Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Root Pruning

Its been long enough for the Laughing Buddha bonchi to have dried up it's unneeded roots as much as it likely will, so I went in and did some root pruning.  The results are looking pretty good.





I'm a little concerned with those thin ones on the back.  It looks like they are dry and dead, but when I gave them a tug they seemed to be firmly in place.  I'd like for that to be a big fat solid root like the others, but the plant has other ideas it seems.  So, I'll leave them alone for now and see if they fatten up later or not.  If it turns out those roots have dried up, I know a few tricks to try and get them to regrow that we can try.



I've also uprooted the Halloween pepper that I had in the pumpkin pot over the skull to put it back in a regular pot for the time being.  Its a little hard to tell in the pictures, but it is noticeably smaller than it's two sister plants.  I've had a harder time keeping it happy water wise (which was expected), but it overall has not been thriving, so back in a normal pot it goes until it gets bigger and we can try it again.

The good news there though was that I actually had some difficulty in pulling it off the skull, so it appears to have been bonding quite nicely to it.  Thats very encouraging for later on.

---

On a non-pepper related note, I've also started some Moringa Oleifera seeds.  Supposed to be fast growing, very healthy edible trees.  I may end up making a sub-page for edible bonsai in general to put that on, but this blog is about peppers and bonchi relating to my final attempt at the Reaper bonchi, so I won't clutter the main blog up with regular old tree details.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Porch Peppers


As you can see, things are coming along nicely.  Everybody has been out on the front porch getting morning sun for about a week now, with them staying out at night for the past several days.  Three of the Reapers are getting nice and big, three are still straggling a bit.  But, thats why I started so many of them, to have a wide range of choices to select from when it comes time to pick the perfect one to start crafting into my bonchi.


So far, this one is the front runner.  Its the largest and healthiest looking of the 6, and hence most likely to continue to grow larger at a fast pace this season.  Overall size is going to be very important when it comes time to chop them down into bonchi, we want them to have as large and as thick of a trunk as possible.


This one grew with a twisted, mutant looking leaf, and it isn't as big as the others (in the first picture, this one is bottom row, far left, where the front runner is bottom row, 4th from left).  However, its already leaning over sideways without any intervention from me.  Why would I consider that a reason to keep one of the runts in contention for the main bonchi plant?  Well if I can get them to lean over (something I plan on trying to get the other one to do through tilting it later on), I can place it more down over the eye socket or face of the skull and rotate it so that the leaning direction points straight up or even up and slightly back over the top again to give a more dynamic pose.

I'm still pinning my hopes on the big one right now, and will be taking steps to get it twisting a bit as it grows, but I'll be keeping an eye on everybody, especially the ones that are straggling behind but showing interesting characteristics otherwise.


Speaking of interesting characteristics, the oddball Halloween pepper is putting out new leaves in earnest now.  They're green at the moment (as were the black leaves when they started), but that biggest one there already shows signs of abnormal coloration developing.  Hopes that the entire plant will have this leaf coloration are slowly rising.


And last but not least, update on the Laughing Pepper.  Now you can really start to see how some of the roots are thickening while others are dying back.  I have not done any root trimming to this, all of the root reduction you are seeing is entirely the work of the plant itself.  You can also see in the first picture in this post that the plant itself is doing well and putting out good new growth (its the one in the red pot), so it is doing quite well.

I'm going to give it another month or so before I try taking that last bit of soil around from the bottom of the statue though.  The roots weren't *quite* long enough to give good purchase for all the roots I wanted to be sure and keep, so I want to be absolutely sure they've had more than enough time to grow before I pull it down again.

The up side is that all of the new vegetative growth on the top of the plant will put increased demand on the roots for water and nutrients, which will cause them to fatten up faster as well.  Right now its a balancing act between keeping the plant happy and healthy enough to grow at a good pace, and shaping the roots into doing what I want them to.  Too much either way will hurt the other end, so gotta find the middle ground as much as possible.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Up Potting

While getting ready to up pot everybody yesterday, I was digging through my used containers for something the right size, and wasn't finding anything.  I did however find the cat treat bins I had been saving.


Was saving them because I thought maybe I could make little hydroponic cells out of them, but I more or less got over my hydro kick, so, time to DIY up some soil containers!


