Re: [CH] Pubescent in the Andes

Love2Troll (Love2Troll@kc.rr.com)
Fri, 9 Jan 2004 06:49:10 -0600 

Rob writes:  "For example last year, we had the hottest and most dry summer since 1947,
only the Rocoto's I grew in pots did got to fruit setting,..."



That was my experience last summer too.  Many of the C. pubescens varieties refused to set fruit and a few didn't even blossom.  The good news was that a few accessions did very well in the high temps.  My 2nd year Red Rocoto did very well too & set early pods.  The year before as a 1st year plant it took from a February starting until December to produce ripe pods.  

Pruning my 2nd year rocotos early last spring turned out to be a horrible mistake.  The yellow & orange varieties did very poorly and still aren't the healthy 5' plants they were in 2002.  One of the yellows was a phenominal early producer in 2002 and didn't do squat in 2003.   

JohnT












----- Original Message ----- 
From: Rob Pieters 
To: chile-heads@globalgarden.com 
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2004 2:46 AM
Subject: Re: [CH] Pubescent in the Andes


Cameron  wrote;

>Here is  one I missed - it rains there A LOT. Of course - "DOH!"- they are
on
> the Western side of the Andes! If you are growing them in a hot place
> try misting them in the middle of the day. Here I was, worrying about
> the high humidity in the Midwest, but that is clearly not a problem.
> We already know that they are not frost hardy and we have observed
> that they look distressed when the temps. get into the upper 80's F.
> (26C=77F) We have talked before about the desirability of shielding
> them from direct sun by affording them some shade around midday. Now
> I am convinced that they can take any amount of sunlight and that
> high temperature is the problem. I'll see if I can set up a mister
> for hot days this Summer.

As I'm growing Rocoto since 1999 here in the Netherlands I can assure that
Rocoto likes lots of rain and no high temperatures.
The most fruits I got from my plants were in the mild and humid summers,
2002 was the best year since.
For example last year, we had the hottest and most dry summer since 1947,
only the Rocoto's I grew in pots did got to fruit setting, the plant I
planted in the garden didn't grow as big as usual and did start flowering
late September!
Which was to late as we had one night at -8 deg C mid October and due to
that I lost all the plants.... Talking about extreme weather, this was the
first year I successfully grew Habanero's!

For those who like statistics here are the average temp numbers total sun
hours and amount of rain over the past 5 summers here in Holland'

            total            total            warm              summer
tropical
Year    sun hour    rain (mm)   day's >20C    day's >25C    day's > 30C
1999    662            209            56                    21
3
2000    567            189            58                    10
2
2001    646            229            65                    21
6
2002    547            267            69                    16
4
2003    736            119            41                    40
11


Just my two cent's
Hot regards
Rob NL