On Sat, 09 Jul 2005 14:54:56 GMT, B.Server
wrote:

About three years ago my wife purchased what was labeled a "chocolate
Habenero" chile plant for me. I planted it in a kitchen bed along
with some yellow and red Thai peppers and a couple of serranos. All
of the plants grew well in that wet year, topping out at about 5 feet
high in the case of the That pepper and (curiously because they are
usually bushy) the Habenero.

Actually, habs can be bushy or tall, it depends on the variety. My
chocolate habs and Grenada Seasoning plants get tall, usually over 5
feet. On the other pod, the Devil's Tongue and Carabbean Red's are
smaller plants. Puppy, which is a mild _C chinense_, gets really tall,
5 1/2 feet or taller, but the Pimento De Chiero plants are short and
bushy, just to mention a few.

The Thai and serranos provided a load of fresh chiles. The Habenero
may have had 1-4 blooms, but never set fruit.

Did I miss what Zone you're in? Average temps?

My chocolate hab is one of the most prolific habaneros I have. It
starts early and produces right up to frost. It does not do well in
cool weather, however. As soon as the nights start getting cool in the
fall, it starts dropping leaves.

The winter was mild and all of the chilies carried over, giving me a
bounty of early fresh chiles last year. Long about late Sept, I
finally found one (1) fruit on the chocolate Habenero. Later another
fruit set. I let them ripen and collected the seed.

If you're not netting the blooms or seperating the plants by hundreds
of feet, it's unlikely that the seeds you collected are pure. It's
more likely that they crossed with the other peppers in your garden.



Last winter all of those chlies died in the cold. I planted the
chocolate hab seeds and have a couple of plants. This year the
chocolate hab is out with the rest of the chiles in the garden. Two
feet on either side are standard hab blooming and setting fruit like
crazy. The chocolate hab is 12 inches taller than the other habs, but
is still playing 'celibate'.

Has anyone had a similare experience with these or have any
suggestions how to get them to bloom? Note, they are not blooming
rather than dropping blooms and not setting fruit.

Are you fertilizing,or do you compost? Is it possible that the
chocolate habanero is getting too much nitrogen?

I occasionally have a pepper plant that just doesn't bloom well or set
fruit. One year a chocolate long habanero bloomed, but didn't set
fruit.
http://www.chileplants.com/search.as...Button=Pressed

They are very long season peppers, more than 120 days, and just as it
was finally blooming, we had a cool spell, and it dropped the blooms.
A St. Lucia Seasoning pepper plant I grew got huge, but never put out
the first bloom. It was taller than I am, and I'm 5'8". The plants all
around it in the bed produced normally. I don't know if its season is
so long as to be possible to grow only in the tropics, or if it was
something else.

The very earliest hab-type pepper that I've ever grown is called
Limon. It's a bushy plant that is just covered in medium-sized,
thin-fleshed, bright yellow peppers. It's not the hottest of the habs,
but it's a nice pepper.

http://www.chileplants.com/search.as...Button=Pressed

(Not suggesting you order from Cross Country, it's just that they have
the best pictures and descriptions. Sort of like pepper porn.)

Penelope