Anyone have experience with Hardy Chili (Capsicum flexuosum)? It is supposed to be cold hardy. Can anyone confirm this?
http://unusualediblesandtheirwildrelatives.blogspot.com/2018/02/hardy-chili-capsicum-flexuosum.html
My only experience is not being able to germinate it and having cuttings of it die in the post. Will be giving it another go this year so will report back.
This chap is planning to test it this outside this winter in the UK I believe: https://radix4roots.blogspot.com/
Intriguing. Does it hybridize with common peppers?
I think it can cross with chinense and annum, few others pretty easily. It also has some self incompatibility issues which could be used for breeding projects.
Offspring won't be as hardy unless you do a bunch of backcrosses. Still extends season.
Very interesting. Might add this to my wish list. :)
Quote from: Garrett Schantz on 2021-01-08, 08:27:57 AM
I think it can cross with chinense and annum, few others pretty easily. It also has some self incompatibility issues which could be used for breeding projects.
Offspring won't be as hardy unless you do a bunch of backcrosses. Still extends season.
I don't think the species itself is that amazingly hardy, but as you said, it could extend the season a little, by helping them resist late or early frost (or near-frost). This alone can potentially add about 20% growing days around here, on a not so atypical year.
One flexuosum seed germinated / sprouted today. I would like for at least two plants to come up, just for pollination/self-incompatibility reasons. Having more seed to work with next year, or for distribution would be great.
Thinking of attempting some hybrids using this if everything goes well.
Yaki Blue Fawn(Capsicum chinense) Apparently descended from an chinense and annum. Bhut Jolokia x Filius Blue. Good producer, smooth black / blue stems, fruit. 87 days to maturity, which isn't bad for a hot pepper. Probably has some fun genetics to begin with.
Murasaki(Capsicum annuum) - Nice shape, purple flower. Unsure about taste, haven't tried it.
Chinese Five Color(Capsicum annuum)
Bleeding Borg 9(Capsicum chinense)
Cap 1141(Capsicum praetermissum) Very nice looking flowers from images I have seen.
If my Mira peppers germinate, I will try those out as well. They are a small sweet pepper, compact, 70 days to maturity. They are rather bland even at full maturity. Most of my pepper seeds are old, may or may not germinate. I have Violet Sparkle peppers, Rezha Macedonian, Black Hungarian - none have germinated yet. Chinese Five Color and Cap 1141 germinated within a week of sowing.
Experimental Farm Network has some things like Mountain Roaster Pepper(Capsicum annum), an early compact pepper plant. Things like this would probably work well with flexuosum hybridization projects - short season pepper growers might benefit quite a bit from a few extra weeks of peppers ripening / developing.
I'm doing this as a small side project. Ideally I would keep the flower type, larger fruit size, earlier maturity and of course the frost tolerance - this would all be tedious considering I may have to backcross to F1s, F2s - possibly the parents for these things, and needing to stabilize the variety to make sure everything is fine.
I suppose others could use whatever I end up creating as further breeding material.
Did you treat the seed specially or did you just sow it?
Quote from: ImGrimmer on 2021-03-19, 11:38:57 PM
Did you treat the seed specially or did you just sow it?
I just sowed them without treatment on February 22nd - it surfaced yesterday. From what I have read the germination can be erratic. So it could takes months for some seed, weeks for others.
Thank you. I also have seeds. Let's see what happens...
I've grown C. flexuosum for 2 seasons now. The first year I didn't get any fruit- only one plant grew large enough to flower and it didn't have a pollenizer. I've heard they stay small for a while, but could be the poor soil they were in too.
All 6 plants survived the winter in mid-Vancouver Island, Canada. It got down to -10 degrees Celsius last winter. They were in an unheated greenhouse so the soil stayed pretty dry. Some took a very long time to sprout in the spring-one plant waited until mid-June and surprisingly has not flowered yet. They all came back from the roots, but maybe in a milder winter they would leaf out from the branches and get an earlier start on flowering.
I just made some crosses with some peppers I'm growing. They seemed to have worked with Jalapeño and C. tovarii only. Fingers crossed. I do also have mountain roaster and Italian swarm peppers from Wild Mountain Seeds, so I'll try crossing them again.
Happy to share seeds if I'm successful!
I have seeds on the way from Small Island Seed Co in BC, Canada. How did everyone else's do? I'm hoping I'll get some germination.
Definitely interested in seeds from any crosses.
Pretty Interesting species. Especially on the cold hardiness.
