Mr. Worf, fire photon torpedoes. Full spread.

Okay, the aphids continue to be a problem.  I've tried the nuclear option of sevin all over the place, I've tried neem oil, I've tried speaking to them in a very cross tone of voice, nothing has worked.  In fact, since I moved the sweet potato heart in, its gotten worse.

 As you can see, aphids on the pepper leaves, and eggs/larva all over the sweet potato leaves.

So screw nuclear, time to resort to anti-matter!  Step one, defoliation!

Okay, not a complete defoliation, but pretty hard.  Found lots of the little buggers in some of the dense foliage where the sprays obviously weren't reaching.  This cuts off the heavy growth that protected them.  Then they all got a good soaking with a mixture of water, neem oil, dish soap, and liquid sevin.  I mean dripping wet over every square inch of plant.  Top, bottom, sides, the dirt, everything.

And just for good measure, while the grow box was empty I sprayed the insides of it down with the same mixture on the off chance magical aphids were hiding in the walls or something.

Frankly, if this doesn't end my aphid problem once and for all, well hell, I'm taking samples of the things and sending them to the military for biological weapon testing.  They're clearly immortal super bugs, there has to be some way to weaponize that!

There's a Fungus Among Us!

Of the three reapers in the grow box, we had the zombie reaper (the seedling that appeared dead but survived), the project reaper (the one on the skull), and the third one that was the best producing of the backups.  The third one was the weakest plant going into overwintering due to it being left out the longest to produce peppers, and the fact it had heavy roots that needed a pretty hard chop to get it in before a freeze.  Never did seem to recover completely like the other two did.

And then yesterday I saw this:

This is something I have encountered before, and it is very dangerous.  Do you see how the leaves are wilting and the center of the cut branch is hollow?  Thats a fungal infection.  When an overwintered pepper is weak, a fungus can infect the cut ends like this and it starts burrowing down the center, killing the limb.  If its allowed to go all the way down to the main trunk, the entire plant will die.

This is how much of the limb I had to chop back before I got to a solid center again.  It delved this deep in a couple of days (leaves looked fine two or three days prior when I last watered), and now it was a good 6 inches into the limb.  Only choice was to chop the entire limb off down to the trunk to make 100% sure I got it all.  Kind of like cancer, you gotta cut out the healthy tissue along with the bad to make sure you don't leave any in there.

This also made me take a closer look at the plant, especially the back side.  I've been having trouble with the aphids coming back on the other two plants, now I know why.

The back side of this one where the spray wasn't easily reaching was covered in young aphids, its where they've been holing up and surviving.

Between the aphids, the fungus, the overall weak state of the plant, and the fact it was basically just a backup, I've put it back outside for now.  If we get a freeze, well I won't cry over losing this one.  I still have the two good ones.  Better to sacrifice this one than leave a source of infection and infestation in a confined space with the good ones!

For the time being, the big heart sized/shaped purple sweet potato can have it's spot in the box.

Oh, I've also been keeping the project reaper pruned back in order to start shaping a canopy on it.  I think its been getting extra light from the reflective backing, as that side has denser vegetation than the other arm, so I've turned it around to try and even it out some.  But as you can see, we're definitely starting to get a nice solid half dome going on.

Moss Test Grade: C-

Okay, its been a little over a month since I started the moss test, and I think the results are in.

Despite daily spraying from the bottle with rain water, the moss is looking pretty... autumnal?  Is that a word?  Spellchecker thinks it is, so I'm going with it.  Yeah, it looks more dead than anything else.  Its not entirely dead, as you can still see green underneath the top layers on the soil surface, but it seems the dry indoor air and the fans in the top of the case make it just too dry for it to thrive.

So, verdict overall is a C-.  Its not a complete failure, but its not very good as a permanent fixture either.  For a short term thing though, it looked great!  I'll be sure to give it fresh moss when I dress it up for final show-off pictures.

On a related note, the cultured moss I brought inside is also suffering from dry air, though I have been keeping it in soggier soil so its done better overall.

