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.

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.

Back in the Saddle

Well, I had a wonderful week and a half there with a dead computer.  How was yours?

Anyway, back up and running, so time for some updates!

The amount of moss I've been able to grow so far has been insufficient for my needs so far (told you this stuff grows slow!), but I found a great big patch of the stuff ready to go.  So, I cheated and harvested the moss I'll eventually use.  Put some of that fine clay mud I gathered last year in a pot base and grabbed enough moss to make a full ground cover when I need it later in a month or so.

Here, along with the fact that I need to cut the grass, we can see that the chop I did on the project reaper has created longs of nice new growth.  All is well there.  However, all was not well when I measured how big the bonchi was in that old green pot and compared that to how much space was available in my grow box.  Its too tall to fit comfortably, and the other night it actually got down into the high 50's so I figured that since I was going to have to bring it in anyway, I might as well repot it into an overwintering container.

Luckily, I already had this plastic faux half wine barrel style pot laying around.  Its about half as tall as the green one was, but still deep enough that I could have some dirt underneath the "neck" of the roots from earlier.  So, still gives it some room to grow in.

Still looking good, and I won't have to worry about repotting anymore, its fully ready to come inside when the weather turns cold on a more permanent basis.  Now, high 50's wouldn't have killed a pepper, but this one at least I don't want to even have a slow-down, so anything under 60 and it comes inside.  And if you're wondering, the green thing is an ant bait plug.  Had some small little ants living under the green pot, and just wanted to make sure that they didn't stick around long enough to cause any problems.

Minor update, the Cumari started showing signs of leaf yellowing after all the heavy rains we had (combination of being in a small container and lots of rain, wet dirt and nutrients being flushed out), so it got repotted into the same pot again with fresh soil and some fertilizer.  The roots on it were looking really good, so I went for a pretty big pulldown on it.  Doesn't seem to have minded one bit.

On a sadder note, the Buddha bonchi is pining for the fjords.  It has ceased to be.  Its dead, Jim.  Oh well, it was a fun diversion, but it didn't really get the good root development I wanted for a long term keeper.  C'est la vis.  It's soft parts went in the composter, and it shall help nourish the next generation.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Rolling Stones Gather No Moss

I said I was going to wait a little while longer, but I got to thinking that the longer I waited to thin out some of these roots the worse the scarring was going to be, and the greater the chance that one in a bad position would choke out one in a good one.  So, did some root pruning today.  This is one of those times where less is more.  We get a much more visually appealing result by removing some of that root mass than we would have had by keeping it all.

After I was done, I found some roots with slack and some previously empty areas of the skull (like the space behind the cheekbones) that hasn't had any soil in it, so I pushed the slack roots into those crevices and then packed them full of damp soil.  While I have some vain hope that maybe it'll encourage them to put out more roots in those areas, in reality the soil will dry out in this heat far too fast for it to do much in the way of new root growth.  But they will help keep the roots I pushed in there in place long enough for them to fatten up and hold that shape permanently.

As some of you may remember from last year, I collected some moss starts from out in the woods that I can use in the final project as cover for the bare soil that won't send down invasive roots and threaten to choke the pepper out of it's limited bonsai pot space.

Since moss takes no nutrients from it's substrate (the stuff it grows on), it is VERY slow growing.  I mean, this is seven or eight months of growth (and about half of what I currently have).  Much like the bonchi itself, it takes a lot of time and patience, but the payoff is worth it.  The hope here is that when the bonchi is done, I'll have a nice thick sheet of this moss already attached to this pliable mud that I can use to make a shell around the actual bonsai soil underneath.  And since its moss, I can just mist it with a sprayer on a regular basis to keep it green and happy without having to worry about overwatering the pepper.

And lastly, an update on the Cumari.

It had a small pulldown today, mainly because these little ornamentals don't grow long deep roots very quickly.  But You can see the plant is healthy and happy, and that we're finally seeing dominant roots appearing.  Which actually is one of the main indicators for this one as to when to pull down, I didn't want to do so when there wasn't signs of good strong roots.

And on the off chance that anyone is wondering why the soil is always sopping wet when I take these pictures, its because when I do pulldowns in containers I typically dig a trench around the plant about twice as deep as I want the pulldown to be, then use water to pour over the top and wash the excess dirt down even.  Much less traumatic to the plant that way than trying to dig it all out by hand.

That and usually I'm out watering things in this near 100 degree heat and checking in on them as I do it, and then if something interesting is going on I finish up then go inside to get the camera.

Visible Progress

While out doing some pulldowns on the various secondary peppers, I started looking at the main project pepper.  It has been at a slower growth pace than the others ever since I put the skull under it, and some of the trimming I did earlier slowed it down even more.

Now, I'm not sorry I did those things, because I still think its for the best in the long run, but I got worried that the larger sister plants so close to it may have been shading it out a bit, making it even slower going.

As you can see, the project plant there on the end is much shorter than the backup/production Reapers, and they do shade it out in the late afternoon.  More I looked at it, more I questioned it, and long story short I've dug the project pepper up and put it in a container.

Two reasons for this.  One, as already stated, I can make sure it gets more sun this way.  Two, it also means I could check up on the root and start doing some pulldown on it as well.

