Taking a short break from our reviewing hot sauces and such, we turned our attention this weekend to taking some pictures of our chile pepper garden. It’s been about a month or so since all the transplants were done, so they’ve had some time to grow while adjusting to their new digs. We’ve been feeding these plants some products that we got from the knowledgable folks at Cross Country Nurseries. We’ve been doing weekly post-transplant feedings that have included some FISH & KELP #1 FERTILIZER, which is primarily a 4-1-1 liquid fish emulsion, and some KELP & FISH #3 FERTILIZER, which is a 90% emulsified seaweed solution that’s like a multivitamin for plants. The results have been pretty striking for some, but not others. Here’s a photo log of where these plants are in their growth now. Above you can see the star of the group, which are the Sandia plants.

As you can see, these Sandias already have a few peppers growing on them. These are mid-season peppers, so it’s now inconceivable that they’d be growing some adolescent peppers already. The fact that they are light-years ahead of the others in growth, though, is what’s so amazing about these.

Next up our the Cayenne peppers, also known as the Cayenne Super II hybrids, which are supposed to be more disease-resistant than the regular Cayennes. Seeing how well these have grown, you would never have thought that these were the same plants than were nearly bitten in half by our misguided canine a few weeks back. The main stem, where the bite mark is, has been overtaken by the secondary growth of some new stems such that the original insult is almost not noticeable.

There are quite a few flowers on the Cayenne plants, but no peppers yet. Some of the buds are probably mere days away from growing their first peppers, though.

The Jamaican Hot Chocolate peppers are a little bit of an enigma to us so far. Definitely no shortage of plant growth so far, and the leaf structure is a little bit different than other chinense species we’ve grown…broader, flatter, and just plain bigger. Overall, though, these are growing very well.

There are a few flowers to be sure, but not as much as some of the other pepper plants. No peppers yet, but that ought to change in a week or so as well at this rate.

Another success story are that of our Lemon Drop peppers. Big plants that are pretty leafy, these are growing at gangbuster rates for a late season pepper. These got off to a bit of a sluggish start after transplant, and have shown probably the greatest response to the fertilizer of any of our plants.

Lots and lots of flowers on these right now. The fruit load on these plants are going to be prolific, so a Lemon Drop hot sauce is almost certainly in the plans for this year.

While we can crow about the growth on many of our plants so far, the Bhut Jolokias are not one of those. Pictured above is the stronger-looking plant, which is a little yellow around the edges. The other plant is even more yellow, but mostly on the lowest level of growth to the soil. Not sure what these plants aren’t getting, or whether they’re getting too much of something….sunlight, rain, whatever. Since these are the latest season peppers we are growing, perhaps we’re just overly critical of their growth to this point. Anyone else growing these think similar thoughts as ours?

Lots of secondary growth, but no flowers yet. Since these are also chinense species, we hope this will be prolific also.

That brings us to the red-headed stepchildren of the bunch, the Rocoto peppers. For the first 2 weeks that these were in the soil, they looked like they were imminently going to die the next day. We changed their spot in the yard to one that was a little more shady, but not less hot. Our understanding is that rocotos don’t often do well the first year, and often have their best production year during the second year and beyond. Since we’ve never been able to winterize a pepper plant, this doesn’t bode well for the long-term future of these plants. We’ll have to hope that these produce something this year, or hunt for someone who can host these plants over the winter where they’ll get enough light to survive. Time will tell.

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