Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Notoriously difficult to germinate, very stingy with its seeds, it's been classified by Guinness as "world's hottest" in recent years. Clocked at 1,000,000 Scoville Units and more, this chile has intrigued me since I first heard it overtook the Red Savina as heat champ.
It's said to have a good flavor too, but I see YouTube videos proliferating of people taking a bite and pretty soon wishing they hadn't.
I was gifted with a half dozen cuttings by my brother. They were taken from plants grown from University of New Mexico seed and carefully rooted, then plugged into the expanded shale of my Flood & Drain system. They were spaced about 40 cm apart and have grown to 1.3 meter tall, 2.5 meters wide, with stems as big around as my thumb.
Some chelated iron was added, a dash every 2 days, when they looked like they wanted to form peppers.
Here's some pictures showing that the tender mercies of a standard media F&D bed gives the Ghost Chile what it needs to produce pods. As I get some more ripe pods filling out branches, I'll post some updates.

Rick

I have NOT tasted one yet.

Oh go on..........

Every time someone mentions hot chilli I feel the need to put up the hippy seed company videos..

Smin the hottest chilli in the world at current has left the bhut jolokia in the dust its the Trinidad Scorpian Butch T

Yeah the Jolokia goes pretty hard, we put around 10 into 20 litres of beer and it near blows your head off!

Last week i made pizzas for dinner and accidently put a heap of trinidad scorpion/ naga morich/ bhut jolokia/7pod flakes on it instead of my other hot mix .

Near killed me eating it haha

Of the 30 odd jolokias and nagas ive tried to sprout i got 1 and it got squashed. Got some trinidad scorpions from wildfire chilli but they didnt come up either with the exception of 1 that might be as im not sure if it was it or another variety. Should know soon as its starting to fruit.

Sprouting is real hard, they need warmth to do it consistently

Notoriously difficult chillis, and they seem to contain very few seeds which probably adds to the cost.
I had similar results roodog, only about 3 from 20 seeds sprouted and i struggled for growth untill i jammed one in the cupboard under a 400w grow lamp and gave it plenty of nutrient. It took off a treat in there, and then i stuck it in a big pot outside over summer.

The Jolokia did not like too much heat, tending to drop flowers if the temp was much over 33, and the flowers that stayed on had little pollen, and needed hand pollination to form fruit. A bit of nitrogen rich fert later and I harvested quite few, but you sure do have to work for it to grow something that is pretty much inedible...

I've seen a man kicked in the mummy daddy button, and watching that guy eat that thing was way more painful it was bring tears to my eyes

Yep for now anyway
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/ ... chilli.htm

Yeah hard to eat just a bit. I would have 5 tiny flakes in a meal!

Taste better then habernero chillies imo

The trinidad has an interesting burn. Makes my tongue fry but my mouth is ok. The morich makes my whole mouth fry.

gold!

Crazy, crazy, people.....

haha you got ot try it, its an experience

One of my fav chillis is the red rocotto, it has black seeds, very fleshy pods and its got a nice kick. Doesnt taste bad either.. awesome for spaghetti etc. I have one of them growing with my suspected trinidad. Normally I ahve heaps of chillis growing but have not put any seeds out yet, been a bit weird this weather, that is also the reason im not sure on my other plant, I planted them last year but because we had such up and down weather I didnt plant till late, and by the time the plant got big enough it was in autumn so I never got any off it, this year will be the first. The rocotto has heaps on it as they do.

I got seeds from the hippy seed co, my dorset nagas when they came up were not dorsets, they were scotch bonnets.

So other than as a novelty, what do MOST people do with these chilis? Use it sparingly in recipes?

That does seem like something 'fun' and interesting to grow though.

I will paste this "Cuttings" post here, mainly so I can find it again later.
...

The capsicum is in the nightshade family, as are tomatoes and eggplants.
I don't think peppers cut/root nearly as easily as tomatoes, but you can do a couple of things to increase your luck:
Make a scar or scrape on a branch and then wrap it with some peat moss or coco coir, something you can keep moist. Scrapes will develop a "callus" and you're halfway home; the callus is where roots will emerge easily. Since the branch is still attached you can take your time and wait until you get roots peeking thru the moss. Google "Air Layering."
Then strip off all leaves but the ones at the far end. Cut off your cutting, below the roots of course. Then plug it in to your AP system, deep, up to those leaves. Roots will form all up and down the buried stem and the started roots will keep it alive while they develop.

This is an important way to preserve valuable or rare genetic material. Or to multiply some plants that you know you like, either to share or to make sure the genetic line is preserved.
We were after both these goals when my brother gave me these. The original plants were grown from seed from the official USA source, the University of New Mexico.

What he did, because he could, was just slice off a little tip of several branches, dipped them in a 'rooting hormone' powder, and plugged each one into some fibrous media in an extremely aerated water bath. When they had a little root, they could travel. I kept them close to a fluorescent light but not having bubbles, just added aerated water every couple of days.

With tomatoes, they are easier. You can just pull off a "sucker" that grows from a junction, jam it down into your media, and it will usually take off on its own.

Some enthusiasts have little "Clean Room" boxes where they can take tiny amounts of leaf material and grow then in Petri Dishes, just like mad scientists cloning their monsters.
Muwah hah hah hah hah!

Rick

{Edit Edit} - OK I take back some of that - these plants were not from cuttings but were seedlings. They were treated with care because this variety does not make many seeds to begin with, and the seeds take so long to germinate that they often get mold or fungus problems.

But the tutorial on cuttings, and the fact you can do cuttings of peppers, I stand by all that. Smin