|
Post by tropgrower on Mar 3, 2015 21:23:39 GMT -5
It normally doesn't rain everyday for weeks or months.Typically we will get a weather system move through that will bring the rain,and it will last a day or 2 or a week.Those weather systems can follow one another in pretty short fashion,which I have seen last 2 weeks.Then there will be a clear period (when people scramble to get their laundry hung to dry)that could last as long as 3 weeks,but that is normally in the beginning of the rainy season,or near the end of the season.During the clearing period,it will be pretty darn humid (as you can well imagine),as it is still summer and hot as all heck when the skies clear.
Hard to keep anything growing during this period,and not necessarily because of the rain.The bigger obstacle is the wind.I have seen the wind blow so hard,that all the leaves have been stripped off the trees.
Tomatoes just get re-planted.Peppers could be put in containers and then moved to a more protected area..if one were so inclined.
|
|
|
Post by LinFL on Mar 4, 2015 14:22:01 GMT -5
Whew...that's a lot of wind! We occasionally get the kind of winds that blow down branches blown and tumble lawn furniture during summer thunderstorms, but the trees only get defoliated when a hurricane blows through. So, I think I'll stay here and continue to complain about my heat and humidity, and then you can come in and one-up me. Actually, the biggest complaint I have about the summer heat and humidity here is that unless we are getting a thunderstorm, there is often no breeze at all. So being outside is a lot like being in a sauna. When we do get a breeze it is SUCH a relief. But you can keep those leaf-stripping winds!
|
|
|
Post by directsunlight on Mar 7, 2015 8:01:26 GMT -5
I'm a pepper, you're a pepper, wouldn't you like to be a pepper too? ?
|
|
|
Post by cliffrat on Mar 8, 2015 0:38:44 GMT -5
Hey Zinnia Girl, why don't you keep one or two of the islander peppers isolated so they don't cross pollinate with other peppers? That way you can save a couple of the peppers for next year's seeds. Unfortunately, Islander is a hybrid. It's purple with an ivory interior. Very sweet and mild, usually thick-walled for me. Years ago, I had taken some to work and my boss who usually could not eat peppers loved them and they didn't bother her at all. OK, so call me clueless, but the seeds have to come from some pepper right? Why won't taking two of these hybrid plants, isolating them so they only pollinate with each other, yield fruit whose seeds produce the same plant?
|
|
|
Post by zinniagirl on Mar 8, 2015 7:45:43 GMT -5
Unfortunately, Islander is a hybrid. It's purple with an ivory interior. Very sweet and mild, usually thick-walled for me. Years ago, I had taken some to work and my boss who usually could not eat peppers loved them and they didn't bother her at all. OK, so call me clueless, but the seeds have to come from some pepper right? Why won't taking two of these hybrid plants, isolating them so they only pollinate with each other, yield fruit whose seeds produce the same plant? It COULD, but I believe the odds are that it wouldn't. It could also produce either parent. Maybe I'll try it and see what I get.
|
|
|
Post by LinFL on Mar 9, 2015 13:57:41 GMT -5
Unfortunately, Islander is a hybrid. It's purple with an ivory interior. Very sweet and mild, usually thick-walled for me. Years ago, I had taken some to work and my boss who usually could not eat peppers loved them and they didn't bother her at all. OK, so call me clueless, but the seeds have to come from some pepper right? Why won't taking two of these hybrid plants, isolating them so they only pollinate with each other, yield fruit whose seeds produce the same plant? No, sorry. It doesn't work that way. Let's pretend for the sake of example that the hybrid pepper's mother was a sweet, thin-walled white pepper and its father was a bland, thick-walled, purple pepper. (I have no idea what it was actually bred from.) The result was a purple exterior color, ivory interior color, sweet flavor and thick walls. Hurray! But the hybrid pepper plant actually carries the genes for different traits from both the mama pepper and papa pepper inside its DNA. It's just that the genes for some traits are dominant, so those are the traits we see in the hybrid. The genes for the other traits are recessive - we don't see them, but they are still in the genetic code. Pepper flowers (tomato flowers, too) have both male and female parts inside each flower. The male part produces pollen, which is analogous to sperm in mammals. The female part produces cells that are analogous to egg cells in mammals. The difference is that there are many egg cells in each flower. Just like in mammals, each "sperm cell" (pollen grain) is different - each one contains a unique selection of half of the plant's genetic code. So some pollen grains contain the gene for purple exterior, other pollen grains contain the gene for a white exterior. Some pollen grains contain the genes for sweetness, others for bland flavor, etc. The exact same process happens in the female part of the plant, so that each individual "egg cell" winds up with its own unique selection of half the plant's genetic code, too. Some of the eggs carry the gene for purple exterior, other eggs carry the gene for white exterior, etc. Now let's say we bag ONE flower on the hybrid plant, and then buzz it with a toothbrush so that the flower is pollenated only with its own pollen. A pepper forms and dozens of seeds develop inside it. Each viable seed is the result of one unique egg cell joining with one unique pollen grain. So each seed in that pepper contains the unique genetic code for a distinct individual plant. Each seed is a sibling. They are related in the same way as fraternal twins in people. So if you grow out all of the seeds from the pepper, you will see all sorts of combinations of traits. You'll get white peppers, purple peppers, sweet peppers, bland peppers, thick-walled peppers, thin-walled peppers, etc. ______________ Sometimes people get away with saving seeds from hybrids. Usually this is because the hybrid's mother and father were very much alike. Let's say that our hybrid pepper had a mama and papa that were both were purple peppers with an ivory exterior, thick walls, and sweet flesh. But one had resistance to disease A and the other had resistance to disease B. So the breeder crossed them together to get both disease resistances. If you save seeds from this hybrid, the offspring would look all alike and taste alike. But they would have different combinations of disease resistance. Unless you had heavy pressure from disease A and/or B (or access to a DNA analyzer), you would have no way to tell there was any difference at all between the sibling plants. But they would be different.