Spray painted them all with some left over primer spray I had laying around (yeah, I have lots of weird craft stuff just laying around).  Roots don't like light, so never use anything transparent, you'll burn the roots and won't have a good day.

Then it was off to the store to buy some fresh new potting soil for everybody, and... I ended up finding really good containers for 98 cents each.  I think I used more than 98 cents each of spraypaint just covering those cat treat boxes, so I bought all of them they had.  Still had more plants to up pot than they had containers though, so I'll still get to use some of these I made.


Looks like I was just in time too.  This is the biggest of the Reaper seedlings.  It was just starting to get close to thinking about being root bound.  Lots of nice long, healthy, white roots though, which is exactly what I wanted to see.



And bam, everybody has been transplanted into a nice new container, much larger than the ones they were in before.  The Reapers (the good ones, anyway) got first dibs on the big heavy new containers, the ones I made got used for the blue tomatoes.

Everything is looking good, expecting to have plenty of big strong Reapers to choose from when it comes time to start the bonchi.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Full Scale Test Run


Its warm, and forecast says its going to stay that way for a while, so I've decided to run my first full scale test using the Halloween peppers I grew for this specific reason.

Now, I have an old skull prop that I used a couple years ago in a stem fusing experiment with three different types of peppers (they were a bhut, a scorpion, and a moruga, if memory serves) that ended up less than successful.  One pepper outgrew and shaded out the others before there was any meaningful fusion, so lesson learned there.  Anyway, I had this laying around.

Old photo I dug out because I again forgot to take a new one before I started.

What you see there is pretty much what you get with this one.  It was a hollow resin skull that I cut the back third off of so that it would lay at that angle.  Looks half buried, but the bottom is entirely open.  Had that laying around (if anyone is wondering, I run a haunted house during October every year, so yes, I have a lot of skulls just laying around), and figured I could use it again.


The dixie cup Halloween pepper has some good root growth.  Good enough that I'm actually a little concerned about the Reapers in the smaller containers.  They're probably good for now, but they're going to have to be up potted here ASAP if they're anything like this one.  Remember, the goal for them is to have good long roots that will be conducive to the root over rock bonsai style, so don't want to have them getting root bound early.  I'm using up the remainder of last year's left over potting soil for this, I'll need to pick a bag or two up when I go out next.


So, laid the Halloween out over the 2/3rd skull and spread the roots out.  Most of the roots are going over the front half of the skull, but made sure to send some across the back for good anchoring as well.


Now, instead of wrapping this one like I did the Buddha, I'm going to try just mounding a thin layer of soil up over everything.  Its maybe half an inch deep across the top and sides of the skull.  This is risky, that soil may not stay in place well when I water, and it will dry out quickly.  I'll have to keep an eye on it.

So why am I doing it this way, and why am I doing it now?  Roots naturally avoid light, they will try to grow away from anything that might peek through the soil, so I'm hoping that will help drive them against the skull.  While the soil will dry quickly, the weather is just going to be in the low to mid 70's for the next few days, then mid to upper 60's following that.  So its not going to be baking summer sun heat, that will help slow the drying out.  I'm also still in the process of hardening everything off, so it won't be in prolonged direct sunlight either.  That should make keeping it moist enough to not die until it re-establishes much easier.

Now, seeing as this is still a young plant, I will not be pulling the soil down on it.  While I know from experience that it can survive that, the process stresses the plant and dramatically slows growth.  I want this Halloween ornamental to get as large as it can (which is one reason why its in this large ceramic pumpkin pot, the aesthetics of the choice were not lost on me however).  This should be more than enough for it to thrive in for the rest of the summer.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Halloween Night

Okay, so as you know (if you've been reading this blog), I have a NuMex Halloween pepper I sprouted from some saved seed I had. All of the seed I started came from the same dried pod from last year, but one of them turned out different from the others...

Go on, guess which one.

Seemed runty and damaged from as soon as it sprouted, but since I have this big grow cabinet, there was no reason to cull it, I had plenty of space and rain water is free, so I let it go.  Figured it was probably damaged enough that it would eventually just die.  Well, while watering today, I noticed this.



You see what I see?  Its finally putting out a new leaf.  My level of interest has now flipped from "Eh, just let it do whatever until it dies" to "What if this new leaf maintains the dark coloration?  What if this isn't a damaged plant, but a mutation?"

