Michelle, The cacuchas have just sprouted, so they're tiny, but will do well! They are wonderfully flavored mild chiles, very productive. I did find out that if you want to keep them growing year after year you must plant fresh seeds. They don't stay viable for long. Maybe I would grow a Russian sage if you have a little one. Pamela, one Siam Ruby for you. I see you were on the list, but didn't know you had already paid Lisa for it, and hadn't heard from you. See you Sunday.

Depending on what your going to do with your peppers you could grow peppers of all heat levels. I never use only 1 kind of pepper at a time in most things I use them in-chile powder or in cooking or pickling them. If something by itself is too hot then mix it with a sweeter pepper. For instance for Bhut Jolokias I mix Trinidad spice,Aji Dulce or other good tasting but have no or little heat peppers with it. It's cutting yourself short when you don't grow a pepper because of it's heat. Some hots and super hots have a flavor you can only get from them. Cut the super hots very fine or mask them up or blend them with a liquid in a blender first.Then add them to your mild or sweet peppers for a new flavor that doesn't blow your head off with heat. Some peppers that look really cool are also very hot(like C. Chinense pods-white bullet,Paper lanterns,Chocolate or Purple Habaneros). Mix them with something to blend it down to your tastes for heat. To me a lot of the milder species don't have as complex of a flavor as some of the hoter ones. For entertainment purposes you can allways grow Aji Dulce (mild yellow habanero tasting peppers) and yellow scotch Bonnets. Walk in chomping down Aji Dulces whole complaining about how your peppers are really wimpy this year.Hand out Yellow Scotch Bonnets to everyone and watch the line at the waterfountain. You might want to get out of dodge fast.LOL

I like that little glass plate! Would you believe I have one JUST LIKE IT! I don't know where it is right now or I'd grab a picture, LOL! Anyway. Not to go against the common wisdom here but I swear those little seedlings look UNDER watered to me. If you wait 'til the plants droop to water, they are already stressed. The point is to avoid stressing the plant. In future I would recommend against using that mix for seed starting - I believe I read it was compost, coir and sand. For one thing, never in my life have I ever bought a bag labeled "compost" that actually was. So whatever was in that bag - it almost certainly was NOT anything one would normally think of as compost. My seedling mix for decades was peat and medium grade vermiculite (I used coarse for potting, but medium for seeding). I can actually get medium grade vermiculite still, but I used to sift the fines out of coarse for my seeding needs and since I haven't been able to get the coarse any more, I've virtually stopped using any vermiculite whatsoever, just because I have no use other than seeding for the smaller grades of vermiculite. I may reconsider that. But here are some of the seeding mixes I typically use: 1:1 peat and vermiculite (medium is ok for seeding, but not potting) 1:1 peat and good quality bagged SOIL such as Miracle Grow (again, of limited use as anything other than a seeding mix or single season container mix) 1:1 peat and very fine pine fines - I'm concerned this may end up too moisture retentive but we'll see. 1:1 peat and Scott's Turf builder - this is very finely graded pine bark with a teensy bit of fertilizer - 1-1-1. I think this could be a good replacement for my old mix of peat-vermiculite. I don't know if you can get anything like it in Australia. I've also successfully seeded in any halfway decent bagged soilless potting mix. I do try to avoid coir because results with coir tend to be so variable. Also, for all the bad rap peat gets for being "hydrophobic", the few times I've worked with coir I've found it to be next to impossible to rewet if it dries out. If you went 4 days without watering that could be an issue. What I would do at this point in your position is get some seeding paks or small pots and "repot" those seedlings. Try just a couple at first and see how they do, but they look stressed enough to me that I don't see a lot to be gained by waiting any longer than you have to. BTW - purpling of LEAVES is not anything normal for pepper seedlings. I have never seen that. Maybe I read that wrong. What I HAVE seen is that the stems of seedlings will sometimes darken to a kind of dark burgundy or purplish colors. I tend to see that on seedlings that have gotten leggy. It fades after awhile. I have some basil seedlings right now where just ONE seedling got leggy because it sprouted before all the others, I had them in a south-facing...

Hey, thanks for all the hints, I'll definitely try the vinegar trick to work out how much of this I can use in recipes. It's just that I've got so many of them now! If they wind up being so hot I can only use 1/4 of one in a recipe I'll be fully stocked til 2012 from just what's on the plant now... ah well, can't complain about that really can I? I think you're right that they'll turn red when fully ripe. Now I'm wondering- do hot peppers heat up as they ripen? If so, could harvesting them earlier, at the purple stage, give me a slightly milder chili? Or would that just be sacrificing flavour development? This variety is called "Burke's Backyard Thai Chili" or "Don Burke Thai Chili", named after an Australian gardening show so it might only be available here unless you can order Australian seeds (Yates is the supplier I think). I'm growing it from a nursery seedling and so far it's a very compact, shrubby plant- about as wide as it is tall with very densely packed leaves and upright fruit. Thanks for the advice, I'll let you know how I go, Slashy.