chillies – frans goes blog

Chilies in the greenhouse

My first hydroponics chili pepper growing season has been bit of a mixed experience so far. On the one hand, the passive hydroponic setup that I installed (based on the AutoPot 4pot system, HydroCoco, and Canna Coco A+B) was a great success. The plats really grew fast.

So fast actually, that I was soon in trouble with them. My planting schedule was based on my earlier experiences with soil-based gardening, but the growth speed in hydroponics is much faster. I germinated the seeds in early February, moved selected seedlings into the AutoPot system in 25th February, and already in early April the plants were so tall they should had been moved to the greenhouse already. My LED plant light system was particularly a bottleneck – the fast-growing chili plants grew quickly up to the maximum height that I could adjust the LED strips into, and I needed to cut them down quite a bit. Even then, the plant growth would have needed better light, and real, strong sunlight that would had been coming from multiple angles, not just from those narrow LED strips.

But we got snow and “takatalvi” (cold spell & wintry weather) in April, and I could not move the plants into the greenhouse. I just kept growing them, cutting them down, growing more – and waiting for the weather to get warmer.

It was only in late May (18th May, to be exact), when the weather forecast told that further snow was now highly unlikely. I started moving the overgrown plants to the greenhouse, but lost maybe half of their branches. The weak, big plants were just not made for punishing physical handling. The hydroponics setup is not designed to be moved around, either.

Poor chilies, moved too late to the greenhouse.

But, I got the plants out, set up the AutoPot system again, this time into the greenhouse, filled it in with water and Canna Coco, and hoped for the best.

All four plants are still alive, which is nice. CAP 270 is in bloom, and is bearing the first fruit even now. But the plants are not that nice looking, as they lost much of their branches in the move, and the growth patterns are not that good, thinking about the future crop. The branches should be stronger, thicker and more symmetrical, to support decent amount of chili pods. Well, we’ll see what the final outcome will be.

The lesson? Maybe I need to carefully think about my cultivation schedules: the plants should be much smaller at the point when they still can safely be moved from indoors to the greenhouse. They should be pruned, so that the powerful growth can be controlled. But otherwise: hydroponic gardening seems like a really interesting option!

The first fruit (C. baccatum, “CAP 270”).

Selection of chilies, Spring 2019

I have been growing my own crops of chili peppers for few years now, and every year it feels like I am a bit late in starting the germination period. This time, it is already late January, and I am still just selecting the seeds and species to grow. These are the varieties I have narrowed down the selection this time – I have also attached links to Fatalii Seeds, who provide a bit more information about each:

Aji Cristal: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/aji-cristal/
Bolivian Rainbow: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/bolivian-rainbow/
CAP 270: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/cap-270/
Cabai Burung Ungu: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/cabai-burung-ungu/
Criolla Sella: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/criolla-sella/
Lemon Drop: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/lemon-drop/
Rocoto, Guatemala Orange: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/rocoto-guatemala-orange/
(Edit – also these:)
Sugar Rush Orange: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/sugar-rush-orange/ and
Hainan Yellow Lantern: https://www.fataliiseeds.net/product/hainan-yellow-lantern/

Taken together, all these species and varieties capture quite nicely the enormous range of options that chili cultivation provides. In some, my main interest is in the taste and productivity of chilies, in some, the exotic and interesting looks would provide joy to the hobbyist chili farmer. In some, it the main interest would lie in understanding more about some of the more exotic, alternative options that the chili universe provides. But I think that all of these should be relatively easy to grow, so in that sense they all could be realistic options. Let’s see how this goes; it is clear that I cannot grow as many as I am interested in, and also the number of plants need to be kept to the mininum, considering the small greenhouse and our other spaces.

Chilies: May 2017 update

2017-05-21 13.06.31-1 — Tepin x Lemon Drop hybrid is the tallest plant at the moment. It has also started to bear fruit, already!

I have been growing a variety of chili peppers for a few years now, and the most of summers 2015 and 2016 were spent building and then testing the Juliana greenhouse that we use for extending the warm season here in Finland. This year however, April was the coldest in record, and there was no point in taking plants outdoors, when it would had just meant having the electric heater working around the clock (which means: expensive chilies!) Now, at the end of May, it finally looks like the unseasonal snow storms could be behind us (knocking on wood…) and this weekend has been the one when the greenhouse has been set up for business, most of the chilies have moved into bigger pots, while there has been also plenty of other work going on in our garden.

