For starters, out of my "family killed my Reapers" batch, there was one that had dead cotys but the stem was sort of alive, so I gave the whole thing some water. The one I was hoping might spring back didn't, but I got another sprout instead. One coty is damaged, but it seems to be doing alright for itself so far, as evidenced by the start of some true leaves there. Good incentive to try and make this one my project piece, as not only is it a reaper, it came back from the dead!
I did get my new Reaper seeds in a while back, and I went ahead and soaked them for about 8 hours in warm water and put all 10 in starter trays. Timestamp on the water picture there says I took it on 2/14, so about 4 days ago. Not that anyone reading this particularly cares exactly when I planted them, I do look back at these to see when I planted things, see how long its been, if I can start expecting sprouts soon, etc.
Side note, while I was in New Orleans, I found this thing on the cheap. Its a skull. Made of skulls. How could I not get that? I'll grow something on it, dammit!
I seriously gotta find somewhere else to store this thing at night...
Update on Laughing Buddha.
After I got back, I decided that we're getting near the end of the pulldowns, and I want it to start trying to grow roots in the container I intend to keep it in (a nice red ceramic number to match the red that the Buddha statue used to be). The base of the statue and roots is actually in a much coarser bonsai style soil mix, with this potting soil mounded up on top. Why the potting soil? The roots weren't as far down yet as I would have liked, and I wanted to make sure the good strong ones stayed in contact with soil so that they kept growing. Mounded the potting soil up nice and high, and been making sure to watch for droopage. That was a little hard on the roots, gotta give it plenty of time to recover now.
But as you can see in the picture on the right (taken about a week after the one on the left), the roots are starting to look very nice. You can already see where the finer roots are dying off and the stronger ones are getting fatter. This is a slow process, but experience tells me it works, so I'm going to stay the course.
This is my mother Bhut Jolokia/Trinidad Scorpion hybrid that will be going into it's 4th summer this year. Its getting to the point where the fruit itself will start to diminish in quality, but thats alright, its given me many bushels of peppers and countless bags of seeds. As you can see, good thick trunk, and a few weeks ago I gave it a *HARD* chop, which it is recovering from quite nicely.
What you can't see in this picture is the real reason I chopped it so hard. I had a bud up near the top so I knew I was safe with what I did, but over the years I've pruned lower branches to make the trunk. After the chop, I kept a grow light on the trunk, and sure enough I got some buds down lower. My plan for this one while I wait on the Reaper to mature is to let the bud about half way down grow out, and then chop the trunk right above it.
Basically, I have used this plant as a producer for several years, and trimmed it based on that. Nice tall barren trunk keeps it from having stems and leaves close to ground level where they might touch the soil and pick up a fungus. Now I want to chop it into a proper bonsai, but the trunk is far too tall for that. The bud I'm cultivating is just high/low enough to make a good ratio to the trunk, and I'm going to take it.
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