Re: [CH] Rocotos are ripe!
Hobby Farmer (hobbyfarmer@t-one.net)
Sat, 18 Sep 2004 14:56:30 -0400
Love2Troll wrote:
>Mrs. Hobby Farmer and I have a 5 year old rocoto plant growing in a 4 gallon pot in our dining room,....
>
> 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
The pods seem to vary in size from year to year depending on how
well I care for the plant. Best pickiong time is late August to
middle September, but we get fruit July to December. Our plant
seems to self pollinate OK, but I am planting another plant in the
same pot as a pollinator to see if we can increase production. It
can take over when the original plant goes to the big chile patch in
the sky.
Hobby Farmer