Germination

For the sowing, this year I first filled the container with Weibulls "så-och kaktusjord". Next I watered the soil with boiling water. After the soil had cooled off I then placed Weibulls "vermiculit" on top of the soil. I then placed the chile seed on the vermiculit and then placed some extra soil and vermiculit on top. Finally I carefully watered the container one last time. Then I placed the sowings on top of our heater where i suspect the temperature is at least 25 degrees Celcius. Hopefully this will do.

Chile Season #2: Sowing the Seed

Today I sowed new chile seeds for the 2011 season! In total I sowed 49 seeds divided on twelve different varieties. Eight of them are chosen mainly because I aim to use them for making chile sauce after harvest. The four remaining chile plants are chosen only because I have never sowed them before and I therefore only plant one seed each of them. These four chiles are: HABANERO CHOCOLATE, HABANERO FATALI, HABANERO LEMON, & SWEET BANANA. The other chilepeppers are as follows: CHIHLUACLE NEGRO (5 seeds), JALAPEÑO (8 seeds), HABANERO (5 seeds), SCOTCH BONNET ORANGE (5 seeds), SCOTCH BONNET RED (5 seeds), BHUT JOLOKIA (5 seeds), HOT LEMON (aka LEMON DROP) (6 seeds), & ANCHO GRANDE (5 seeds).

Anna Permanto's Chile Chutney

Making Hot Sauce: Chocolate-Chile Hot Sauce

This Hot Sauce did not come out as hot as my previous sauces. It is made out of Chihluacle Negro pods, 5 chipotle pods, cocoa, vanilla powder, 18 years old single malt whisky (Highland Park) and other ingredient



s.

Making Hot Sauce: Chihluacle Negro Sauce

This hot sauce is made out of eight chihluacle Negro pods, along with vanilla powder, 18 years old single malt whisky, almond aroma, onions, garlic, carrots, dark brown muscovado sugar, white wine vinegar, etc.

Making Hot Sauce: Chile-Lemon Hot Sauce

This hot sauce is made out of a bunch of Hot Lemon Chiles.

Redder Than Red & Hotter Than Hot

Indeed, most chile peppers are hot! Peppers are rated based on so-called Scoville Units, a method developed by Wilbur Scoville in 1912. The original method used human tasters to evaluate how many parts of sugar water it takes to neutralize the heat. Nowadays human tasters are spared and a new process called HPLC, or High Performance Liquid Chromotography measures the amount of capsaicinoids (capsaicin) in parts per million. Capsaicin is the compound that gives chiles their heat.(to be continued)

Chillin' in the Chile

Our cat Vilse loves to chill out in the chili jungle.

Presenting peppers

Below I present the result of my ambition to grow chile peppers. Being the first time ever for me to plant chile in combination with my general lack of knowledge concerning any plants and how to tend them, I must say that it went alright. There were only two or three forms of chile that I didn't manage to grow; the Pequín (which I brought from Mexico), the Jamaica Bell, and the .... Furthermore, while most chiles matured in either august or september, the really hot ones such as the different Habaneros didn't turn red until very late - in late October. These I had to transplant into ceramic containers and move indoors. ( to be continued...)

Chihluacle Negro


Hot Lemon (aka Lemon Drop)


Yellow Adjoema


Unknown chile (from seed bought on a street market in Mexico City)


Hungarian Hot Wax



Orange Habanero


Scotch Bonnet Orange


Scotch Bonnet Chocolate (aka Kongo Black)


Spanish Pepper

Green turns to red

As is seen below, the chile Fresno is about to change color...



...and yes, first out as a red hot winner is Fresno! My second chile to turn red is Cayenne Long Slim and this redness of chile pods takes place in the beginning of August.

A green pod summer!

The summer of 2010 went on and I kept getting more and more fruits on my chile plants. July was the month of green pods.

Cayenne Long Slim


Anaheim


Fresno

Fruit of labour!

