Anyone Struggling With Peppers/Chillies?

None of my 2nd sowing are showing any signs of life yet :fingerdrum:

 

The twenty melons that germinated from a supermarket melon are going down the plot in a few weeks. The promised hot summer may produce a bumper crop of melons but if not then at least the foliage will suppress the weeds.

 

Looks like I need to go to the supermarket for some chillies before it`s too late

 

Not that well up on genetics, but I'm just wondering what open pollinated varieties means??

Surely its a gamble, probably more of a gamble, bearing in mind you dont have a clue what variety pollinated what.
Open pollinated means the plant must be changing and evolving all the time.

I know some hybrids are sterile, but thats not what I have found with peppers, they grow like weeds.

I've also found peppers are self fertile, you tap the flowers to get pollination, similar to toms, so open pollinated doesn't really mean much in this case.

 

It means that they come true if you do nothing special to assist the pollination - so just let them pollinate by the Birds & the Bees as normal.

So the flower is "left open" during pollination, rather than having its Male or Female bits cut off to prevent pollination naturally, and then having the pollen provided from a completely different variety by manual human intervention (to create, for example, an F1 cross)

You do have to protect Open Pollinated varieties from being cross pollinated by other varieties nearby though.

 

"You do have to protect Open Pollinated varieties from being cross pollinated by other varieties nearby though."

So they are not "open pollinated" as such, like they would be if you grew them in your own garden?

A kind of natural hybrid?
Perhaps, of unknown quality.

I know it could be a particular strain that is fairly stable due to long time breeding.
I dont think I know enough about this subject:D

 

Sorry, I probably didn't explain it very well.

If you grow "open pollinated Variety X", and assuming it only pollinates with other plants of the same variety (and NOT some other variety nearby) it will come true generation after generation.

I'm sure there is the possibility of mutations, and maybe a small proportion of the offspring are not true, but in the main you will get the same crop every generation.

This is distinct from an F1 cross where a specific, pure-bred Parent X is crossed with a different pure-bred Parent Y to ensure that the offspring are of a known, consistent, type. But seed saved from the F1 crop has no guarantee of being like their parents. Making these F1 crosses involves a lot of manual labour, so the seed tends to be expensive.

Sometimes F1 crosses have significant benefit to some growers - for example disease resistance - e.g. the Club-root resistant Brassicas. Also all-female flowering Cucumbers which are a convenience to the grower. But often the benefits are less obvious; some are bred so that the whole crop comes together, which is a boon for a farmer who wants to make a single-pass harvest, but a PITA for an amateur gardener who would like to harvest little-and-often over a long period.

Most of the F1 crosses in the seed catalogues that promised "better flavour" or "incredible colour" etc that I have tried over the years have been a Fad and a waste of my money!

 

So weather not been too good ,haven`t been in the greenhouse for 2 days as nothing urgent, Went in late yesterday for a look when sun shone for a brief spell and OMG there`s chillies "

types Jalapeno and I forget which other, all in the same module, hoping the others germinate aswell .

The other problem I have is tomatoes, I sowed a few from packets ,not so many this year :D

I also found some I saved from last year welded to a piece of kitchen towel, as I could not get them off I laid the paper on top of compost, and covered them with vermiculite. The entire lot must have germinated ,I have approx 50 Chocolate Cherry and the same Legend Beef tomato.:gaagh:
I allready have Green Zebra, German Orange ,Garden Pearl,Roma and Marmande

 

I like Marmande, grew them last year, and growing them this year. Out of 9 peppers and chillies, just two have seedlings :(