I have questions about they yellow stick cards and the oil mentioned.
I’ve read the sticky cards are for monitoring, and the linked YouTube video says use as a lure to a place to kill them. Does this mean the yellow stickies are part of a solution, but not a solution by themselves?
Is the oil mentioned in the YouTube video meant to be a version of mineral oil, like dormant or “all season” oil, or something you come up with from aromatherapy type supplies?
Also, how about bug vacuums? I bought one for indoors, but I’m thinking it might work as well as a spray of water, which might leave them to make their home somewhere else in the garden.
I’ve not used the sticky cards for control because they really don’t trap that many whiteflies and trap any small insect that lands on them. For monitoring, I use my eyes and a pocket microscope; might as well look for all trouble makers while I’m at it, scales, mites included.
The oil method does require you take plants outside and thoroughly coat the tops and undersides of leaves. An all-season horticultural oil, like the Monterey type is better than the heavier dormant oil types.
I think it’d be best to spray them with the oil spray early in the morning, when it’s cool. If you need to move the plant(s) outside, do it the day before (provided they won’t freeze) and be gentle. You want them to stay on the plants they’re on. In all likelihood, if you’ve got whiteflies, they are apt to be outside somewhere already. They do get around.
If you hit them with oil, then hit them with a soap, detergent type spray, you should be able to wash off the leaves, ideally someplace not near flowers or shrubs, like grass, mulch, concrete, etc. The whiteflies can travel good distances, but the larvae don’t travel as far and the eggs are likely to hatch and the first instar larvae die if it’s not on a food plant.
The bug vac sounds like it’ll disturb too many adults and they’ll fly off from the vibration and the breeze generated by the vac.
Looks good! Too bad they used the wrong pepper, even after the Chef’s statement:
" Definitely the use of the Peruvian ajíamarillo , as this makes up 90% of the dish’s unique flavor." LOL! Dried Aji Amarillo loses a lot of the flavor. Frozen, fresh or freeze dried are better. Someone needs to cross Lemon Drop, a heat tolerant, productive C. baccatum, with Aji amarillo, then breed backwards to develop a more productive, heat tolerant Aji Amarillo. I wonder if, somewhere in Peru, there is a more heat tolerant selection. Worth searching for!
Great thread on the aji amarillo. I am growing some this year in Northern Virginia. Just a couple plants. They have been flowering for a few weeks, but all the blossoms have dropped. I may need to go and hand pollinate. Have you had problems with getting fruit to set? I grew aji amarillo a few years ago and don’t recall having this problem.
Welcome! I have one and two year old plants, grown in sub irrigation buckets, flowering and fruiting during a month of f 95+ temps, and warmer than usual nights. I’m impressed! I posted these pics on the vegetable garden thread.
Welcome mp-egan! I used to live in N. VA; where are you? My family lived in Springfield and Fairfax. Now, I’m northwest of Charlottesville, VA, a couple hours away.
Aji Amarillo is sensitive to heat above 83 degrees F (28C). Remember, just because one sees fruit and green peppers during hot weather, the pollination happened long before that. How long it stays hot, and night temperatures also is important. Blossom drop is a sign of no pollination. When temperatures moderate, you should see tiny fruits begin to form. Since frost typically arrives later in N. VA, being more urban/suburban, October harvests can happen there.
Shrinkrap is also an “Aji Whisperer”- a long-time grower; and because she plants in containers, the plants know that, if they don’t perform, it’s not hard for her to carry them to the compost pile, LOL!
Thanks! I am in Falls Church. So, I do expect the plants to survive until early November. I also have a couple in pots, as well as a rocoto plant I started, so maybe I can threaten them into producing like Shrinkrap.
My guess was a lack of pollination due to hot weather – I started getting blossoms when we hit a two week period of 95+ weather. Now that it is a little cooler maybe I will see some fruits.
Falls Church, VA. Having bumper yields of almost everything this year, aside from the aji and my yellow beets, which never yield for me. My cucumbers are usually spent by now, but still going strong.
Rocoto is even more sensitive to heat, especially the Peruvian varieties. There’s a lot of breeding going on over there. The last time I was in Peru, the rocotos were about twice the size they had been.
The only time a good yield came in here, the plants were in five gallon containers, in a greenhouse. As soon as frost passed, they got planted in the ground. The early flowers set fruit, but nothing developed after it got around 80 degrees F. The vining plants got huge, about 8 feet across. They started setting fruit again in Oct., but didn’t have time to ripen.
Hi all,
Hoping you guys might be able to help me with a problem I’m seeing: I’m in San Diego, CA and successfully grew an aji amarillo plant in a container last season, which I had purchased from a local nursery. It produced many orange fruits - delicious and spicy - so I collected some of the seeds at the end of the season, when no other pepper plants were in flower.