I have the grow box, so I have the facilities to grow year round now.  If this plant proves to be a unique phenotype, I'm going to isolate it as soon as it starts to bud to prevent any potential cross contamination and see if I can get it to breed true.

If it proves to be a unique genotype as well, I'm definitely going to try to stabilize it.  Lol, wouldn't that beat all?  Spend all this time and effort trying to make a kick ass Reaper bonchi, and the real success story being one of the "something to keep busy and practice on for the blog" side projects ends up being a whole new pepper strain that makes me millions of dollars?

Yeah, probably not, but it will at least be something interesting for you guys to follow along with while we wait for the reapers to get bigger.  But pie in the sky here,  I think I'll call it the Halloween Night pepper... assuming it keeps the black and orange pods.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Spring Has Sprung


It was 70°F/21°C here before noon, so I decided to let everybody out of the grow box and go outside for a field trip. Fresh air, real wind instead of PC case fans, real sunlight (the porch is covered, don't worry, they're only going to get morning sun and then shade, not going to go through all of this just to sunburn everybody to death now!), etc. Also in the shot are my original P20 Blue tomato seedlings, several containers sprouting peanuts, and my dragonfruit cactus.  Not pictured are the wasabi (if anyone tells you wasabi is hard to grow, smack them, they're easy), my miracle berry plant (should be big enough for fruit this year, now that'll be something to grow bonsai of!), and the other assorted stuff that has no bearing on this blog that was out of the shot.

Oh, and while moving everybody out, what do I see on my Halloween peppers?


Look closely in the center, we've got some buds! They grow up so fast... *sniff*

Monday, March 9, 2015

"Special" Peppers


The Halloween peppers are coming along nicely.  You can see the one on the front left that is labeled "Halloween (Skull)", that one I buried over one of the mini-skulls as before when I transplanted it.  One on the right is in straight soil, and I'll put it over a skull later.

But you see the one on the back left?


Bless it's heart...

Yeah, no idea whats going on with that one.  Its not costing me anything in terms of time or space, so I'm just letting it go, seeing what it'll do.  Not exactly expecting it to do anything special though.  You know, like live.  But maybe it'll surprise me.


Laughing Peter is still chugging along.  Looks like its time to turn him around though, the leaves facing his back clearly have been in the better light.  Time to work on evening that out a bit.

Friday, March 6, 2015

I'm Not Dead Yet, I Feel Happy!

General update, the Reapers are all alive and well.



Of the seven, all but one have true leaves, and as you can see from these two go getters, a couple are working on their second set.


Not pepper related, but after a few years of going tomato free, I've decided to grow some blue tomatoes from seed.  Been so long I was a little afraid the seeds had gone bad, but if you look closely you can see a purple stem just starting to peek out here.  These are seeds I've saved from the original P20 Blue line that later became known as the Indigo Rose tomato.


And just for the hell of it, I found this fish tank ornament a while back.  I think it'll make a fine bonchi set piece, especially if I can get one of these damned cumaris to sprout!

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Potting Up


The new batch of Reaper sprouts are just starting to get their first true leaves, so time to transfer them over to starter pots.  One big thing I like about the seed trays I got this year is that they're somewhat flimsy.  While that would normally be a bad thing, for these it means it was very easy to cut the trays up and down and open them up like a book, which means I could just take the soil plug out and put it right into the waiting container without disturbing the seedling in the slightest.

The Halloween peppers are on the left and are doing nicely (the best ones have three or four sets of leaves now, with the best one being put over a mini-skull when I repotted).  Two of the Halloweens are looking kinda... "special", didn't waste a pot on those, they just got dixie cups.  If they straighten out later on, then they can have their own real pots.  On the right and in the back are my Cumari.  Have had no luck sprouting the ones I started in the large tray container, so I've got more over in the seed starters I used for the reapers.  Only been a few days, so not expecting anything there yet.

Also had one of my ventilation fans go out on me.  Going to have to order another one of those off ebay (sure as hell not payig $15 for another one at freaking Radio Shack when I can get the same thing off ebay for $3-5, there's a reason Radio Shack went bankrupt!).  But one fan is enough to keep the air moving in there, plus I've still got the space heater down below to keep the temperature up (combination of air current and higher temp will help keep the surface dry).