Well, look at this! not only do my plants bloom but they also begin to bear fruit! Here's a Chile Fresno seeing its first light of day and this is happening in the middle of June 2010, some three months after it was only a little seed that was put into the soil.



Also, my mum and dad pitched in and gave me a small but functioning greenhouse. And as can be seen below the plants are getting bigger! Maybe I'm on to something here!

The first flower!

Yiihaa! Maybe I'm doing something right anyway! It is now the 3th of June and here is a picture of my first chile flower - ever! A white one, a beautiful white flower! I believe it is the flower of a Cayenne Long Slim plant.

The greenhouse effect!

After some thought on how to proceed my new career as a chile grower I decided to construct my own greenhouse. Even if all my plants did not fit in there it sure helped them to get the heat and humidity needed in order to grow, bloom and bear fruits. Some plants I planted right down in the soil in the backyard. Regretfully, however, they never came to bear many fruits. Still more plants were kept in pots inside on the windowsill facing south and others I were given the opportunity by Per and Eva to place in their real greenhouse. Well, all good so far, even though I suspected at this point in time to be a bit late in planting my chile. I was worried that I wouldn't have the opportunity to see my plants bear fruit before the winter was to hit us again!

I wish to thank all those people who helped me with my containers for my plants. I was given a variety of different plastic containers to put my plants in; Mayonnaise-containers from the local Pizzeria Tuppen, Keso-containers from the school's kitchen etc. My neighbor Vivan also gave me a great number of strawberryjam-containers.

Way too many plants for a guy who doesn't even own a greenhouse!

April 2010. Where to place all these plants. In retrospect maybe I should've listened to the woman working in the plantshop: "don't plant too much! You'll not manage it and instead you'll grow tired of it all". Well, at the time I did not own a greenhouse but I had not room for all the plants inside. Therefore, my only option was to place them outside on the porch where they at least had (a partial) roof over their heads. Regretfully, however, The months of April and May, turned out to be a really cold which resulted in that many of the plants grew very very slow. Even so, after a while, I came to the oh so obvious conclusion that I had way too many plants to care for so I called all my friends to come and get what they wanted,

Pepper Permanto in retrospect: Windowsill Germination

So it continued, me growing chilepepper on my windowsill in march 2010. Besides the seeds from Mexico (which I still do not know what kinds they all are even though I suspect some of them to be Chile de 'Arbol, Guajillo, Cascabel, and Pequín) I planted; Hungarian Hotwax, Hot Lemon (aka Lemon Drop), Spanish Pepper, Piri-Piri, Pasilla, NuMex Joe E. Parker, Anaheim, Fresno, Jalapeño, Red Habanero, Orange Habanero, Rocoto Orange, Scotch Bonnet Red, Scotch Bonnet Orange, Scotch Bonnet Chocolate, Long Yellow Ringo, Serrano Tampiqueño, Yellow Adjoema, Chihluacle Negro, Cayenne Long Slim, Habanero Red Savina, Jamaican Bell, Caribbean Red Habanero, Lombardo, Piment D'espelette, and Apache.

In April 2010, roughly one month after first having inserted the seed into the soil (såjord) I found it appropriate to transplant the seedlings and place them in individual larger containers. For this procedure I used Hasselfors P-Jord.

Pepper Permanto Begins: A Retrospective

One may say that it all began in Mexico. In the summer of 2009 I visited Mexico City and just a few days before returning home to Sweden I found myself walking down a crowded streetmarket where I bought several different dried chile pods. While I am still not completely sure what kind of chile I bought ( I am pretty sure of the name of some of them I brought these home and while being insecure of what to do with them I simply put them away on a shelf in a glass jar. Several months later, in March 2010, I somehow got stuck on the idea of planting the seed from the dried pods that I had saved and see what would happen. At the same time I bought more chile seeds from local garden shops as well as from the internet. All in all I planted some 35 different variants of chile which would eventually result in some 300 (!) seeds.