Monday, August 29, 2011

First Costa Rican Red Habanero...

Today the first red Habanero from the new crop was harvested. It's a monster @ 4+cm in diameter;


This is so encouraging; I had all but given up. 
The 6 orange Habanero seedlings are planted in their new bed and seem to be okay; we'll see... 

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Skipped the Chitosan this week...

...because there doesn't appear to be anything wrong. I applied it as a prophylactic due to previous problems. I will however apply it at the very first sign of trouble.
The one huge pod is turning red and may be fully ripe in another 3 days. In all there are 8 pods set on 3 of 4 plants. 
I'll be putting the 6 orange Hab seedlings in the ground by Saturday; the bed is almost ready and so are they.
Cheers.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

What's Growing Now!

Here's a few pics;

A blurry (sorry) shot of the 4cm red Hab w/hand for relative size;

The 4cm is on the right below with another coming on as well;


The six orange Habanero seedlings;


These will all go into the ground as I'm a bit put off by container growing based on last years failures.
cheers.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Chitosan; second treatment...

...today, Sunday the 14th. (Even though the blog is dated, I'm on the other side of the date line, thus the different dates depending on the time I post) The rain has been spotty at best so today I applied roughly 2 - 3 liters of the diluted mixture (10ml/5+ liters of water) per plant in the garden.
The 4 Costa Rican Red Habaneros are doing extremely well so far. One plant has the biggest Habanero I've ever seen with my own eyes; it's over 4 cm. in diameter. I will post a pic of it soon. All of them are podding up with very little flower drop.
My sick chocolate Habanero is not worse; that's the best I can say at the moment and it got a dose of Chitosan also (2nd for it also).
So, it's actually only been a week and I'm hoping to see definite results in the next week or so.
I have 6 more orange Habanero plants in thumb pots which will go in the ground sometime this week if they harden up enough so the birds don't eat the tops.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Chitosan; a soil treatment based on seafood waste...

I applied the first treatment of Chitosan today (Sunday the 7th here) to one chocolate Habanero (a very sick plant) and the 4 Costa Rican Red Habanero plants (they are healthy so far).
The reason I delayed is because we are in the rainy season here and it's been pretty wet the last 2 weeks. Finally got a 3 day break, so applied it @ about 1 liter of dilute mixture per plant. I used 10ml Chitosan to 5 liters of water.
I'm hoping this will break the cycle of my plants demise after a year of growing.

Chitosan is supposed to be very effective in eliminating bad soil bacteria as well as the bad nematodes while leaving the healthy stuff alone. A simple google search will bring up loads of data on Chitosan, cheers.