Good thing I did too, because there was definitely some issue with the root placement.

The good news is that there is some good shape going on here in the front.  You can't tell from this picture (I can't even find it in the picture and I saw it in person) but there was a pronounced bulge on the inside from where I had pressed the roots into an eye socket.  What you might be able to tell from this picture though is that almost all of the roots are in the front.  Now, we want the roots to be fairly front heavy because thats where the main center of focus for the piece will be, but we still need some in the back to help hold everything in place.  That just wasn't there the way I wanted it, so the potting let me catch a defect in plenty of time to correct it (hopefully).

Since the roots were not in just the right places, the plant wasn't able to lock onto the skull completely on it's own yet, so I had to resort to using some twine to tie it down in place.  But you can see where I was able to pull some roots back over to the rear of the skull.  Was actually pretty happy with the amount of roots it had, if not exactly with the layout of them.  With some work though we should have some very interesting placement later on.

You can tell by the leaves here that it was indeed getting crowded out by the plant next to it.  Had to tie it back a bit to pull that branch over so that it would fill out a bit better.

Since I had plenty of root length to work with, I've gone ahead and left this as the pulldown soil level.  Its a little lower than I had originally intended, but it looks like all the roots are plenty long enough to get good purchase in the soil, so should be fine.

And since I mentioned working on the other projects, here's updates on them as well.

The Cumari on the skull made of skulls.  Had a lot of small roots, but not much in the way of anything well defined.  Pretty much just spread it all out evenly over the skull and reburied.  Much like the main Reaper, the length of the roots were enough that I felt I could safely pull it down fairly far on the first go.

The Halloween pepper on the miniature skull is turning out to be less than I expected.  Did a pulldown and had to tie it down to hold in place.  This strain of ornamental pepper stays pretty small, so there is less root structure here to work with than I thought there would be.  This one may end up being a failure, but I'll see it through to the end, maybe it'll surprise me.

Was out shopping the other day and found this ceramic pot that was just perfect for the Laughing Peter pepper.  Since the plant was showing no signs of stress from the pulldown, I went ahead and repotted it in this smaller container.  I figured that since the pulldowns were done, I might as well go ahead and put it in something more decorative and let it really settle in.

Finally, Something Happens

Weather forecast for today was fairly cool (relatively speaking), mostly cloudy, and 0% chance of rain.  Perfect weather to work on some bonchi.

As you can see, the peppers are finally starting to really take off.  The ones not sitting on a skull are still doing better, but the little guy is starting to catch up.  Too bad about what we're about to do to it...

(I'm baaaaack!)                                                   

After trimming some lower branches to expose the trunk, I dug it up to work on the roots.  I'll have to admit, I had hoped to have more to work with at this point, but there's enough.

Hard to hold everything in place and still take pictures.

Pressed some roots into the eye sockets so that they'd help hold it in place later on, pushed some into the sides of the open mouth, and all around spread things out.  Its kind of hard to see in the photos, but the main central root was curling nicely around the nose bone.

Got everything replanted, and you can clearly see the bends that the tie ropes caused in the trunk.  Didn't come out quite the way I had hoped they would, but we'll see how it ends up looking later on.

Next up, the Buddha Bonchi.  As you can see it's canopy has started filling out nicely, and the branches have lignified, so they should hold their shape after I take the stakes away...

And they do!  Perfect!

The main roots are nice, thick, and gripping the statue tightly.  Pulling on the trunk gets very little movement, so time to do some work on it.

This really illustrates the difference that the pull down makes on the nature of the roots.  The roots I exposed earlier are thick and woody, but even after all this time the roots that have been down in the soil are small and thin.  You can pretty clearly see where the soil line was just by the sudden transition in the root structure.

On a side note, I'm holding only the statue here, the pepper is gripping tightly enough to hold itself in place.  Thats excellent news.

Now, the next thing I did I didn't get pictures of, because it required both hands to do.  The roots you can see dangling beneath the statue in the previous picture?  I gathered them up and gentle twisted them under the base of the statue.  This pulled them all around under the bottom into a nice partial ball.

The reason for this is further insurance that the pepper keeps it's grip on the statue and can't be pulled off later.

After that had been done, I put it back in the pot, put some more soil in, and pressed firmly around the base in a diagonal direction, down and towards the center.  You can see the small trough this made around the base of the statue, this was again to press the roots up under the statue.  Then I put some more soil in to level everything out.

Once I've let it recover for about a week, I'll take a squirt bottle and knock the rest of the soil off the roots and start the last phase of pulldown on this one.  I'll pull it down to the base of the statue at the very least, and I may actually end up pulling it down even further by setting some spacers under the statue.  The reason for this would be to get the roots to fatten up under the statue to completely lock it in.  We'll see if thats needed in the following weeks.

And making it's transition into Bonchi-in-Progress is the *ONE* Cumari do Para pepper I got to germinate.  Must have tried a dozen seeds, only one ever came up.  Pretty unforgiving odds with these things, but everybody says they're great little semi-wild peppers, so I'm giving them a shot.

Putting it on the skull made of skulls I got in New Orleans earlier this year because I don't really have anything else to put them on at the moment.