Home grown salad in the middle of the winter :-)

Today we picked our home grown salad that we started before going to India. December 14th. So it's now more or less than six weeks since we put the seeds in the "containers" in the Zengrow.

It worked really well! OK, it took a while before the salad was ready. And no large scale growing. But the taste was excellent! And as an experiment it was really fun!

We have already started new salad seeds in the available "slots" in the Zengrow. New exciting varieties :-)

Regards,
  Mats

Repotting baccatum

My aji limon and orange baccatum are ahead of the other chiles in the mini greenhouse. Today it was time to repot them. And to take some seedlings away, so the other remaining ones get more space.

Here they are. The leading duo!

I don't know why they develop roots in the air.

Look at this long root! It's sure time for repotting :-)

I saved four plants of one variety, and three of the other.
I planted them deep in the new pots, so only an inch of the plant is above the soil.

I can see from last years notes, that I repotted the first ones in 2010 on February 1st. Keeping my fingers crossed that 2011 will be a great chile year!

Have a great weekend!
   Mats

Chile news ... Roasting chiles.

Well my friends. I hope that it wasn't one of you.

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/chiliangor-ledde-till-sjukhusbesok

It must have been really hot chiles. Four people two hospital with breathing difficulties after roasting them in an oven.

Three more today!

• PI 596058 - Chuquisac (Capsicum baccatum)
• Chiltepin Mexico (Capsicum annuum)
• Black Cayman (Capsicum chinense)

I was surprised to see my chiltepin germinate so fast. My experience is that they take longer time. So this is either A) promising, or B) bad sign that the seeds are not pure, and therefore not really from chiltepin.

My vote and hope is option A! Promising!

The ones that I still wait for are some old chinense seeds. Maraba, cheiro de para and caronog. But also a Florida bird pepper (undomesticated annuum), a pubescens, pimenta da Neyde and goat pepper.

Well, two weeks is not that much for chile seeds to germinate. So I will stay cool!

A question to you geeks out there.
Do you keep track of when your varieties germinate, and so on? And in that case, how do you do it? I created a database some years ago, in which I log some "events", and export spreadsheets from it. If anyone is interested in the technical details, please let me know, and I can write about it and share it with you. It's based on OpenOffice / LibreOffice, so it's a cross platform solution.

Hot regards,
   Mats

Action in the mini green house

Two old favorites, and one new variety for this year showed up this morning!

The good old ones
Malagueta large Salvador 2001
Malagueta mediumSalvador 2001

And the new one
Black Cayman

Eight varieties have germinated since January the 3rd. Hopefully some more will show up!

Have a great weekend!
   Mats

A Brazilian trio

Yesterday and today, three more varieties showed up.

It was the Girino (that I grew a couple of years ago). I think it's a C. chinense. It's a very nice one.

And my old favorite malagueta. The small variety that I bought 2001 on the market in Salvador, Brazil. I think that it's amazing to see that 10 year old seeds still are ok. I really hope that it will survive, but so far it looks good! This picture is some years old.

And the third variety is one that I got from a friend in Brazil. He calls it "black pepper". It will be exciting to see what it turns out to be :-)

Wishing you all a nice end of the working week.

Regards from a "lightless" and ice-slippery Stockholm.
   Mats

Second place

It's amazing to watch the tiny seedlings. It's six days since we put the seeds in soil, and today the second variety showed up.

And that was the orange baccatum from my friend Jan. Thanks Jan!

2 of 18 are up. Still a long way to go :-)

Have a great Sunday!