This year, I planted a bunch of the seeds and culled down to two plants for production. Both plants are in containers, and both are incredibly healthy looking plants, growing better, bigger, and faster than the plant I bought from the nursery. The early fruit looked fantastic and I was looking forward to a bumper crop from these two plants; however, while the first pods were still green, they began to fall from the plant. They are around 3 inches in length and appear totally healthy, but they keep breaking off right where the stem connects to the plant and falling to the ground. I tried to ripen them in a paper bag with other ripe fruit, but they never progress. I cut a few open, and they look fine - there are plenty of white seeds, etc., but the flesh has no spice heat at all! And they never mature to orange.
I have read through what you guys have discussed about heat sensitivity, but we’ve had a really mild summer here, so the temps all year have been maxed at maybe 85F the whole time. Mostly, we’ve been sunny (or marine layer) and in the 70s. It seems as though every flower produces a fruit, but none will ripen. I’ve never had this happen to any of the chili peppers I’ve grown in the past, and the parent plant from last year literally kept its fruit on until it shriveled, so I’m just baffled as to why this is happening. All my cultural techniques should be essentially the same as last year, but these peppers just won’t stay on the plant!
Do you folks have any idea what might be going on?
I’m no expert, but I tend to assume seed collected from fruit will not be the same as the parent. I know sometimes it should be. On the other hand, sometimes it’s better!
I’ve had some smallish peppers with no heat from one vendor.
Hi shrinkrap…yeah, that’s definitely the thing to worry about…I didn’t know these plants were grown as F1 hybrids…but if so, whatever I have it not the pure breed. The plants are amazingly healthy, so it’s just such a tragedy that they won’t keep fruit on. For next year, I’ll need to get seeds from a vendor and start fresh…
I’m not aware of F1 Aji Amarillo hybrids; though they may be out there. You can get pure seed of open-pollinated/non-hybrid seed from me; just email me at my gmail account rob.botanique@ etc. etc. No charge.
White seeds can be aborted, nonviable seeds, which will likely result in pods dropping. However, it sounds like temperatures have been ideal. This makes me lean towards a possible nutrient deficiency. Peppers, especially Aji Amarillo, need a lot of Calcium and Phosphorous. The former can be supplied with Dolomitic limestone. If your plants are in regular potting soil, such as ProMix, put a teaspoon of powdered dolomitic limestone in a gallon of water, swirl it around to mix and water the plants before the powder settles. If you have any blossom-end rot, that’s an indicator of Calcium deficiency. Phosphorous is less likely an issue, since it’s in nearly all fertilizers.
When Aji begin production, they often drop the first fruits, presumably due to poor pollination. Hopefully, the issue will stop. If there are lots of pods forming, the plants may be thinning down the number of pods to mature, manage what they can accomplish. Three inch pods are kind of small, so heat may not be present in very immature fruit. How many peppers are forming, approximately, on how tall a plant(s)?
I didn’t think there were F1 hybrids either…just that when shrinkrap mentioned that the seeds from the parent plant can perform differently, it made me think of the implications of seeds from an F1. In this case, the only difference here is that these plants are from saved seeds and are behaving so differently from the parent plant, which was grown in the same cultural conditions…same 7.5 gal pot, same type of potting soil (made myself), same sorts of fertilizers at planting and throughout growth. My compost has eggshells in it, and one of the fertilizers I use during the year has Ca in it…so I think I’m good there. And again, all my other peppers, including Sugar Rush Peach (which is a baccatum hybrid), are performing normally.
Yes, it has been the first fruits that have fallen prior to maturation. Maybe 10 or more pods have fallen on two plants. The pods seem to be about the size of the ones I got last year (from which I made the most amazing Indian curries!) - maybe even a tad plumper. But they never get past green - at least, so far. I have been hand-pollinating them since the beginning, but now there are so many flowers, I can’t keep up, but as far as I can tell, every flower produces a fruit.
The plants are 4 feet tall from the surface of the soil - one is larger than the other in terms of side branches, but both are producing numerous fruits (too many to count easily). They look more healthy and happy than virtually any other pepper I’ve ever grown! I’m hope you’re right, bogman, and it’s just a matter of shedding these initial fruits and then the rest will go full cycle. We have a very long growing season here, so I should be able to harvest all the way through December.
It does sound like the plants are managing their work load.
Sugar Rush Peach is not very good at managing its work load! I’ve got a bunch and they are overloaded with fruits, bending to the breaking point. Though it’s a C. baccatum, it’s true breeding now, after beginning as a hybrid. You may get hybrids between the two C. baccatum. I’ve wondered if one can breed heat tolerance into an Aji Amarillo, using something like Sugar Rush Peach, which would mean renaming it. Good luck!
