Gardening Challenges in Colorado – Climate By Jim Rohling

Photo courtesy Jim Rohling

One of our biggest challenges in gardening in Front Range Colorado is climate. We can have rain on Monday, snow on Tuesday, sunshine on Wednesday, and hail on Thursday. Challenging seems like an understatement!

Some of the elements of climate important to gardeners include sunshine and temperature, precipitation, wind, and hail.

Dancing With Peppers: A Timelapse Video from Seed to Plant By Jim Rohling

It was around December 2011 when I read a blog article about gifts for the gardener who has everything. Well, I must admit, I have a lot of gardening stuff:  a greenhouse, 700 square feet of garden area, everything I need to start seeds, a plant sale to help support my habit, and most important of all, a wife who understands my passion. But, I didn’t have a timelapse camera. Guess what I got for Christmas!

During the first week of February, the time when I usually start my pepper seeds, I thought how cool it would be to capture the different stages of the pepper plants from germination to killing frost with my new camera. I started out taking 10 exposures a day when the first cotyledon (seed) leaves appeared. After about a week or so, I went to one exposure in the morning and one in the afternoon. I moved the plants to the greenhouse the first week of April and then to the garden at the end of May.
At the end of the season, I had three videos that needed to be combined. After discussing some options with another CMG, I downloaded moviemaking software and turned my videos into one.  It was a good video, but it still needed something more. The answer was music—the “right” music, of course.  My wife, early on, had said the peppers looked like they were dancing, so I titled the video “Dancing with Peppers”. Another CMG commented, “I didn’t think those little guys could move like that” (the secret? lots of rehearsals!).

How Hot Is Hot: The Bhut Jolokia AKA the Ghost Chili by Jim Rohling

The Bhut Jolokia chili originates from Nagaland and Assam in northeastern India and was named by the Naga people after the most venomous snake in the region. The Assamese word “jolokia” means the Capsicum pepper and the word naga means” King Cobra” in Sanskrit. The peppers’ fierce “bite” is akin to the venom of a King Cobra. One farmer described it as “so hot you can’t even imagine. When you eat it, it’s like dying,” hence the name “ghost chili.” It’s also been referred to as “the equivalent of a gastronomic mugging.” At over 1,000,000 Scoville units (SHUs) one can see why.

In 2005, New Mexico State University’s Chili Pepper Institute (yes, there is a chili pepper institute) found the Bhut Jolokia to have a Scoville rating of 1,001,304 SHUs. Although there are other peppers that are hotter, like the Naga Viper at 1,382,118 SHUs and the Trinidad Scorpion at 1,463,700 SHUs, because of their hybrid nature they are unable to produce offspring exactly like the parent. So, at 855,000–1,050,000 SHUs, the Bhut Jolokia is the hottest “naturally grown” pepper.  For comparison, a bell pepper registers zero SHUs, a Jalapeno comes in at roughly 3,500, and a Habanero is approximately 100,000–350,000.