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.

The Must Haves

Okay, fall is finally arriving here, and I'm looking at temperatures down to 50°F tonight.  Now, thats not enough to kill a pepper, but its cold enough to stunt it.  So, I figured this was the perfect time to go through the peppers I have at the moment and decide which ones get to live on via overwintering, and which ones will get left out to mother nature.

Obviously, the project reaper made the cut.

Its clearly been doing quite well since the chop back.  There has been some minor root pruning that didn't really justify a posting, but its mostly the same as it was the last time you saw it.  Just been letting it rest and settle into it's new smaller container home.

Isn't time to bring it in permanently yet, but when I do it'll be getting another chop back.  You can see in the above picture that the canopy is leaning to the side, but we have some new limb growth that will help counter balance that after a good chop.

Also making the first round cut was the Zombie Reaper.  I chopped it back a week or so ago, and its been doing well.  Not only did it give me the best shaped pods and impressive roots, but it ended up with a very nice natural windswept appearance to boot.  Three good reasons to save it, so save it I did.

Next up is the Cumari.  I consider this one a failure as far as the intended bonchi design of being grown over that skull made of skulls, as it did end up letting go of the skull too much to leave it that way.  However, its a neat little pepper that was surprisingly hard to sprout, so I decided to save it.  Took the skull out, filled everything in with soil, it'll probably be happier this way.

Now these two actually surprised me.  I was actually pulling them up and composting them now, but after yanking them I noticed their roots were actually doing pretty well.  Well enough to justify letting them keep going, anyway.  Halloweens are easy to sprout, unlike those Cumari, so if they end up not working out, thats fine too.

Even with that giant cabinet I built last winter, my space for overwintering peppers is limited.  I might end up saving one more of the reapers, but I'm not sure yet.  Like I said at the beginning of the post though, 50 degrees won't kill these things, and I could probably leave them outside through it, but I'm going to bring these five inside tonight anyway.

The rest should be fine, and its scheduled to warm up later in the week.