Tuesday 29 March 2011

Habanero!

Just a quick update.

I have a Habanero germinated! It's only taken 31 days (so around 20 days longer than all the other varieties) but I got home this evening and 1 of the 3 I planted has sprouted.
They need a decent source of constant heat to germinate and I had a new boiler fitted yesterday after months of intermittent heating so maybe that helped? Could just be coincidence (and let's face it, it probably is).

The plants which have germinated are starting to sprout their adult leaves, by this I mean the second set of leaves. The first 2 (or 3 in the case of my Trinidad Perfumes) are a completely different shape and used almost like solar panels to get as much light as they can and give the plant a good feed.
I think I'll plant them into pots over the weekend so I'll do a proper update with plenty of new pictures then.

Thursday 17 March 2011

The non-growers

I mentioned in my last post that a couple of the varieties had not sprouted, that's still the case.
I decided to move them back under cover today and have set up another temporary germinating greenhouse.


This is the Yellow Burkina Habaneros, the Thai Bird Eye chillies and "The Dalston Mutant".
I really want to get some Habaneros going this year so my fingers are still crossed for them, I'm not going to give up on them just yet!

So I don't get confused I drew up a new plan for them too.


These are now suitably moistened and covered in cling film sitting on top of the boiler for heat, an essential ingredient for germination especially for varieties used to hot and steamy conditions.

Enough about these non growers for now though, I've taken a few pictures of the growing plants and they're looking pretty healthy despite the horrible weather we've had sine they germinated.



I've got a bit of an oddity with one of the varieties. It's a new variety for me so it may be normal, who knows?

I thought that all plants (chillies and others) always started with a shoot with 2 leaves to get them started, certainly every kind of plant I've ever grown has started this way.
The Trinidad Perfume variety (the Habanero without heat) has 3 starter leaves.


I'd be interested to know of anyone else who's had this with a chilli plant before.

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Shoots!

After day 4 or 5 I checked for shoots and have checked every day since. Yesterday was day 10 and I came home to shoots from a few of the seeds.


So going back to the position plan I drew up (see my last post) I can see that the Krakatoa, Christmas Bell, Ring of Fire and Trinidad Perfume have come up.
I'm not surprised that the Yellow Burkina Habanero, Amazon Chile Roma and De Banco haven't come up yet, they're all from the same family of chillies which are notoriously slow to germinate.
The Thai Bird chillies are a bit of a mystery so not sure how long they'll take to come up, the guy who gave them to me said he'd not been able to grow them so we'll have to watch them and see what happens.
The last one, the 'Dalston Mutant' could be infertile and might not grow. That's the risk you take with hybrid plants.
I've moved them to my kitchen table which is by a window that gets loads of light and also by the radiator to keep them warm.

When I got in from work today I noticed that the Amazon Chile Roma and De Banco seeds have also sprouted (delighted!) I wasn't sure if I should separate them off and put them back under cling film until they germinate but have decided to leave all the varieties together for now. 
I'll separate the 3 which haven't sprouted yet if I haven't seen any signs of life by the end of the weekend.

Here's a couple more shots from yesterday.