Interestingly the pepper species that was fastest at growing from seed to fruit was a Capsicum baccatum "Sugar Rush Peach". Never grown that species before, but now highly interested in it. Brought all my peppers inside this winter. Need a proper grow tent soon and better lights. Peppers were one of the few things that actually grew for me this year. Despite not starting them inside and messing up their soil quite a bit many germinated and survived. Looking forward to getting more into pepper growing and future breeding.
please keep me posted.
Is anyone else getting interested in the baccatum species?
Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2023-11-02, 12:28:18 AMIs anyone else getting interested in the baccatum species?
Yes. I enjoyed 'Aji Delight' and am trying to cross with it. Interested in what its genes might have to offer to an annuum population.
I managed to get some seeds from annuum x flexuosum. So that's possible. Unfortunately no germination, and I don't have time to focus on that at the moment, but it seems worth pursuing by anyone interested to do so.
Well done Justin. How many pollinations did you do? What was the rough seed number per fruit ?
I may get around to trying this with some other species as mothers like chinense or baccatum.
Flexuosum did not germinate for me. I'll have to try again this year.
Quote from: Chance on 2024-01-22, 01:15:41 PMWell done Justin. How many pollinations did you do? What was the rough seed number per fruit ?
I don't quite remember, I didn't take notes for that project, Maybe... between 25~60 attempts? With multiple mothers, and multiple flexuosum varieties. I got 2 or 3 fruits only, all using flexuosum from Paraguay. I forget if only 1, or 2, had seeds. Total something like 4 or 5 seeds.
I can't remember which other species they managed to cross with in the papers, but I have a feeling they might have been unable to with baccatum. It might be worth trying to the species which the folk in the papers succeeded with if your time is limited. Otherwise for sure, make hundreds of attempts with all 3 species and see what comes!
I think it would be interesting to use \plant preservative' to increase seed germination chances, I might try that if I get more successful crosses. An Diane, I was wondering about that even for germinating flexuosum itself, which is hard. Can take a few weeks, and so mould issues can be tricky! I hope I can learn to germinate things better over time but using that preservative stuff might be worth it for me until my skills improve.
It does help if the seed is fresh. And it might help if it gets a bit dry sometimes. It seems sometimes seed that hasn't germinated can be triggered into doing so by drying out a bit, then rehydrating. Like might happen by accident. Or in nature.
Hi,
I'm curious if anyone has made any more attempts at these cold-hardy Capsicum hybrids. They sound very interesting...
I'm suprised that the cold hardiness of C. flexuosum hasn't been utilized already in developing frost-resistant lines!
Weston
Anyone have sources? The only one on a quick search is in Wales in the UK.
https://welshdragonchilli.weebly.com/
Small Island Seed Company in Canada sells seeds.
https://www.smallislandseedco.com
I had 10 seeds from Welsh dragon seed seller, half of them germinated this year (februari/march) in the window. I used the zipbag method. I put 3 plants in a 3L pot and they do just fine. Their hight is around 50-75cm and they bloom alot more then normal pepper or bell pepper plants. i got seeds this year with some had 3 seeds in a fruit. This winter will be tested how much they can take in my unheated greenhouse.
Justin, so you used annuum as the seed parent? Are you pretty confident that you didn't have a self-pollination event generating the seeds?
Update on the flexuosum. They survived the winter with easy. Fall had high humidity which caused grey mold on the leaves/twigs or the dead flowers. Its easy to prevent with cutting the moldy parts away. There was like 50/75% leaf fall during cold periods but the old leaves from last year are dropping while new growth is starting. I put one outside the greenhouse to see the difference between green house with open ventilation and outside. At first no sunburn but after a long period of sunny days lots of new growth and twigs died.
I put the damaged plant in the shade of a rose and it recovered.
I'm trying again. I bought another packet of seeds, sowed all 11 in mid February and am still waiting for germination.
Hi diane what is your température?
https://www.les-tomos.fr/tomowiki/doku.php/tutoriels/capsicum_pour_les_nuls/germination_des_piments
I sow pepper in hermetic box with transparent cover for make mini-greenhouse.Its more easy.
I put the seed pots on an electric heat pad with a plastic dome over top. The soil is probably about 20 C.
20°C is a little low.
For others species they recomanded a température between 25 and 27°C
If nothing is germinated and you have a sunny day you take little of risks to put the plastic dome at full sunny i made that for wake up the sleeping of my olds seeds.
You can should dip again the seeds during one day.
If you have sand paper you should sand the seeds after dip them.