a chile? Is this a C. annuum or something totally else?

[cornell]

Looks like that double petal flower has not so many stamens... at least with roses multilayer petal flowers lose their stamens... or stamens are replaced by petals... seems to be same case in your flower...

[svalli]

Finally the peppers in the garden have started to ripen. I had my first ripe Jimmy Nardello. It looks like it could be a hot pepper, but it is so sweet and totally delicious.

I had also a ripe PI 441551 today. Taste and shape is same as the Christmas Bell; these may indeed be same variety. I'll do more comparison, when the CBs start ripening.

[svalli]

This evening I picked some peppers and tomatoes for salsa. One Beaver Dam had got a bit of red so I picked it. These peppers are described as mildly hot and I agreed to that after tasting one unripe. When gutting the peppers and discarding the seeds and the mid part I usually test how hot the mid is by touching it with my tongue. This time I had also my lips touch it and they were in intense pain immediately. I tried milk, but it did not help. I was walking around in the kitchen and cursing my stupidity and wondering what to do, when I remembered the Orajel. I ran to the bathroom and rubbed Orajel on my lips and got almost an instant relief. I have to remember to buy more of that stuff, because it will be needed when the pepper crop starts ripening. I like testing the taste of peppers, but I do not want any fiery face experiments. I have to remember to test, if that same cream works on skin because in the morning I chopped some baccatums to be used with lunch and accidentally rubbed the juice of the peppers on my face with my fingers. I tried a normal wrinkle cream and it just made the burning under my nose worse.

In all the fuss I forgot to taste the Beaver Dam pepper itself. I just threw it into the Tupperware chopping thing with couple or jalapenos, sweet banana peppers, onions, tomatoes and cilantro. I do not like to go to the Tupperware parties, but this chopper thing has been worth the money and 'suffering' through a party. I just put my ingredients in and wind the thing by hand and "voilà" the fresh salsa is done.  I have electric food choppers, but they make everything too fine easily, so the manual one is great for chunkier salsa.

By the way the salsa is extremely good and has perfect hotness. The Beaver Dam seems to be perfect salsa pepper. It is large, productive and hot. I will be saving seeds from these.

A perfect late night snack:

[svalli]

I tasted my first Brazilian Multicolor Acorn today. It was not totally ripe, but it had still the wonderful fruity baccatum flavor. I was actually able to test the flavor before the heat kicked in and it felt like my heart is stopping. These are quite nice little fire bombs. Plant seems to grow similar way as Aji Omnicolor. I should have planted this one in a pot and not in the garden where it is shaded by the taller baccatums.

[Omskakas]

http://www.orajel.com/

That product sounds useful for chile 'accidents'. Does anybody know if it's available in Finland?

[svalli]

I found some more ripening Beaver Dam peppers today. One of them is huge; it is 20 cm long, 8 cm wide and at the stem end it gracefully tapers to the tip, scale showed 207 grams. It is partially ripe with bright red and light green coloring - totally gorgeous pepper. Unfortunately the camcorder battery died so I could not get the picture out.

Taste of these peppers is sweet and they are crunchy. Heat in the flesh is slow, first I could not feel it and seconds later my lips and mouth started to burn more and more. These are the absolutely best salsa peppers for making fresh salsa. If anyone wants seeds of this American-Hungarian heirloom, let me know.

[Nuthead]

Hep, here's one!  

Kaitsu

[Janne]

Me too! I have been looking for a good big & relatively mild pepper variety for some time...

[mau]

With pleasure!

[svalli]

Yesterday I found first ripe Sweet Datil. Even the smell of it was aromatic, when I cut in half. Taste was heavenly and I could detect a tiny amount of heat. Unfortunately my mild chinenses have not grown as well as I wanted. There are some pods growing but they will get eaten right out of the plants and I may not have enought for preserving.

Last night we had quite strong thunderstorms with hail. I have not checked the garden yet. I hope there is no bad destruction.

[svalli]

The rain, rain, rain came down, down, down...

Rain and thunderstorms have been going on now for three days. Luckily there has not been any damage, since there do not seem to be high wind with these storms. It has been raining a lot and there has been flooding in low areas. Our house is on top of a hill so we are safe from floods, but sometimes the lightning can get really scary.

It is raining hard even at this moment and the thunder makes it sound like we are in middle of a war zone. The radar map shows that  there is a long thin line of storms approaching us and  they will keep going over our area. It may continue be like this the most of the day.


Tomorrow should be finally sunny again and I can go to pick ripe peppers and tomatoes from the garden. The ground will surely be well watered.

[Aji Inferno]

The rain, rain, rain came down, down, down...

Rain and thunderstorms have been going on now for three days. Luckily there has not been any damage, since there do not seem to be high wind with these storms. It has been raining a lot and there has been flooding in low areas. Our house is on top of a hill so we are safe from floods, but sometimes the lightning can get really scary.

How I ENVY you - in a weird way! For some reason, I love the power of thunderstorms. While living in Atlanta, I always looked forward to the almost daily, magnificent storm... Here in Vantaa, Finland, there are practically no thunderstorms at all. Actually, although Finland is a very good place to live in, I have two irrational complaints:
1) No real mountains
2) No real thunderstorms
= Boring! ;-)

Well, I might reconsider if egg-sized hail had turned my car into a modern piece of art... Or a tornado had taken my roof off. And so on. The people of New Orleans might also have a word or two about the "fun" of storms.

That's the thing about Mother Nature. It's magnificent. And it's something to respect - because its power is beyond our technology and understanding... That's the beauty of it, too. The thing I love about America is that it's (still) a wild, wild place. Dangerous currents for swimmers. Severe storms and winters. Very hot. Very cold. Very everything... Wonder what Russia is like? Probably very similar.

[svalli]

My C. pubescens have finally set fruit. I have four potted plants, which have been flowering some time, but it may had been too warm earlier. There should be at least one more month of outdoor season left, so maybe there is enough time for the pods to grow.

I have 22 chile pots around the house. There will be too many to try to bring indoors to overwinter, but it is hard to decide, which will be keepers. We should build a sun room, where I could keep all the plants during winter.


This is my year and half old Aji Omnicolor. It has quite nice color show at the moment.


I updated couple of pictures on the garden journal and the photogallery.
http://home.wi.rr.com/vallinmaki/gardenjournal.htm