Re: [CH] Rocotos are ripe!

Love2Troll (Love2Troll@kc.rr.com)
Mon, 6 Sep 2004 18:54:44 -0500 

>> Mrs. Hobby Farmer and I have a 5 year old rocoto plant growing in a 4 gallon pot in our dining room,....

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Oh wow!  4 gal pot.  I love it when people do things like that.  I have a 3rd year red rocoto in my livingroom window.  This spring I transplanted to an 18 gal pot and pod production isn't what it was last year in an 8 gal pot on my deck last year when I got 3 major flushes of pods.  Both my deck & LR window get only filtered sun because of all my trees.  It's now about 20' from base of plant to tip of longest branch.   

Are the pods getting bigger over the years or maybe smaller?   Do you get good production in the winter/early spring?

I still chuckle over a paragraph in  one of Jean Andrew's pepper books (I love her books) where she says that "Rocoto requires a long growing season with day lengths of eleven to thirteen hours, making it unsuited for cultivation in the United States."   And I'm not necessarily disagreeing with her.  My first attempt a growing rocotos I had only one plant of five that produced pods in less than 10 months.  They all bloomed in 90-100 days from seed start, but most just wouldn't set fruit.  

JohnT



----- Original Message -----  
From: Hobby Farmer 
Cc: Chile-Heads 
Sent: Monday, September 06, 2004 2:24 PM
Subject: [CH] Rocotos are ripe!


Hi, all;

Mrs. Hobby Farmer and I have a 5 year old rocoto plant growing in a 
4 gallon pot in our dining room, thanks to some seeds from Cameron 
Begg.  We walk into it, the cats chew on it and it gets only about 4 
hours of sunlight a day.  When it hits the ceiling or spreads out 
across the floor, it gets hacked back.

It puts out peppers most of the time, but it has been especially 
busy of late.  The peppers have plenty of heat, black seeds, thick 
walls, and an interior that looks like it is lined in red crystals. 
  I've posted a photo at:

http://www.t-one.net/~hobbyfarmer/Rocotos_1.jpg

I have some extra seeds, several hundred, actually.  If any of you 
would like some seeds, drop me an email.  Rocotos are a very long 
season plant, so if you don't live in a frost free zone, plan on 
having a houseplant for at least one winter.

Hobby Farmer