Advice on the care and feeding of a habanero?

[antongarou]

A friend of mine bought a small box of habaneros and agreed to give me one so I could extract the seeds and try to raise a plant. Could anyone give me advice as to the best way to raise the plant?(i.e. what kind of soil does it like?Do I directly sow the seeds or should I germinate them and then transplant into soil?how much water does it like? etc.)

Two things of note:
1)I live in a semi-arid climate, although it's currently winter here
2)I'm not in a financial situation to buy grow specific equipment beyond soil and pots

[InkRose]

Well drained, slightly acidic soil is probably best, though they're not too fussy, really. Ideally something rather light on nutrients, with a pH of around 6-6,5. I use a peat-based soil for my chilies, here's the one. It is fertilized, but also well drained, and the plants seem to rather enjoy it.

As for fertilizer, you'll want something relatively high in phosphorus, and more potassium than nitrogen. The one I use is N-P-K 13-7-20 plus minerals and costs 8-10 euros for a 1 kg pot that'll make about 2000 litres of fertilized water.

Water well when you do, and let dry well between waterings. You can allow it to droop dramatically without harm.

[antongarou]

Thanks!sun or shade?and what size pot will it be comfortable in?

[InkRose]

Habaneros can take a lot of sun. The more the better, usually. If you keep it in a pot all season, it's worth the trouble to dig it into the ground a little bit. Say 10-15 cm deep, to help keep the pot itself (and the roots therein) from baking. Or just arrange for the pot to be mostly shaded while the plant itself gets loads of sun.

The bigger the pot, the bigger the plant, and therefore yield, too. Unless you mess things up with seriously high-nitrogen fertilizing for some reason, which will give you massive vegetative growth but little else. OTOH, in your part of the world, it's probably unlikely you'll even be able to OD a Habanero on Nitrogen compounds, considering how much sun it'll get. Balance is key, as always. For a long outdoor season, I'd recommend the final "grown-up" pot should be at least 10 litres. Again, the bigger the pot, the bigger the plant. You can always repot it into something smaller and cut it down to bonsai proportions for the winter if you want. If everything works out ok and you give it a big enough pot, you can expect some few kg of crop (sheer guesswork this last one). A few kg of Habanero is enough for most people to last the winter. A Finnish friend got around 12 kg of Naga Morich (aka Bhut Jolokia aka Ghost Pepper) last summer from one plant (in an "ebb & flood" type hydroponic system). He eats 3 dried pods at breakfast every day. He may be insane.

Don't plant it in the big one right away. I use yoghurt cups as a first home (just poke a few holes in the bottom and water via tray), then milk and juice cartons (comfy enough for chiles to grow from 15 to 45-ish cm tall, same hole-poking prep), and then into the big one. Habaneros don't really NEED all that much root space, but more soil keeps moisture for longer etc... And they will use as much as you give them. I've seen very impressive shots of Naga Morich roots that filled a 12 litre bucket of soil in one 4-month outdoor season. More roots than soil in the end.

Also, once the plant starts blossoming, you can start to slowly increase the amount of fertilizer. When it's blossoming and producing pods at full steam, even 5 times the recommended dose won't be a problem, it'll just make sure the plant has enough resources to keep growing and blossoming and ripening pods at the same time.

[antongarou]

Thank you!*goes off to reuse yogurt cups*

[antongarou]

Just wanted to update that my habaneros are just in the "move to friends/relatives/final pot" stage. About half survived the journey from seed to semi-mature plant,  and they're happy and content as far as I can tell. I can't wait until they flower and start producing pods:)

Thank you everyone, and Especially Ink Rose- I will post some pictures after I take them!

[Elizabeth Bear]

Huzzah for not-dead habaneros!

[Emma Bull]

Unlike, say, undead habaneros. Which probably happens more often than you'd think, given the vital force of a habanero.

[eschatonic]

Undead habaneros are available commercially: zombie habaneros are the canned ones: sure, they're oozy, and they've been entombed for god knows how long, but they've still got a hell of a bite. Dried ones are mummies. They have a dust attack that targets all mucus membranes.

[antongarou]

If they can turn undead I'd better make sure to gather them promptly or they might go the vampire way of watermelons and pumpkins.

[InkRose]

Very glad to hear that your habaneros are doing well.

My own season has gone pretty badly. I've lost over 4/5 of my plants to broad mites. Supremely annoying things they are, with a fast breeding cycle and damn near impossible to kill, short of "industrial-strength" pesticides that I simply do not want to use. The plants share a home with my kids, after all.

I did find an organic repellent that works pretty well even against mites, although of couse not 100%, but at least it's cheap and - more importantly - safe: Water with 1-3% rapeseed oil, ~1% soap (I used washing-up liquid), and optional 1% alcohol. Spray all over the plants, focusing on the undersides of leaves.

No overwintering this time, everything goes out come winter, before I start germinating the first seeds for next season. Well, I may make an exception for the C. flexuosums because they're so incredibly rare, but it will be a hard choice. There's no visible mite damage in them, but that doesn't mean they're not bearing the beginnings of another infestation...

[eschatonic]

InkRose, supposedly you can kill any mites that might be on your surviving plants by submerging them in very hot (45-50°C) water for 15-20 minutes. You might want to try that before you germinate any new seeds.

And If I were you, I'd scrub the infected pots with bleach, inside and out. Just to be sure.

[Elizabeth Bear]

Ink Rose, can you possibly at least preserve seed from your rare cultivars? It seems like a stint in the freezer should put paid to any buggies, and shouldn't affect germination, I don't think...

[InkRose]

Thankfully, one incredibly generous grower got a relatively massive harvest of C. flexuosum last year and I think he still has loads of seeds. I have three left of the bunch he sent me last year. There are also a few local growers I know who have healthy specimens so I might ask them for cuttings if my germinations fail. There's plenty of C. lanceolatum seeds around, it's so common among the Finnish chile community that it's almost boring. And I've still got a good pinch (some 50-ish) of C. rhomboideum seeds as well. Gotta love the generosity and community spirit of our chile forum people.

The female broad mites (polyphagotarsonemus latus) live for 2-3 weeks, lay dozens to a hundred or so eggs, and it only takes the little baby mites 4 days to grow from egg to mature mite. Also, it takes up to two weeks for their feeding damage to become visible. So yeah... They're a fairly annoying enemy to battle. Thankfully they're big enough that I can see them in the right light with my naked eye.

I really hope our boy grows out of the "let's see if I can pull this pot down" and "I wonder what I find if I just reach into this pot and grab stuff (stuff being soil)" phase before it's time to start germinating things for next year...