Same dead extremities, but a much greener under story.  I decided that since its rainy and fairly warm out for the time being, I'd put it outside with the stuff I left out there this whole time (and give it a good soaking of rain water).  The comparison picture here tells the story, IMO:

What I've had indoors is struggling, but is much darker green.  The stuff that has been outside is thriving, but is a much lighter, almost neon green.  Tells me I probably haven't given the indoor stuff as much light as it would have liked, along with the indoor heat and air making it too dry for it.

Anywho, I dug the mostly dead moss out of the skull.  I was kind of hoping that maybe the moss would hold enough moisture to encourage some new roots into the eyesockets from the pepper, but that didn't happen.  Just didn't stay damp enough for long enough at a time, so oh well.

But as you can see, the peppers are loving the conditions in the box.  I gave them a feeding about a month ago with some miracle grow mix (they've been in these containers for a while now with nothing but what was in the leftover soil), and I didn't want them to go hungry on me.  Nice dark green leaves mean happy peppers!

Happy Birthday!

Nothing new to report really, and the pictures from last week are still pretty darned accurate as to what everything looks like this week.

But, today is the 1 year anniversary of when this blog went live.  One year ago I had the idea to start this project.  Got the parts I needed, built the equipment I needed, whole nine yards.

And for everyone that said peppers weren't "real" bonsai material, I'd just like to step back, let my photos speak for themselves, and say "I'd like to see you get anywhere near this kind of result from scratch in only one year."

Here's to another year, and a fully realized project!

And maybe a one-upping of the current project... hint hint... wink wink... ;)

Just Veggin' Out

Not much to report on at the moment.  Just letting the plants be plants.

It is interesting to note that this is the first time my grow cabinet is being used for it's intended purpose.  I built it last winter, but all it ever got to do was sprouts.  This time the moveable shelf is all the way down and it has full sized plants in it, and it has been working great.

You can see that after the trimming for the aphid problem last month it has really started bushing out very nicely.  Thats the goal of this winter, to get a nice shaped canopy going.  The project Reaper has been aphid free for a while now, but the zombie Reaper had a small outbreak of them again just this morning.  Another round of neem oil for everything in the box!  Spray it on the leaves, the soil, everything.

The moss test I started last time is doing... okay.  I wouldn't say its thriving by any stretch of the imagination, but it is still alive.  Its been getting regular hits from a spray bottle to try and keep it moist without waterlogging the pepper.

Also happy to report that there has not only been no further loss of roots, but that we pretty clearly have some very nice fattening up of the roots we have left.  One of the reasons I've been keeping this blog is so that I can go back to past pictures and compare progress, since to me just looking at it the progress is so slow it feels like its the same as it ever was.  But going back and looking at some of the pictures from early August, I can definitely see that the roots are a little thicker now.

Its subtle, but its there.  It'll be another year or two before its really night and day difference, but things are turning out quite nicely (and a year or two for a pepper bonsai beats the hell out of 5-10 years for an actual tree bonsai!).

Heh, I'd like to see anybody else get this kind of progress out of a bonsai in less than a year using a "traditional" tree!

Moss Test

Okay, since the aphid problem is under control now, I decided to move in to the next stage of testing.  I've been growing some fern like moss for the final display, but I wanted to mess around with the stuff and see how well it would survive.

So, first step was to go harvest some more of the moss to avoid killing what I've been tending all this time, and mix up some mud.

I didn't think to grab the camera while I was mudding up the surface of the soil, but I think you can figure out "put a thin later of mud on the top of the soil and gently press the moss into it".  I did think to grab the camera after I muddied up the skull itself though.  Idea here was to get the fine mud all over the skull, push some moss into it in strategic places, and then wash it off by simply pouring rain water over the top of it.

Now, do I know if this is all going to live (the moss, that is)?  Nope, I honestly don't.  However this moss grows wild out in my back yard at the treeline, so I figure it should be pretty hardy.  The main issue is going to be that moss likes being damp, and the pepper doesn't.

So, I'm going to use this as a chance to test how much drying out the moss can take before it shrivels up, and if a hearty misting will perk it back up without keeping the soil damp for the pepper.

