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.

The Pepper Gods Giveth, and They Taketh Away

Well, first the good news.  I've been letting the project reaper set pods to increase it's nutrient demands, and hence it's root growth.  Was inspecting it today, and found these pods.

It's pods do in fact have nice stingers, and those first couple were in fact duds when it came to shape.  That is very good news for me!

And before I get to the bad news, lets take a moment to appreciate how much is going right on the actual project.  The roots look great, the main trunk already looks like an old tree (complete with knot hole), and the branches are splayed out enough that when I start chopping them back I can make a nice three tiered canopy out of them.  Thats great.

The bad news?  The Buddah bonchi may be a gonner.

Couple days ago the leaves went yellow with green veins, that's usually a sign of a nutrient deficiency.  I had been leaving the pods on it as a test, so I cut off the pods and fed it.  Tried not to mix up anything too strong, but after a couple days of no result I was afraid that pretty container may have had a drainage problem, so I did an emergency repot into fresh soil.

Its not looking too good, but it does have some new growth trying to peek out.  I'm hoping it'll survive, but I've done everything I can for it right now, its up to the plant to pull through or give up.

Incremental Improvements

Spent a little time cleaning up the roots on the main Reaper.  Mostly I just removed a lot of the small dried up roots, but I also trimmed a few small ones that were going the same direction as a bigger ones (no need to double up on those) and re-positioned some into more interesting places.

We are finally starting to get some idea of what the finished bonchi will look like now, or at least what the roots will look like.  There was a very nicely twisted and convoluted root coming from the eye socket on the right (skull's left) that was going across the face over to the left (skull's right) that I re-positioned to curl up inside the nasal cavity and down through the teeth.  I accidentally broke the root a little shorter than I wanted, but it still had enough root below the soil line that I think it should retake.  I hope so at least, because roots twisting down through the teeth would look incredible, which is why I chanced it.

There's still more roots on the left (skull right, bottom picture) than I really want, but I don't want to start trimming any of them right now.  I can't see yet how they are wrapping and developing underneath, and I don't want to risk snipping the perfect root now just because I couldn't get a clear picture of where it was going.  So, going to leave all of that there for the time being.

Also kind of want to cut that one root thats going straight down and flexing out from the front of the face, but like the side ones, it might be doing something interesting on the lower jaw or otherwise making an interesting shape.  Its definitely on my "keep an eye on it, and prune it if it doesn't put out" list though.

The Laughing Buddha Peter Pepper is looking good.  Been letting it set as many pods as it wanted while keeping the main canopy trimmed into a basic shape (it keeps wanting to put up a leader on the right).  I think the pot ended up being a very nice compliment to the plant, and by end of the year it should be done.

Oh, and yes, the other Reapers are putting out tons of pods, and the main bulk has started turning red.  Already got some early ripeners from the best shaped pods/plant for seed, but whoo boy, gonna be able to make lots of Reaper flakes!  Thats just one plant...

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.

Final Peter Pulldown

The Laughing Buddha Peter Pepper is entering the home stretch in it's bonsaification process.  Today is a little over a month since the last pulldown, and it was ready for one last round.

The soil has now been pulled all the way down to the base of the statue.  The smaller roots have been flared out to ensure a nice wide base.

Since there's no way to know which ones of these will end up filling out like the top ones did, we're trying to give the plant as many positive options as possible.  That way, no matter which one it selects (or even better yet, which ones), we'll end up with something nice.

You will have noticed by now that I have tied the roots down once again.  There isn't anything wrong with the roots, as you can see by the above picture they are still pretty firmly locked onto the statue.  However, the bottoms are still new enough that they aren't locked into shape yet, so some jute twine to pull them in close while they thicken up will help ensure a nice flow down the contours of the statue, as it already has on top.

Now, just because we've done the final soil pulldown doesn't mean we're through, far from it.  It just means that we've finished elongating the roots.  There's still a checklist of things that need to be done over the next several months to finish this one out.

1) Base Roots

Its going to take months before those roots fill out enough to be considered "done", and a close eye will have to be kept on it as before to make sure it doesn't suffer any insect damage.

2) Root Polish

Don't know if there is a better term for it, but its what I call it.  You can see in some of the closeups above that the top roots that have been exposed for months still have stubby root nubs coming off the main root trunks.  I've been leaving them there for the plant to clean up as much as it will, but eventually I'm going to need to go in with a sharp knife and start shaving those off so that the main root is nice and smooth.  If this were truly a full sized tree that had any great age to it, those roots would be perfectly smooth, and while we could wait 5 years for the plant to finish the job itself, I'd rather help it along now (or at least in the near future).

3) Canopy Shaping

We've done some basic shaping to the canopy as we've gone, but I've gone fairly easy on it so far.  Reason being that we've been stressing the plant by messing with it's roots this whole time, so messing with the leaves at the same time would have probably been a bit too much for it to handle.  Oh, it would have lived through it, but that much stress would have stunted it and slowed it down quite a bit.  Not what we want when we're trying to get everything done in a single season.  Once the roots are done, we can really go at the canopy though.

Number 3 there will be the most long term need.  Up until now, we've been basically shaping roots and only paying lip service to shaping the limbs.  Now that the roots are almost done, we can start treating the top like a proper bonsai.

Its easy to get discouraged by the slow pace of projects like this, as when you're looking at it every day you don't really notice the changes.  So, here's a picture of how it was looking in February:

And way back in last November when we started him:

So not too bad, considering we've only been actively working on him for about 8 months.

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.

Slow Going

Its still slow and steady over here in bonchi land.

The one on the left in this picture is the one the skull is buried under, so of course its now the runt of the pack.

As you can see, I have it tied back and to the right with one of the tent pegs I first used on the Laughing Buddha bonchi.  Its a little hard to make out in this, but it is leaning over and then growing back up straight quite nicely, given it's small size.

If you recall, this pepper is sitting on top of the left eye socket (which would be on the right in this picture since it would be facing us if it weren't underground), so this bend would be pulling it further to the skull's left out away from center, and towards the back of it's head.  The next pull when it gets taller will be further back and to the left, to create a bit of a spiral to wreath the skull with.

As a comparison, here is one pepper right next to it, growing much taller.  Not sure exactly why that two peppers right next to each other would be having this noticeable of a growth difference, but considering all three of the non-skull peppers are doing better, I can only assume that it has something to do with the skull.  First thought would be that the skull pepper can't grow it's roots straight down, so it has a harder time getting away from the dryer surface layer, and hence not growing as quickly.

I'm not overly eager to try and water that end more than the others, because ideally the "its not getting as much water as the others" is exactly what we want.  It means that once the roots do fully grow out, they will keep trying to go deeper to get to the water, and will encircle the skull better.

I could dig it up and see for myself how the roots are going, work on repositioning things, but I'm trying not to right now because messing with any of them now would cause them to be delayed.  Once its bigger, I'll take a peek at how the roots are going just in case something needs moving around, but for now I'm just letting it do it's own thing.

Did give it a bit of extra fertilizer though, just in case.

Speaking (earlier) of the Laughing Buddha bonchi, here it is.  It has several pods on it, and I've decided to let them ripen.  That will dramatically slow the growth of new leaves and branches above ground as it diverts all of it's energy into fruit production, but the increased demands on the roots will really help things along.  As evidenced by this:

Those roots are getting nice and fat, exactly the way I wanted them to.