Last summer I decided to start growing chili peppers. I love spicy foods (although my mouth doesn't always), and so does my boyfriend. To begin, I bought some seeds for jalapenos and habaneros.
Here is a close-up of some of my first sprouts:
And again:
I planted seeds in six pots: three pots of jalapeno and three of habanero. In each pot I planted three seeds, just in case some did not germinate. I think of the 18 seeds I used every single one sprouted!
A few weeks later, the pepper plants were growing in full force! There were three plants in each pot, so I cut down the weaker plants so that there was only one growing in each pot. Artificial selection at its finest!
Here's a shot of my prettiest habanero sitting in the windowsill. Notice the heart shape of the leaves, as well as the regularity of leaf placement along the stem.
Here's another photo of it from above.
The jalapenos ended up flowering before the habaneros. I'm not really sure why that is. I guess each variety just grows differently. So here's a photo of one of my jalapenos from above. You can see the different growth pattern, the different leaf shape, and the little round blobs that are its flower buds.
I took a small hiatus from taking pictures when I was packing up and getting ready to leave for my third year of college. Once I got settled in, I had time again to take some pictures to document how my peppers were growing. I ended up taking four chili plants to school, two of each variety. The photo below shows my larger habanero on the left, and my larger jalapeno on the right. At this point my jalapenos were showing signs of flower buds, but none of them were opened up yet. The habaneros were still all leaf and no flower.
And finally, a jalapeno flower! They are about 3/4 of an inch in diameter, and they droop down to face the ground. They have six white petals.
Another shot of the jalapeno flowers:
And another one (blurry because iPhones are not that great for photos):
To make sure I would get some peppers instead of just leaves and flowers, I used a q-tip to assist pollination. I had really good luck with the jalapenos pollinating! Below you can see the pods just starting to form.
A shot of overall growth shape as the pepper pods start to form:
Now we switch to looking at the habanero. It finally started to bloom, so I used the other side of my q-tip to try and pollinate its flowers. While most of the jalapeno flowers turned to pods, I only ever got two peppers from this habanero plant. It is now one year old and has been flowering nearly constantly since last fall. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I got two pods growing last fall, which grew and ripened beautifully, but no luck since. Here's a shot of its foliage, with its little round flower buds interspersed throughout:
While most of the flowers fell off my habanero without being pollinated, I finally got a pod growing! Seeing its size compared to my fingers makes it look that much cuter. :)
As days turned to weeks, I continued to document the growth of my chilies as they grew. Below is a shot of my jalapeno showing off all its pods. All in all, nearly a dozen blossoms fertilized. A few pods dropped as they were ripening, but I suppose that is to be expected.
Compare the size of this jalapeno to my hand. Much bigger than that baby habanero pod earlier!
Look how much bigger the habanero got since last time! It's still not ripe yet though, none of them are. Any time a pepper is green, it's most likely not ripe yet. Not that it can't be picked like that though. Most jalapenos we see are picked while still green, and then pickled. If all our green bell peppers were left on the plant, they would eventually ripen to red or yellow or orange, or even purple with some varieties.
The habanero seed packet I bought had a variety of red, yellow, and orange varieties, so I was excited to see what color this guy would eventually ripen to. Below are two shots of the same pepper with some time elapsed, or perhaps it was just a different angle. I can't really remember, it was nearly a full year ago.
Here are another couple shots of my jalapeno plant. On the left is my biggest one again (as seen above with my hand) after some more time has passed. On the right you can see how it and my hand compare roughly to the size of the whole plant, as well as the other peppers. Sorry about my blurry finger at the bottom! :P
I was delighted to discover one day that one of my habanero pods had begun to ripen! I still couldn't tell if it was going to be red or orange, but it didn't really matter to me at that point anyway.
The other habanero pod that was growing, smaller than the first, was also beginning to ripen. Looking at this one I could tell that it would eventually turn red.
After probably a week since it first started changing color, the smaller one was completely ripe. It looked so pretty!
In the meantime, I was getting impatient for my jalapenos to ripen all the way. I ended up picking the largest two while they were still green and using them in my quesadilla.
After some time, probably a few weeks, the jalapenos were finally ripening to red. At this point the weather was beginning to get colder, and I suspect that's why the leaves were starting to look all old and gross. Even though the leaves were getting old, the pods looked young and vibrant!
I decided that it was about time to harvest:
In the meantime, I had harvested my smaller habanero and used that in sloppy joes. Or maybe it was tacos. As for the larger one, once it ripened fully, I picked it and hung it up to dry. I was worried it wouldn't dry well at first because for the first few weeks it just got really wrinkly. Eventually though it dried enough that my fingernail could no longer dent it. This little guy is gonna become crushed red pepper flakes for my boyfriend!
Since harvest, my pepper plants have continued to live. No habaneros, but I did get some jalapenos in the spring. Unfortunately, the plants have been infested with thrips off and on since the fall, and the second harvest of jalapenos was no good. Still, the plants have been doing well enough. Eventually I want to prune them into a bonsai shape. For now though I left them at home for my mom to take care of while I'm off at school. Perhaps at some point I'll have my brother take some photos for me so I can post an update.
Moving forward, I'm looking forward to buying a couple "Tin Can Garden" packages from work so I can grow chocolate habaneros and ghost peppers! I'll keep y'all updated as things change!
Until next time,
- Jess
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