Pepper project 2007 - #2

[nctomatoman]

Starting once again to dehybridize Islander F1. Here is the hybrid -

About a decade ago I worked on this - the hybrid is a beautiful pepper -ripens a unique lavendar color, through yellow and orange, to red. I managed to get 5 different selections within a few years - green ripening to black, then red; ivory ripening to orange red; ivory ripening to yellow; lavendar ripening to red, and lavendar ripening to yellow. I lost interest in my concentration on tomatoes, and the seeds died....so I am growing out a number of F2s this year, and will track progress in this thread.

[sirtanon]

VERY pretty peppers you have there. Definitely keep us up to speed on these.

[nctomatoman]

I have 8 seedlings of Islander F2 that are healthy, vigorous, and have either open flowers or very small fruit set. In a week or two I will have a better idea of the variation (already, one of the small peppers is chartreuse, another is pale yellow).

Edited to add more - took a close look at these today and was pleased to find ripe fruit on all 8 plants. 6 of the plants have very small pale yellow fruit, 2 of them have light green fruit (from past experience, I've found that the green fruit tend to turn black purple, then red - let's see if it holds again this year). The pale yellow fruit can either go orange red, yellow, lavendar to red, or lavendar to yellow from what I've seen previously. Again - we shall see what happens with these!

[Grub]

Hi Craig,

Are the seeds 10yrs old?

[nctomatoman]

Hi, Grub - nope, they are seeds I saved last year. Unfortunately, my older Islander dehyb project fell victim to dead saved seeds, due to a few years of neglect in pursuing the project.

[Grub]

Righto,

I see you mentioned that above now. D'oh. For a while there I thought you were going to surprise me there with your seed-saving techniques.

Are any of your pepper projects based around good culinary ones? I like to grow stuff that's useful as well as fun... what type of pepper is Islander?

Thanks in advance.
Grub.

[nctomatoman]

The reason I am using Islander - it is probably the most beautiful pepper I've seen, produces like a machine, and has really good flavor. My original goal years ago was to get an OP version with the color of Islander (pale yellow green to lollipop lavendar to orange to red). Where I got to in the project was 5 distinct types - ivory to orange red, ivory to golden yellow (really unusual to find a deep yellow when ripe bell!), pale yellow green to lavendar to orange to red (I did manage to find a line very similar to the hybrid), pale yellow green to lavendar to golden yellow (a real find, that one!), and pale green to black purple to red. My suspicion is that the two parents of the cross were the ivory to yellow and the green to black to red.

So, we shall see what I get in the F2. If you want to join in the fun, let me know when I send Patrina my annual load of seeds! I still have plenty of F2 seed, or will likely have seed saved from one of the 8 F2s I am growing out this year.

[nctomatoman]

Here is an update on this project.

The first picture is last year's Islander F1 (not quite ripe). Then come pics of the 8 F2s that I am growing this year. The last time I did this experiment I used a very similar hybrid (I thought it was the same, but am now thinking it is not) called Blue Jay. The F2s I am seeing this time around are a bit different than what I saw last time. The plants are all loading up with fruit - the ripe colors will be interesting. Only one appears to not have some shade of purple pigmentation in the F2.

[Grub]

They look interesting Craig. Is that a baby Peruvian Purple keeping company with the last F2?

[nctomatoman]

No (good eyes, by the way!), those are parts of pepper project 1 or 3 - my reselection of the ornamental hots that I am working on (I have 25 of them going in small pots) - and it appears as though I have over 20 distinct selections from those plants - so, more work to do, but more really attractive possibilities. I will be taking and posting pics of those later this week.

[Grub]

Interesting... I enjoyed about a half-dozen Variegated and that many again of Peruvian Purples in my front flower bed last year... they are still alive, though ravaged by winter, and the Variegated are, well, especially variegated. One, in particular, is a lovely little dainty bonsai thing and one other stands out coz it's so strong!

[nctomatoman]

OK - I need to do a better check when the next crop develops on the 8 plants, but since I sent seeds from each of the 8 F2 selections, here is what I ended up with (of course in the F3 additional variability/outcomes is always possible!).

Islander F2 #1: blocky bell shape, pale yellow fruit ripens through lavendar to deep red

#2: elongated bell shape, pale green to dark purple, then fades to yellow green before ripening orange red.

#3: bell shape, pale yellow ripens to lavendar, then fades to bright yellow and deepens to gold. Quite lovely and unique!

#4: starts out pale yellow, then goes to pale green before ripening to orange red - nice large blocky bell.

#5: pale green, to purple - then ripens to deep red - nice blocky shape.

#6: pale yellow green through lavendar, ripening to golden yellow. I need to compare this with #3 to see if the unripe colors are slightly different (which I did write in my notes).

#7: large blocky pale yellow fruit, to purple, ripens to orange red.

#8: pale yellow blocky bell, to purple, ripens gold - again, need to compare to 3 and 6.

So, all except 4 go through different shades of purple as they ripen, all starting out either very pale yellow or very pale green. 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 end up deep red or orange red, and 3, 6, and 8 end up golden yellow. All are thick walled, productive, good sized and very sweet when ripe.

[Grub]

Sounds interesting Craig, especially #3.

[sirtanon]

Absolutely.. I agree with Grub. #3 sounds totally incredible!

[cosmicgardener]

Craig - Is the project still ongoing ? I would like to see the colour possibilities explored further.

cosmic