This was the first thing I used one for:

Thats a NuMex Halloween ornamental pepper, supposed to grow black and orange fruit. As you can see, right now it only has black on it (well, dark purple, but you probably guessed that already), and haven't gotten any more fruit to set during the cold dreary winter, but the plant itself is doing well in it's unusual container.

The second one of these I got I decided to cut at an angle, and I was going to graft three bhuts together, one coming out of each eye socket and the nose. Graft them together as close to the skull as possible so that when they reached full size it would look like one MASSIVE trunk growing into the skull's face (I mentioned it I liked creepy things already, remember).

Might need to cut it little further so it lays a bit more flat though.

But, reading one of the other grafting threads here got me thinking. If I'm going to graft peppers together using this method anyway, why use just bhuts? Why not make each of the three a different superhot?

Right now I'm planning on having one bhut, one butch T scorpion, and one... haven't decided yet. I was thinking I have naga morich seeds, but they're too similar looking to the bhuts. I could get a moruga or a brain strain, but those are again too close to the other two. I've got some "lesser" peppers I could use, but if I'm going to be merging these together over a partially buried skull, I want each of them to be lethally hot on their own. Maybe a Chocolate 7 Pod?

it looks as though the skull is empty of dirt? will you plant them in the dirt beneath the skull, and then train them through the holes? or fill the skull with dirt, and let the roots travel down through the dirt in the skull, into the dirt of the garden beneath?

Either way, since you are going to have three trunks together, it seems to me that you could have them be a little on the leggy side... this will allow people to see the skull better, and shouldn't have the side effects that would come normally with a leggy plant (so long as you don't get too crazy with it).

And yeah, if all goes according to plan I'll wait until the peppers are of fair size (I'm thinking 8-10"), hold back on their water enough for them to wilt a bit to make the stems more pliable, and trim the lower branches off to have good room for grafting them together with.

After all, if this works, the cool twisted trunk growing into the skull's face will be one of the coolest parts about it, so you'll have to be able to actually see it.

Added benefit of this approach will be, I hope, that at the end of the season when I cut it back into a bonchi it will already be fairly tree-like.

Its like a 3-4'tall woody stalked variety of pepper... kind of looks like a small tree (so i'm told) which could help the bonchi effect...

The final choices are:

Bhut Jolokia
7-Pot Douglah
Butch T Trinidad Scorpion

Also got the skull cut down further so that it lays flatter.

I'm vaguely worried about the relatively small opening in the nose, but by the time that pepper grows large enough that it could be a problem they'll be grafted together and sharing roots, so it should be fine.

Biggest potential problem I'm seeing for it is the fact that there will be three plants with three roots in very close proximity. Under normal circumstances, I know that would cause all three to be stunted as they compete for the same food in the soil. But if they're all grafted together? I don't know what that will mean. Will it act like a single plant with 3x the root mass?

I'm thinking it won't. I'm thinking the roots will support their own original plant along the outside (away from the graft) and then the middle roots and middle plant (the inside of the graft) will more or less merge together, but it won't be one big harmonious whole.

But then again it might all just start playing nice and be more vigorous than an one of them alone would have been. Not sure which way it'll go, but it'll be fun to find out. =)

Heh, and with the three hottest peppers in the world in one plant, it should make for some very interesting hybrid seeds, thats for sure.

Should be pretty awesome...

I have a theory that I'm going to email you about.

Skull is in place and stuffed with soil, and I've seeded some shade loving moss plugs around it. Will be months before the peppers are big enough to do fancy stuff with, and hopefully by then the moss will have spread out to fill the container top around the skull. In addition to making it look cool, it should also serve as some natural mulching. And since it likes the shade, it should be perfectly happy with a big leafy frankenpepper growing over the top of it blotting out the sun.

Obviously this pot is too small for a giant pepper plant, but it will suffice for quite a few months before I have to up-pot to one of the big 25 gallon containers.

I'll have to start keeping my eyes open for some nice spooky/gothic/etc pots of about this size for it's final overwintering/bonsai container too, so if anybody happens to see a really wicked looking container, let me know.

I ended up pulling the moss though. Someone over on the Fatalii board brought up a very good point. This moss likes to stay moist. The peppers like to stay dry. Would be exceedingly difficult to find a watering routine that would keep both of them happy, so screw it. Peppers > moss, moss went back home out in the yard.

I'll just have to find some other form of ground cover for it later.

If so, could you not bottom water the pepper and mist the moss?

Just askin.

Elfin Thyme:

Stays very short, grows in a dense mat, thrives in dry conditions and full sun. Specifically recommended for placement between bricks and paving stones, or in this case skulls and container walls.

It even has pretty little purple flowers from time to time.

I don't think anyone ever forgets the first time they make that blunder.

One of those moments permanently emblazoned upon ones mind.

Looking great though!!

You may need to register that thing as a weapon of mass destruction though ;).

Was going to buy real shadecloth until I got a good look at the stuff and went "This is just glorified screen door meshing, I've got rolls of this at home!". Sure enough, couple of crisscrossed layers twist-tied to half an old wire tomato cage later and I've got myself a shadecloth.

Cotys on the t.scorp are drying up, but the true leaves seem to be just fine and its working on a second set, so not particularly worried about it.

