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.

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.

Branching Out

Couple days ago I gave the project reaper a chop to encourage some growth lower down on the main limbs, and as you can see new growth is exactly what is already happening.

Now, this is where I need to keep an eye on it.  The plant is going to try and put out new growth all over the trunk, which can include places where we don't want it.  A sharp eye and regular inspections will let you catch buds forming in places you don't want, and then you can just scrape them off with your fingernail.

The earlier you can catch and remove unwanted growth, the better.  The reason being that the larger a branch becomes, the greater the scarring that will result when you remove it.  You know that knothole in the main trunk (which you can see in the above picture)?  Thats from where I removed a limb that would have obstructed the view that I removed months ago.

Sure, it gives us a nice, well placed knot hole now, but we don't necessarily want that kind of thing up on the limbs.  So, pinching off new growth that is too close to the trunk now saves us headaches later.

And gotta say, this rainy, drizzly weather is doing wonders for the moss.

Big Important Update: Final Project Reaper Pulldown

After the last pulldown, I had noticed a change in soil characteristics in the project reaper container.  Today its been cool and rainy, so I went out to take a look.  The soil was definitely finer and denser than it should ideally be, and fine dense soil retains water.  Peppers don't like wet feet, and we were down to the point where feet is pretty much all the project pepper has left.

I looked at the forecast, we're in for a week of fairly cool temperatures and lots of rain.  If that dense soil managed to compact and block the drainage holes in the container, that would be a very BAD thing, like project ending root rot bad.  So, again, relatively cool temperatures (between 70 and 80 Fahrenheit) for the next week, I decided to repot now.  Get it some fresh soil with more particulate matter so that it can breath better, and to raise it up a little higher, give the feet more room underneath to grow down into.

Step 1: Lift the plant, soil and all, out of the container.  Now, if you've never really done this, there is a trick to it.  You don't want to dig the plant out, that causes root damage, which in turn causes undue stress to the plant.  Instead, hit the sides and bottom of the container with your hand repeatedly, going all the way around the edges and bottom.  This will cause the soil to come loose from the sides, then you can slide your hands down between the edges of the soil and the container, and lift the entire thing out in one solid piece, as shown above.

 Step 2: Use your garden hose with no sprayer on it to wash the soil away from the roots.  Use your thumb to get a jet going, but don't make it too strong.  The idea here is to wash the soil away from the roots without damaging them.  The bottom of the rootball I didn't do more than blast the very bottom of to loosen it up, I did not try to remove all of the soil from the middle column.  That will help lessen the trauma as the plant will still have untouched roots to draw from while the rest heal and settle back in.

At this point, it looked pretty freaky, honestly.  It was like the skull was trying to regenerate a new body made out of plant roots.  The good part of all this though is that the skull and the jaw are completely locked in place.  I had tried gluing the jaw in the open position originally, but I know I broke the glue when I put it in the container because I heard it snap.  Carrying it around as just skull and roots now however and I could see a little jiggle indicating that it was two pieces, but the roots held everything in place fairly tightly on their own, which is perfect.

I'm also noticing that the lower jaw isn't lined up 100% straight with the rest of the skull, its just slightly askew, and I think thats awesome.  I hadn't intended it to do that, but that little bit of imperfection should really help sell the overall image.  Happy accidents that I will of course claim were completely intentional design choices in the future. ;)

I want your soul...

Seriously, that was freaky.

Anyway, fill the bottom of the container with nice fresh soil, set Mr. Head & Shoulders in and get everything up to a level you're comfortable with.  Then start filling the edges in with soil to re-bury him back up to his neck.

3) Once the soil level is up where you want it (just under the jawline in this case), press in and down around the skull to make sure you push the roots up under the skull a little bit in order to keep it tight.  I used water from my rain barrel to wash everything down flat as I was going to make sure I had enough soil.  You don't want to think you're good and then find out days later that it settled and left you high and dry.  Plus, it helps wash the soil back in between the roots, again helping the plant recover quickly.

4) Last chance to re-position the roots.  We had some in front that were curling around in odd places, so I took them and moved the loops around to hook the chin for a good grip, and pulled some roots out of the mouth.  Originally when I first buried the skull, I pushed the roots up into the mouth to make sure they wrapped all the way around the skull.  We still want that, but the ones  near the front I wanted to look more prominent so I pulled them forwards and hooked them in place.  We also seem to have chipped a tooth somewhere along the line, but oh well.  That just adds some character.

And bam, the hardest, riskiest parts of the entire project are now complete.

We have grown the Reaper, we have done some early trunk shaping, and most importantly we have stretched the roots down over the skull in ways that are both visually appealing and structurally anchoring.

Next steps are to basically stop messing with it for a few weeks and let it recover.  As the root masses start to dry up and fall away, I'll of course be pulling them off to expose the key roots, and likely prune a few of these lower roots as we go, so keep checking in.

Also, after seeing how freaky the roots looked as a neck, maybe next time I do this I should see about the top half of a rib cage and shoulders.  Just how big of a project could I accomplish?  Hmmm... maybe next year I'll order a full on replica skeleton and see if I can't flesh the entire thing out in a single plant's roots...

Timber!!!

Okay, out inspecting and decided that it was setting far too many pods for this stage of the game, and as I was removing the pods I decided I might as well go ahead and do a partial chop on the top.  Not too likely that the roots will get significantly better now, and it'll do better recovering with good sunlight.  So, off with it's head!

Now, as you can see this wasn't a full chop.  A full chop would have gone down even lower and removed of those high branches, but I want to be playing it extra safe on this one.  So, a half chop that leaves plenty of leaves and nodes for it to recover with.  The idea here is that it will now start putting out branches lower down that I can then start shaping into a canopy later on.

Wasn't kidding about playing it safe, either.  Large cuts on peppers that drastically weaken the plant can become infected with a type of mold/fungus.  It causes the plant to start dying at the cut, and then starts eating it's way down inside the branch towards the roots.  It makes the stems hollow like a straw, and if you look down inside them you might see a fuzzy white substance.  When that takes hold, there's only one answer, cut below the infection and pray you got it.  There is no saving anything at or above the infection point, so you gotta amputate.  And just like with human cuts, a good squirt of hydrogen peroxide will sterilize the wound without hurting the plant.

A few customary update pictures after a few more waterings have exposed the teeth a little better.

And just because, a glamour shot that I'm calling the Peter Capaldi:

No, all 13 of them!

Pulldowns and Moss

Went out for some early morning watering and took a look at the root I had repositioned between the teeth, it hadn't taken after all this time, so I removed it.  Kind of sad to lose the one that was curling into the nasal cavity, but if it wasn't taking after all this time it wasn't going to, and it would have eventually just withered away.  Plus, that was the main thing holding me back from doing a pulldown.

You can't see in this picture, and can really only feel when you're touching it, but the top of the teeth on the lower jaw are now above the soil line.  We're getting into the home stretch here people!

That root ball on the side still has me confused.  It seems to have formed over the outside of the mandible joint, but I still can't really tell what its doing.

And if you were sharp eyed in that first picture, you probably spotted the green.  Since I had to lose the nose root, I decided to try giving it some carpet moss starts in the recesses.  Some in the nose, the backs of the eye sockets, and partially visible back up in the first image, around the base of the trunk.

I don't know if any of these plugs will take, but hopefully they're in sheltered enough areas that they will retain some moisture and be able to grow.  This is a different kind of moss than I'm growing as a soil cover.  That moss is more fern like and leafy, this stuff just forms a thick dark green carpet.

Since this moss is really slow growing, it should lend a great air of age to everything if it takes hold.