A few years ago I bought 50 Carolina Reaper seeds from the original person who invented it for $50. It was just entered into the record books then as
the world's hottest chili. I think I had a few too many the night I sprung for that on the internet.
Seven of those plants survived their misuse by me (my 1st time growing anything from seed) and despite me they ended up producing over 1000 chilies
and a few gallons of hot sauce. I still have about a gallon left in sealed canning jars. The whole peppers went FAST. It's amazing how many
pepperheads there are out there especially since I work on the road. I've got many a free drink at the bar for a 3oz shaker bottle of hot sauce or a
few whole chilis. Great conversation piece.
I still give the remaining aged hot sauce away to friends but caveat that I do not take any responsibility for this bright red, 3 year old aged hot
sauce. They say it's still excellent. I also ended up with about 10,000 seeds I put in envelopes of 100 seeds each. My plan was to sell these seeds
on Ebay and make a fortune. However, by the time my seeds were ready for sale the price dropped from $1/seed to 1 cent. Guess I better keep working.
My CR pics from that harvest are currently being held ransom by PhotoBucket.
I was working on the road back in early Spring when I germinated 100 seeds using those enclosed seed starter kits you buy at HD. I put about 5 seeds
in each little bin. I placed them in the window sill of my hotel room. To my surprise most germentated and before long I had a mini-forest in my
room. I can just image what the maids thought! I gave about half those plants to others to carry on the process of turning the little CR baby plants
into one of the hottest peppers on earth. They all killed the plants within a couple of weeks for various reasons.
I learned the last time from a pepper article I read out of many how to produce healthy, fruit bearing chili plants. Their method was using only
Blood Meal, Bone Meal and Fish Emulsion for soil additions, plus water often, and use a very small, soft tipped paint brush daily to germinate each
open chili flower.
Once the peppers initially branch into two paths, pepper flowers (1-4) start growing in the "V" of that branch. Then each branch branches again with
more pepper flowers in each branch's "V". It branches and branches until the pepper plant finally reaches over 6' in height.
I spread a handful of each Blood and Bone Meal around the plants monthly. In the pic above 2-3 handfuls of each per wine barrel. It slowly dissolves
with watering. Keep the soil damp at 5-7 on the water probe.
As I have found out last time, be careful with the concentrated Fish Fertilizer because too much will cause the leaves to wilt and kill some of the
plants. More is not better! Just follow the directions on the bottle. I fertilize once a month. If leaves wilt, most plants will recover after a few
days.
Notice the size of the plants in the wine barrels? They were all planted the same days from the started seed pots. The amount of sun they get seems
to determine the rate of growth. The barrel in the front gets the most sun and back right the least. Neither barrel gets sun all day.
This is the only plant I have ever grown from seed. Once you get the pepper plant growing in its finally location this method seems to have excellent
results. I do not know if the paint brush germination method did the trick or insects did the germination but I'm sure it did not hurt the plant.
