Time for a moment to see what the actual status on my little pepper plants is. It has been a couple of weeks/months since I have started this project again and I didn't even know how long it was ago now anymore.
Looking back at when I was writing this post it was the end of April when I got my pepper seedling plants at the Dutch chili fest which had a crazy amount of small plants that were going to give some heat to life!
Let's check on what the current status is!
Start with the success!
The first plants to look at was the 'Thunder Mountain Longhorn' chili which has is a 40K on the Scoville scale. Not that much but just a snack size bit of a chili. I guess these are the ones you would normally get in a supermarket.
From the start this little seedling was the strongest of them all and it was growing super turbo fast. Already in the first weeks outside little flowers started to develop and since there is enough stuff flying around here, these flowers were pollinated in no time.
Long peppers were growing on there which is a characteristic of this plant and it didn't even take long for them to turn on colour.
At that time I also snipped one off to just taste it and see if there was some heat in there already, but that was not the case as yet. It tasted like a paprika but it was also still green so no need to worry on that.
For the last couple of weeks they have been turning on color to red which seems in line because it has been more than hot and sunny over here which these pepper plants like a lot!
Doesn't this one look exactly like the logo from the 'red hot chili peppers' band hahahaha?
But indeed, it was time to take this one off of the plant. Harvesting in time is important since that will allow the plant to put its energy into other fruits, hopefully making those ones stronger again.
And there it is. The first pepper harvest of the season. I'm not expecting too much of heat, but it is always good to have a couple of those in store.
Bring in the heat!
One to the hot ones to see how they are doing. Below here you can see the first sign of the 'Bhud Jolokia Chocolate' turning into something with color. Already you can see by the shape of these peppers that those are the angry ones with 800.000 scoville points in there.
These guys are hot🔥! And those are the ones when they are ready that you should process them with gloves on before the heat gets on your skin and you wipe your eyes with it.
Also looking at the next called 'Bhud Ghost pepper" which has 1.000.000 (yup, that is one million indeed) scoville points you can see the first traces of them starting to turn in color and that means the end date on harvesting is coming closer by.
These are the ones that I want to dry and make sambal out of it. I have been saving some small containers already to make small amounts of sambal and I'm really looking forward to the process of it.
Now the next one here is called the 'Dragons Breath' with a 2.4 million scoville points which has the highest expectations on it. But as you can see it has no flowers as yet which is a bit disappointing.
On the other hand: the plant looks super strong and as if it is ready to make new leaves and flowers so we will see what happens over the next couple of weeks.
I just hope the season won't be too late for this one, otherwise I will take it inside once the flowers get pollinated. That is still a long way to go from here though so fingers crossed
Status on the other plants
Looking at the other plants they are also working it, some seem to be more successful than others at the moment. But that doesn't matter, it is end of July and there is plenty of time for them to ripen.
This one here above is the 'Aji Angelo' which is also only 40K on the scoville scale but it is making super nice and thick fruits. Nothing is turning color at the moment but I thick these ones will be a nice snack size in about a month or so.
And the one down here is also an interesting one. This seedling is from seeds that I had dried last year from one of the peppers from my own harvest.
My intention was have the circle of pepper continuing by using my own seeds for making plants again which partially has succeeded.
Because yes this looks like an awesome strong plant at the moment, but on the other hand it is still really small and it had some issues in the spring with growing.
Honestly, I think this one will be too late for this season, but maybe I can keep it going through the winter? Who knows!
But seeing all of these plants together I think we are right on track for a decent harvest in a couple of weeks. Let's hope that the weather stay nice and sunny and warm to keep the growth going!