|
|
|
Post by cliffrat on Mar 10, 2015 0:19:37 GMT -5
OK, Lin, I get it. But for sake of argument (I am Italian after all!) If the desirable traits are dominant, and the lesser desirable traits are recessive, I would go back to my biology lessons (from ancient history) and do the Trait box diagram. I'm going to see if I can do it here. Lets say the dominant traits we are looking for are the purple skin and the ivory flesh. The purple skinned pepper has a recessive green skin gene and the Ivory flesh pepper has a recessive red flesh gene. The dominant traits are represented by the capital letters and the recessive traits from the lower case ones. P is purple skin, I is ivory flesh, g is green skin, and r is red flesh. I take a Purple skin red flesh pepper and cross it with and Ivory flesh, green skinned one Skin traits on top and flesh traits down the side P g I r
The products of this cross yield 4 different combinations of characteristics: Purple skin with Ivory flesh (both dominant) Ivory Flesh with green skin (one dominant, one recessive) Purple skin with red flesh (one dominant, one recessive) green skin with red flesh (both recessive)
All of which are going to come from the initial cross pollination of the first two parents and there is no way to be sure to get seeds that will always produce purple skin and ivory flesh, which is what Zinnia purchased.
I do not actually think the purple skin and Ivory flesh are the dominant traits. I believe that they are the recessive ones, which means that their offspring only carry the recessive genes and not the dominant ones. In which case crossing the two pepper plants can only lead to the same recessive trait pepper as the dominant genes are not present. Again, I am not a botanist, but I look around and say how many peppers have either purple skin or ivory flesh? The rarity of it leads me to believe that these traits are recessive and are purposely bred up from other plants.
If we look at it from the purple skin and ivory flesh as recessive traits, (like light colored hair and eyes in humans) Blonde haired blue eyed parents (on both sides) only produce light colored hair and eyes in the offspring. Parents exhibiting recessive traits cannot produce offspring with dominant traits unless they cross with another parent that exhibits the dominant traits. A blonde haired, blue eyed father with a red haired, green eyed mother will never produce children with brown hair or eyes.
|
|
|
Post by nightmist on Mar 14, 2015 8:44:02 GMT -5
Sweet: Albino bullnose Bulgarian ratund (I've dry spot that they just adore) unknown paprikas
Spicy: Black Hungarian Romanian (those roundish red ones that are very sweet on the outside with hot membranes) Leutschauer Paprika
Edible but blah:
Tequila sunrise
The hots will be interspersed along and in vulnerable beds to try and deter slugs and other pests (wormwood and thyme will be doing the same duty). A few black hungarians will be doing duty with the tequila sunrise in the very front bed to deter children. I've a wild pack of well fed brats up the street who have been laying waste to local gardens. The tequila sunrise are very nice looking, as are the hungarians, If they bite into a tequila sunrise they will likely be unimpressed, but if they bite into one of those hungarians they will get a bit singed. I am PO'd enough at this lot that I was briefly tempted to plant some bhut jolokias, but those could actually injure them. Yet another annoyance, because I would love to plant those elephant peppers for the squirrels and woodchucks, but those obnoxious brats from up the street have a habit of coming into the garden, and taking a bite out of every fruit and then flinging them. Cops have promised to do more than talk to them if we get a repeat performance this year.
|
|
|
Post by gulfcoastguy on Mar 14, 2015 12:51:35 GMT -5
How about some Thai Hots Nightmist? They are very attractive, produce quicker than just about any hot pepper, and are 8 times as hot as a jalapeño. A big bite of them before the others are even putting on fruit ought to do the trick.
|
|
|
Post by gulfcoastguy on Apr 12, 2015 17:37:38 GMT -5
All of my pepper plants are in the ground and doing well, much better than the maters. Except for one remaining pepper on the front porch. It got dried out a bit and looked like Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree so it stayed home with a drink of water when I went to Dad's with all of the others. The stubborn cuss of a pepper recovered.
|
|
|
Post by LinFL on Apr 13, 2015 11:32:24 GMT -5
Good for it! Now you need to give it a home where that stubborn cuss of a pepper can make lots of fruit.
|
|
|
Post by nightmist on Apr 14, 2015 15:11:52 GMT -5
The Albino Bullnose peppers are all of of sudden leaping up out of the starting mix and growing quite fast, as are the Leutschauer Paprikas. Except for the one black hungarian, the rest are still sulking.
It's what I get for not getting the darned things started until March.
The last couple of years we have been able to count growing season until nearly October, so I may yet get some peppers. It has only snowed once since the first, and it is all pretty much washed away by the rain. So now I am just waiting for the ground to dry. and at least a full week where the temps stay above freezing at night.
|
|
|
Post by gulfcoastguy on Apr 14, 2015 20:02:10 GMT -5
The stubborn cuss of a pepper got planted last night. I didn't put a lot of effort into it since he seems to thrive on abuse.
|
|