The story of…

… the three little chiliplants who almost did not make it from the plugbox into the world.
As we already told you, we have three little chiliplants, Mega, Giga and Pacho. Their story began on a cold evening in March, 2010. They were seeded in the Plugbox just as the rest of the chili-seeds, but as the rest of the plants were growing fast and becoming bigger, the three little chiliplants were getting small and scrawny. The names Mega and Giga were a result of a little joke. The chiliplants were so small, that they looked nothing like you would expect a plant named Mega or Giga to look like. And Pacho got his name because he is a Cayenne and not an Apache chili 🙂

On the moving day we repotted all of the chiliplants into different pots. Mega, Giga and Pacho looked dead/dried out so we couldn’t give them away, who would want a small plant that looks almost dead? However, I decided that I would like to try to bring the three chiliplants back to life. I repotted them just like the rest of the plants, gave them a lot of water, lamplight and love. After a few hours Pacho seemed to recover miraculously. He didn’t look dried at all, but he was still a very very small little chiliplant. Mega and Giga were a little bit bigger than Pacho, but it took a little longer for them to cover. I had almost given up the hope, when I took another look on the plants. I could not believe my eyes. At the first look, it was hard to say which chili was one of the good ones and which was one of the recovered ones. I had a very hard time deciding if I was willing of letting Mega, Giga and Pacho seek for new homes. Nobody wanted them, so I was really happy when I had the chance to continue looking after them 🙂

-Eddie

Searching for my roots…

2010-06-06
We repotted all the chilies during the weekend. This should have been done a long time ago, but we never got around getting bigger pots. The pots we ended up buying were the 200mm Pauliina pots with a water reservoir. The soil we used was “Kekkilän puutarhaturve“, a peat-based soil. Unfortunately the smallest bag was 85 liters, so it was quite a lot to carry home from the store.
All went well during the repotting, until it was the Cayennes’ turn. They were currently growing in glass cans that had a narrow opening. This turned out to be a real problem when trying to get the roots out. Unfortunately, one of the plants actually broke off. We put the top part in a pot, and the small stump in another small pot. We’ll see how they manage…

So, three tips and pieces of information here:

• Pots that have a water reservoir at the bottom
• Peat-based soil
• Don’t use small pots that have a narrow opening

Flowers and fruits

2010-05-19

The old ones are starting to grow fruits, and some of the young ones are flowering!
We even got a visitor inspecting the growth 🙂

Apache flowering

Apache flowering

Cayenne fruit forming

Cayenne fruit forming

Visitor inspecting the plants

Sunshine and flowers!

Finally it is becoming sunny outside. The young ones really enjoy sun on their leaves (behind the protective window glass). And the old ones are getting flowers!

The young ones enjoying the sun

The old ones are getting flowers

Moving day!

After repotting the not-so-small seedlings from the PluggBox, we came to the conclusion that we would not have room at home for all of them. We decided to put them up for adoption.

Looking for new homes

I asked around at my workplace if someone would be interested to adopt one or two of the poor seedlings. The interest was bigger than expected, and I brought the first batch with me to work the next day.

Chili peppers going out into the world

The PluggBox and the window sill looked really empty, and the ones that stayed at home missed their siblings deeply… *snif*

Empty PluggBox and marked adoption pot

The ones we kept: two cayenne, two apache, two sodexo, and the young ones Mega, Pacho, and Giga (Cayennes)

Pacho crying

It’s getting crowded!

After a few weeks, the small seedlings were not that small any more, and they started to demand some more space for themselves. I took two plugs of each kind, and put them into different types of pots to see which one works the best.

Two of each kind repotted

We also decided to re-introduce the halogen lamp, since the area to light up had become much larger.

More lights after first repotting

However, as you can see below, there was still not enough space for the not-so-small seedlings, so more drastic measures had to be taken…

Repotting six seedlings was not enough

Let there be light!

Since Finland is a very dark country during the wintertime, and chili peppers need a lot of light, some extra light is needed. We started out by using a small halogen desk light. It worked quite well, but since it was a halogen light, it produced a lot of heat, and it had quite a narrow cone of light, so after a while, we switched to an energy saving light (ESL) in a larger desk lamp. However, as we will see later on, the halogen light still had a role to play.

The Biltema ESL

The light we used was a 30W, E27, 4000K standard ESL from Biltema. It cost 3.50 euros, so we didn’t break the bank. It gives a really bright white light, and does not get that hot. I also want to believe that it will look nicer on the electricity bill.

Both the plants from the previous year and the new seedlings seemed to really like the extra boost of light.

The old plants after some extra light

Seedlings with extra light

This is how it all started…

Since we both are chili-virgins, we are still only testing and learning how to grow our own chili plants.

Last year's surviving plants in new pots

Last spring we had bought some chili seeds from Plantagen, but somehow we forgot about them and they were left on the balcony in a plastic bag. One day late summer my wife found the seeds again, and just put them all in a normal flower pot to see if anything would come up. Much to our surprise, all of the seeds germinated, but due to the late start, and lack of proper care, only a few plants survived through the winter. This spring, we repotted the surviving plants to larger pots, just to see how they would turn out.

PluggBox with seedlings

This spring we also thought that we would make a proper try this time to grow chilies. We got some more seeds (Cayenne Slim Long and Apache) from Plantagen (www.plantagen.fi), and I got a few fresh chili fruits from the restaurant at work. I don’t know what the variety is called, so from now on, I will call them “Sodexo” in honour of the restaurant. I used the chilies when making food, and saved the seeds. In March we planted the seeds in a PluggBox. The PluggBox is a kind of germinating tray that allows you to grow 49 separate plants. However, we put several seeds into each plug, because we were not sure how well the seeds would grow. As you can see in the picture, the seeds were really healthy, and having several seeds in the same plug made the roots twist into each other and made the plants difficult to separate. So in the future, we will just put one seed in each plug.

The seedlings grew and grew, and soon it was time for them to move out of their safe PluggBox into their own space…

Spicy greetings!

Welcome to my (our) blog!

The first contact I made with chilis were many years ago when I was eating some hot food. For me, chili has always been a spice you use if you want to burn your mouth or make something so burning hot, that your neighbor from Asia wouldn’t like to eat it. However a few years ago when me and my wife were shopping for some seeds to plant we bought some chili seeds, you can always try new things, right? Lack of space made us forget about the chiliseeds and we just planted the “normal” spices (basil, parsley…) My wife surprised me one day last summer with some really small chiliplants, I never thought they would survive the summerheat or the freezing winters we have in Finland. With some love (and some reading on the internet) we managed to make the chilis grow and now they are really big.

I don’t know anything about chiliplants. I mean nothing. In this blog we will try out different things, and maybe we will come up with some great (and less great) methods in how to make your chilis grow. I know that much that once you get the chilifruit, you can put it in a food and make the food delicious 🙂 Hope you want to join our exploring in the jungle of chilis and maybe you will start your own chiligarden. If you have ideas or information of chili growing, please let us know! ENJOY!