It also serves as a great excuse to see how the finished thing will look, and that bottom picture there looks pretty damned awesome, if I do say so myself!

The Final Cut

These are the final cut for the peppers that are getting overwintered.  The Project Reaper, the Zombie Reaper, and the best producing/best shaped backup Reaper.  Oh, and the Cumari.

Update on the aphids, the sevin nuked 95% of them, but did not knock them all out even after repeated sprayings.  So, I took more drastic measures and pruned the growth buds off the Project and Zombie Reapers to get rid of most of the ones that were left and then hit everything with a good coat of neem oil.

For those not familiar with neem oil, its not actually an insecticide like the sevin, it won't kill anything right away.  Instead what it does is mess with neural pathways and causes long term damage to soft bodied insects (like mites and aphids) that stop them from growing and reproducing.  It'll take days or even a couple weeks, but it'll get the job done.

Basically, nuked most of the little buggers with sevin, pruned off their favorite living spaces, and then covered everything in bug birth defect spray.  But, after all of that, I shouldn't have to worry about aphids or mites for the rest of the winter.  Or if I do, I had better learn to live with my new aphid overlords, because they are clearly immortal highlanders who will come at me in the night with their wee little swords to extract revenge on their fallen brethren.

Nuke It From Orbit, Its The Only Way To Be Sure

Okay, its been several weeks since we moved the Reaper into it's container and I re-positioned some roots.  Time to do some pruning!

There was lots of pruning.

Two kinds of pruning happened.  First kind was the kind I've talked about before, cutting out the small stuff to encourage the bigger stuff to get bigger, and removing bits that are just cluttering the place up.  The second kind is the less enjoyable kind.

Namely I went around and gently tugged on the various roots.  Ones that are solid are golden, they're doing their jobs.  The ones that easily lift out aren't actually doing anything because the bottoms are dead, and eventually the entire root will wither away, so best to just prune those now.

Lost some roots I wanted to keep, but kept some I was afraid I was going to lose.  So, par for the course really.  None of the lost ones were project ending, so onwards and upwards!

And now, if you are particularly astute, you might be wondering what any of this has to do with the post title.  The answer is this:

Aphids.

Luckily this isn't on the project Reaper, they're on the other one, the Zombie Reaper.  Either way, there are aphids in the grow box, and its only a matter of time before they spread.

Now, as a beekeper as well, I tend to not really endorse the "spray broad spectrum insecticide on everything!" because, well, bees are insects too and I don't want to kill my bees.

However, this is indoors now.  In my grow cabinet.  There are no insects of any kind that I want to be in there, so screw it.  I'm went nuclear!

I covered everything in there in a white glaze of Sevin.  Even the walls got a soaking of the stuff.  I wanted to be absolutely sure that there was no safe harbor for them anywhere.  And today?  No aphids.

Nuke the site from orbit, its the only way to be sure.

Almost Halloween Season Hack 'n Slash

The project Reaper has been doing well.  Nice and green from a late feeding, even was trying to set some new pods.  Now its entirely too late in the season to be worrying about pods, and going into October the weather becomes much more unpredictable.  Its pretty warm now, but I've known it to snow in mid-October before with very little notice, so its time to start working on actual bonsai chops!

And bam, by the miracle of editing, the chop has been completed.  From here on out, the focus on it will be developing a canopy.

Because as you can see the roots are doing very well.  Even the moss is surviving nicely (and I'm digging how it makes the eyes and nose almost glowing green).  I'm not quite this use to this many things going right, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. ;)

I've also gone ahead and chopped the backup plant down pretty hard.  Made sure to spray the cut ends on both this and the project reaper with peroxide to help keep it from developing that lethal fuzzy white fungal infection, and I'm hoping that between that and the large intact root system on it right now will be enough to pull it through.  It ended up making for a fairly neat open center design, so I can definitely work with this.  I mean, if it dies, it'll be disappointing, but it won't be end of the world.  Project Reaper is good, the Zombie Reaper is good, this one would just be a bonus.