Re: [CH] Rocotos are ripe!

Rob Pieters (r.pieters7@chello.nl)
Tue, 7 Sep 2004 10:50:12 +0200 

Hi

> JohnT wrote:
> 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.
>
>

Well, I grow rocoto in approx 3 to 4 gal (10-15 liter), pot's too, no
problem there all full of fruit every year, new or overwintered, never had
one who didn't set fruit.
I'm located in The Netherlands, where day's are quit short, just like the
season and weather is mild.
Specially this year we only had about 4 weeks with temperatures above 25
degC  (77F) and a record broken of the rain which has fallen during
summertime, and both the new and the overwinterd rocoto I have are loaded
again.
Having said that and my experience is... more what I do is... you have to
put 2, 3 or 4 plants together in a 4 gal pot and put it in on a place where
the plant has a maximum of 5 hours direct sunlight, be mild on fertilizer
and water daily (without soaking the plant) that works very well for me
since 1999
I've also planted Rocoto in the garden last year but due to early frost in
September it didn't work out as I hoped all plants died...:-( but never the
less they had flowers and fruits only they were not as big as the ones in
pot's.
Don't know why, but perhaps when they have more room (for the roots) they
work harder on there roots than on growing in height, also possible is the
soil temperature, the soil gets heated up much more in a pot than in the
ground.
So when you plant chilies in the 'cold' ground you best can place them on
flowerbed's where the length of the bed is pointed to the south ( this is no
science nortested yet by myself but is just the thoughts I have about it!)
problem might be water household.. I think you need a watering system for
this.

I'll see if I can put some pictures somewhere on the net in a couple of
weeks if someone is interested of the plants I have.

Hope this helps
Kind regards
Rob NL