Pepper Update: July 25, 2016

Once a week during the growing season (and maybe less frequently in the off-season), I’ll be posting updates on the pepper plants and any fruit which may be in the process of ripening and such. So without further adieu, here’s the first of hopefully many such updates to come.

The Virginia heat has been abysmal as of late, reaching almost 100° each of the past couple of days, as well as today — with more to come of the next week or so. I’ve been doing my best to keep the plants from wilting too much in the heat and by the looks of the photos that follow, so far so good.

First up is what is turning out to be a fairly prolific Bhut Jolokia — at least compared to my plant from last year. With several large pods and 7-8 smaller ones just showing up over the past couple of days, this looks like it’s going to be a beast of a plant.

Bhut Jolokia

This next one is the Scotch Bonnet that I chopped back to pretty much just the stalk and a few leaves about 2-3 weeks ago. It was suffered some serious damage from aphids, but as you can see this little bugger is chugging along with plenty of healthy growth and budding blossoms. I’m very excited to watch the progress of this little plant.

Scotch Bonnet

This next Scotch Bonnet was purchased shortly after trimming back our original plant. It was purchased as a “plan B” if you will and it too is doing great at the moment. There’s a solid number of pods already on it, just waiting to ripen.

Scotch Bonnet

The really poorly taken photo below is of my Carolina Reaper. This is the first time I’ve grown one of these plants and so far, it’s looking great. There are almost a dozen pods on it of varying sizes from just over and inch to brand spanking new. I’m both extremely excited about and scared of this plant — those pods are already starting to look nasty.

Carolina Reaper

The next two photos are of the mystery peppers. When I purchased them, they were labeled as Trinidad Scorpions, but they certainly look like two distinctly different plants. The leaves are different shades of green and the pods are vastly dissimilar in shape, so we’ll see what happens as these two progress. I’m curious to see which direction they go.

Trinidad Scorpion
Trinidad Scorpion

Not shown today are my cayenne and habanero. The cayenne can actually be seen in the background of the reaper photo and it’s the only plant, so far, that has fruit ripening. The habanero was trimmed back last week due to something eating all of the pods that were on it. It’s also been isolated from the rest, just as a precaution. At the time of this update, it is the only plant without fruit or buds.