Steven, your neck! You have one!

Okay, I was going to be happy with just the skull sitting on the forest floor, but that image of the roots making a neck the last time I repotted it have stuck with me, and today was incredibly warm (almost hit 70... in late January), so I decided to push it a little further.  I decided to give the main project a neck.

As you can see, he currently has a rope around his neck.  Its to make sure the roots pull in close together under the skull to make a proper neck and not just have it be a pile of roots with the head on top of it.

As you can see, its pulled tight enough to even give him a chin!

Only weak spot that I've seen so far is in the back where it doesn't really have the root density to support itself in the proper position right now.  I'm hoping that much like the roots on the face the neck roots will thicken and toughen up enough to lock it into place, but in the mean time he gets more soil under the back of his head to make sure it doesn't lean over at an odd angle.

Wish I had some vertebrae I could stick in there to make a spine to hold him up, but alas.

Next time!

Aphid Free!

The good news is that everybody is growing back nice and healthy after the defoliation and extreme spray down to get rid of the aphids once and for all.  Which worked, btw, haven't seen a single one since I went crazy on them.

Now that they're leafed back out in new growth, I can go back in and take off the older, damaged leaves from the Time of Aphids.  Had to leave some on to make sure I didn't hurt the plant (don't wanna strip one 100% bare when you do that if you can help it), but they don't look very pretty compared to the flawless new growth.  So, time to take them off here soon.

And yes, that was ice in the corner of the grow cabinet you saw in that first picture.  Its been kind of, you know, cold here in winter, and my rain water was frozen rather solid.  Still wanted nice soft water for starting new seeds with though, so I just tossed some rain water ice chunks on top of the starter trays full of soil and left them to melt overnight.

Once melted, I just stuck a heating mat under the catch tray to warm things up and planted half a dozen mystery pepper seeds for a family member.  Not quite sure what they are, they just told me that it had been the best sweet pepper they ever got from a farmer's market that said it was heirloom, and they gave me the seeds from it.  So, I'll give it a go at growing them, see what it comes up as.

Still debating on if I want to bother with ornamentals or not this year.  Can't really eat 'em, and they don't make good root bonsai because they're so small they don't get impressive root systems.  Can't eat 'em, can't display 'em, what good are they?  Eh, I suppose if I kept one going for several years it would end up looking pretty good... they're just not as much of a case of instant gratification as the big peppers are.

I think I'll give the Cumari another go at least, it was an interesting little pepper, even if it didn't do well as a root over rocks.  I'm sure I can find something interesting to do with it.

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!