As I wrote earlier, I tried out the simple Ikea hydroponic system in germination and sapling phases. The early steps worked very well, and it seems that for indoor chili growing the setup is good for these first steps. However (partially due to the deferred Spring), I kept the saplings too long in the hydroponic setup – if large plants like chilies are grown in hydroponic manner, it needs to have a water pump installed, that keeps the nutritious water flowing over the roots, rather than just soaking them. I did not have the pump, and ended up in troubles, with growth of some plants suffering, and even losing a couple of important chili varieties. I moved the remaining plants into soil and pots in early April, if I remember correctly, but I should had done that much earlier. The growth was strong after the move, even while growing plants had to get along on the windowsill, without any extra plant lights from that onwards.

2017-05-21 13.07.31 — Scorpion, one from Messukylä school sale.

Luckily, there was the school yard sale in the local Messukylä school, where again hundreds of plants, dozens of chilies included, were available, so I could supplement my selection. I lost all my Aji varieties, and both of my extra hot varieties, “7 pot Brain Strain Yellow” and the Bhut Jolokia. But from the school sale I managed to get both a new Bhut Jolokia, as well as a Moruga Scorpion – both traditionally top of the line, as long as heat is measured. And there were also a couple of interesting habanero varieties that I picked up, as well as something that was called “Jalapeno Hot”. I have only tried rather mild japapenos so far, so it is interesting to see how that will turn out.

Here are some photos from the chilies at this point, 21st May: the school yard saplings are much smaller than the ones that I had grown in hydroponics and then in pots starting in January. The “Naga” (Bhut Jolokia) is particularly small, hopefully it will survive the move into a larger pot, it does not have particularly strong roots yet.

2017-05-21 13.10.13 — *My “Madame Jeannette” habanero is growing strong, though still indoors.*

2017-05-21 13.11.29 — *Pequin Firecracker is also making nice growth right now, it should move to the greenhouse in near future, I think.*

Talking about roots, I try this time using a specific commercial nutritient, Biobizz “Root Juice”: it is an organic “root stimulator” designed to boost root growth. As I had a gift voucher to a local chili gardeners’ store (thanks, Gamelab colleagues!), I have now also other nutritients to try – sticking to Biobizz products, per shopkeeper’s advice in soil based chili cultivation.

2017-05-20 17.38.49 — My other tools in testing: “Top-Max”, “Bio-Bloom”, “Bio-Grow” by Biobizz (company is originally from the Netherlands), and also the Finnish classic, “Jaakon taika” (a photosynthesis booster).

2017-05-21 12.22.23 — *Gardening can provide many rewards.*

Greenhouse: Waiting for the harvest

This is the first summer when our greenhouse is in use. So far everything seems to have gone just fine, even while we have been so busy in other areas that we have not really got so much time for the garden or the greenhouse. Even with just minimal care, most greenhouse plants seem to do well – Laura’s tomatoes exceedingly so, they have grown into real giants. My chillies would had profited from earlier change to the greenhouse and to larger pots, but I did not have the electric heater at that time. So my plants are mostly small to medium in size, but on the other hand the idea of this first summer was not so much to maximise the crop, but to test a wide variety of plants, and then see where to specialize in the future. For that purspose, my small but fruit-filled plants suit very well. Here are some photos taken from the greenhouse today.

Garden photos, 11.7.2016

Greenhouse: the heater

Yesterday, the heater for our greenhouse finally arrived and we can now actually keep the plants in the greenhouse, around the clock. As you can see from the Netatmo screenshots from below, the morning temperature outside was 1,7°C, but with the help of our heater (BioGreen Palma Digit, including Thermo 1 digital thermostat), the temperature inside greenhouse remained comfortable 12-13 degrees. The safety instructions for the heater say that there should be 40-50 cm empty space between the heater and our wooden plant crates, plus c. 1,5 meters empty space ahead, where the heater directs the hot air flow – this proved to be bit of a challenge in our small Juliana, but putting the heater on top of a metal chair for the night also the safety considerations have now worked out fine, I think. And chillies seem to like the move to outdoors, they get more light and the moist air of greenhouse is good for them, too. (Got an extra sapling from our kid’s school rummage sale – a Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Red; let’s see how that one turns out…)