[CH] V5 #112 Rocotos & Mailing List Questions

Cameron Begg (begg.4@osu.edu)
Fri, 13 Nov 1998 08:35:55 -0600 

Hi C-H's,
Jeffrey Rose asked [of rocotos]:
>Does anyone know how long these babies take to ripen??

Brent has already answered, but on this subject I'm always ready to chip in
my tuppence worth. This year my oldest (3-4yr) rocoto plant has been
enormously successful. It was in partial shade instead of full sun and I
fed it with extra dilute tomato fertilizer every time I watered it after it
had flowered. So much insect activity, mainly in the form of wasps and
hornets, was observed that I dispensed with hand pollination. The plant put
on a lot of new growth, reaching a height above soil level of about three
feet, and continued to flower and set fruit from June till I stopped
feeding it in late September.

Now (at last!) to answer Jeffrey's question on ripening, I wait until they
have started to ripen on the plant before picking them. They undergo a
color change sequence like this: Green, green with a patch of brown, brown
patch spreads to rest of pod, the part which browned first becomes tinged
with red, browness slowly gives way to brilliant red (or yellow as the case
may be). I have found that if they are left on the plant until half way
through the brown spreading stage, they will ripen nicely indoors. Cut them
off with scissors. I put them all together in a poly bag not fastened at
the top. The logic there being that I want their ethylene emissions to
mingle, but want the water vapor to escape to avoid rot. You might try
putting stubborn green pods in with your bananas.

Mike Benson wrote (welcome to the list Mike):

>What is the usual procedure to reply to a message?

There is no set procedure, but I have tried to get most things the way _I_
think is correct with this posting.
If while you are reading a list contribution and you do a simple "reply to"
with most mail clients, the reply "Subject:" line will contain something
like:

Re: [CH] Chile-Heads Digest V5 #112

I usually chop out the "Chile-Heads Digest" bit because everyone knows
that. The "To:" might contain:

owner-chile-heads-digest@globalgarden.com (Chile-Heads Digest)

Make sure you EDIT the "To:" address or your message will be sent to Mike
Bowers, the list owner. The correct address for replying to the C-H list is:
chile-heads@globalgarden.com

I further try to quote just enough of the message or string I am replying
to, so that readers have some kind of subject and author index. I copy the
message to the originators of the subject in the "CC:" line. I also make
sure that any encoding such as MIME, HTML, or styled text is turned off.
This is to avoid ASCII gibberish.

If I had to be self critical, I would say that this posting is too wordy,
and might have been better split into the two subjects it addresses.
However, it's Friday and I feel pretty good; so I won't give myself a
pennance :-)

Lastly, my "sig." is minimal, and not advertising anything.
                     Regards,               Cameron.