The 8 crosses you sent me sorted
One of those overloaded peppers (here Banana x Santa Fe)
One of those super loaded eggplants: this being a bit short and not super high yielder, but the earliest (Wild Board x (Patio Baby F1)
Most advanced direct sown F2 to F4 (this: Banana x Wisconsin Lakes F2)
what is the hardest thing I find in the selection of sweet pepper is to know when the fruits are good⊠with the crosses some remain yellow other orange or redâŠwhile on other white orange or yellow are just stages before maturing totallyâŠwe donât know so never the stage of maturation to have fertile seeds
there is also always this fear that pepper pollen will put spice in itâŠfor that I only grow peppers Aji Capsicum baccatum
Seeds ripen some 2-3 weeks before full maturity so the danger of picking too early isnât that big. You just have to learn signs that tell that the fruit is at green ripe stage and about to change colour. All unripe colours in annuum are diffrent to same ripe colour. Yellow or orange unripe is a lot duller colour. Usually there is also some cracking once they are at green ripe stage, most notably jalapeños. Just about all these and other peppers I grow this year are from fruits that had no signs of final colour change. I do wait for it if I have time and pick them once there is the first sign of colour change to save them from the elements. You can observe ripening before outside colour change when you open unripe peppers; often there is some subtle colour change around placenta even if nothing shows outside. At that point the seeds are ripe.
I donât have that fear. I have been practicing with chinense for several years 
. All annuum are about the same for me. You can choose for bigger fruits and that way have less spiciness. Once the placenta is removed even a bit hotter big pepper is quite mild. Ofcourse thatâs all subjective.
Thank you. Iâm not making too much selection at this point other than what those direct seeded had to go through to make it to mature plant. I might take some plants of that arenât looking as productive, but mostly itâs A) fastest make the most seeds B) I have marked the dates of flowering so that I can favour those in next years sowing. Iâll also try to separate direct sown to tall and smaller. Eventually Iâll remove tall plants from my population, but not before Iâm in the part wild population. F1s and some those F2s that I transplanted Iâm just collecting all mixed, besides new crosses I made, and let them battle it out next year direct sowing. I have noticed that some transplanted crosses maybe bette in sweetness than others and some had a bit too thick of a skin, but quite pointless making those crosses if you donât sow the diverse generation. I also need to make progress in speed before I can truly test for their culinary aspects.
It doesnât always need to be pretty (in the traditional gardening sense). If it can deal with that kinda neighbours, next year with less competition it should thrive. Iâm also curious to see how something that has been direct sown would fare next year from a medium transplant. I expect them to have some adaptions to rooting and they might do better also transplants as long as the roots arenât too bound together.
Another difficulty I encounter, I started from very early and delicious varieties as breeders but most are a little weak in vegetation I find. I want taller, more leafy plants and especially stand alone, because you need more shade on the ground to protect from drought and uv rays that sterilize the soil in our increasingly hot and dry climate.
The only breeder who works wonders with these criteria here is âHoly Italianâ:
it is part of the grex but I have not yet found crosses with him, where then the gene strong vegetative growth is not dominantâŠ
you find many natural crosses where you advise me to do manual pollination?
I havenât observed many natural crosses, but thatâs partially due to my climate. Usually save seeds from the first to ripen in varieties and the insects donât visit the first flowers as much in peppers. Secondly, it might be hard to see if something is a cross. As you know, many peppers have very similar growth and fruits so that crosses might not stand out. Certainly there are variance, but then you would need to observe them very closely and be a little lucky that the crosses are with those that have different enough looks. I have had only 2 natural crosses that I have seen. One was with purple leafed variety that was easy to pick out when it came from green leafed seeds. Other looks to be in these direct sown. I sowed some cañoncito partially to see if I could find some crosses. One of them ( I think out of 8 mature plants) has clearly different pods, but otherwise there is no clear difference that would have stood out. Might have culled many crosses as smaller plants. Still possible that itâs just a seed that got there accidentally. If you pick later fruits you should find decent amount of natural crosses, but I would still do manually. Itâs not that hard and then you can use the space just for crosses instead of having a lot bigger space just to try to find them. Natural crossing is good when you already have a diverging population and donât need to know if they are crosses.
For me the opposite seems the best. I rather have smaller plants, if it means that they fruit faster, and less leaves as late season gets moist whether it rains or not. Peppers easily spoil from the moisture. Iâm still in the early stages and mostly looking at their speed. I have some tall plants, but Iâm not sure if they are leafy. One interesting is chimayo, which isnât tall at all, but it has an interesting thick sideways growth like an umbrella. If you prefer baccatum, I have after this season quite a wide hybrid mix.
Already a week (20.9) since I picked all that looked at least mature green and on the night between 21-22.9 there was the first frost that killed off tomatoes, tomatillos and most tender plants. Drirect sown peppers were so tightly packed that it only topped them off, but lower half still remains. Not that it matters much or tells much about cold tolerance in general. I left quite a lot of iffy fruits there as I already had a couple hundred litres of peppers overall. These also made quite a bit ripe enough fruits even if a lot goes to waste this way. Hopefully over the years they will improve speed so that the waste gets less. First fruits started to change colour just before mid september, an althought there werenât more than a few that had colour change when I picked them, now a week inside and already big portion has fully changed or is changing. Quite happy with the results. This year temperatures were good for ripening until mid september. It means that this year Iâll get more seeds than I was counting on. Based on the time fruits started to ripen, even if it wasnât as good conditions and I had to pull the pluck on early september, still some of these would have made viable seeds. Because there is less hard selection this year, I saved fruits to 4 patches roughly based on speed and a couple others patches. Iâll sow them next year preferentially so that Iâll skew towards faster. I also played bumblebee and did some manual pollination on the first fruits using the fastest plants preferentially, but also just mixing it up. If the weather doesnât make harder selection next year, Iâll do it for it. I have plenty of F2 seeds, half wild and some quarter wilds from this years transplants which Iâll sow separately.
2 of the first to turn colour on 17.9
Yield is good even if mostly there were only 3 fruits worth taking. Those look like they are single plants, but mostly there are 2 or even 3 plants merged together. I calculated that there were over 10 plants per m2.
A few plants made a lot of sideshoots and had huge number of fruits. Maybe not ideal for direct sowing as these werenât the fastest, but there is still some potential for transplanting and people with longer season. I saved fruits from these plants separately.
Eggplants also made quite a good harvest considering âyou need to start them in januaryâ, or so they say. Also collected about half that amount before. There was only 4 plants and 2 of them started flowering a week later than the first.