Note the artful splatter of bird poop on the right side of the cranium. Perhaps I should invest in a falcon...

Learned that one long ago. When in doubt, LEAVE IT ALONE!

Thats a douglah growing on top of this:

The idea being that as it grows bigger, I'll slowly pull the dirt away from the top and unbury the skull mountain. As I do, the roots will have to grow deeper to maintain the same amount of soil contact, and by the end of the season I should have a nice bonchi with big craggly roots wrapping down the side of the mountain.

looks like your project is going well!

The roots must have hit the ornament by now, thats not a very deep spot of dirt. Hopefully they're growing in a visually pleasing manner!

Apparently it was still too strong. Bad news is that I lost some leaves and what I do have left are half brown. The good news is that whats left is nice and green. Been raining for the past week, so any excess appears to have washed on through. None of them are dead or appear to be in immediate threat of dying, but a couple are kinda sad looking right now.

But, they'll spring back, they're peppers.

Anywho, they're all better now and a nice dark green, so I'd say it was worth it. Whatever doesn't kill them just makes them stronger!

Its becoming a fight against the two bigger, older peppers to keep them from shading out the nose pepper, but so far so good.

Also, is that some kind of moss growing on the soil?
Bruce

And thats elfin thyme growing around it. Very drought tolerant, should make good living mulch.

Edy, when are we gonna get an update on this? Are they blooming yet? Any pods?
Bruce

Just got the first rain in about as long, so thats good. They probably haven't been liking the chlorinated stuff out of the garden hose too much.

And if anyone is wondering about the hole in the thyme, it was mounding up in an unattractive fashion so I trimmed it back down. Does not seem to have regrown to close the hole as quickly as I expected.

As you can see, the roots have continued to bulk up nicely. So nicely in fact its about time to pull the soil level down on them again.

Actually, comparing it to the picture from this morning, I didn't really end up pulling the dirt any further down at all. I did end up repositioning the roots though so that they fan out more. Can also see where I had to tie the trunk to the side of the skull. It always comes loose when I mess around with it. When its all said and done, I'm probably going to superglue it down to the skull. Until then, a bit of twine keeps it in place while I push the roots back closer to the mountain.

Was pruning the middle leaves off the big two when I realized how lignified they were getting. Lignification = bad for merging and flexibility. It was now or never, and the little one was still too short to avoid being shaded out by the two bigger ones if I left the tops on them. No choice but to top them all and start weaving the new growth together into a nice bush.

They're peppers, they should respond well to aggressive pruning, but it always feels like I'm killing them to do something this drastic, even though I've done it before and they turn out just fine.

Do you think the mountain ones would grow more side roots if you covered them back up and kept it moist? Kind of a uncover, reposition, recover for root growth, repeat until you're happy?

---

Thing with the roots is that while you do get more roots if you let them stay covered, the roots you get are small. When you uncover them and force the plant to grow them deeper to keep getting to the good soil, it will naturally prune back the extra hair roots and then bulk up the main tap style roots. They get bigger and thicker and cooler looking because they are having to act as main highways to get the nutrients from the finer hair roots below up to the plant above.

Its why I'm pulling the dirt level lower and lower down as I go, it forces the plant to grow gnarlier roots that then lignify in the light.

You may notice I stuck some soil back up along the left side there and on top. The left side had a runner that I'd like to prompt to fill out some more, and would like to see if I can start anything from the top to drape across the back just for the sake of stability.

And the full plant, if you want to see that.

Some leaf curl from the extreme heat and drought we were having, nothing serious though. Should bounce back from that pretty quickly.

And since I took the picture while I was out there, my sweet banana pepper that has finished it's production run, so I trimmed it way back to see if I can turn it into a bonchi as well.

It's trunk and roots aren't as pretty as the others, but all in all it has potential for being a large bonchi. Any new growth that I will want to keep is going to come from the fork there at the top, but it looked cooler right now to leave the extra stumps above it. Who knows, maybe something will sprout out of the tops of those. Can't hurt, might help.

Thats my inflatable snake in the background, keeps the rabbits out of my garden.

Now to just leave it alone and let it thicken up and grow big and strong.

I hope...

Frankenpepper:

Starting to put out some buds, limb braiding has started (as in I started just before taking this picture, since the branches are long enough now):

The thyme is slowly devouring the skull, but thats okay:

Skull Mountain:

Putting out some new growth, staying nice and green, so I would say that so far this one is a raging success. Was my first time doing this root exposure method, was half worried I'd end up killing it. Thank God pepper plants are tougher than an Arnold Schwarzenegger character!

(If anyone is curious, the background includes carrots, stevia, a california redwood, giant hybrid god-only-knows-what from supermarket sweet peppers, and some baby dragonfruits.)

While I'm at it, the Skull Mountain Douglah has buds, but no pods yet. Not surprising seeing the hell I've put it through, but the stems and upper half of the plant are taking on an interesting shape as well.

The vegetation seems to be growing forwards, I'm guessing it must be getting more/stronger light from that direction. For the sake of a nice even grow, I've turned the pot around 180 degrees.

Skull Mountain is doing well.

Frankenpepper isn't living up to my expectations as well as the other, but its doing okay. I think it'll be a few years before it really merges together the way I envisioned.

I went around and gave all of my potted peppers fertilizer sticks that caused some burn and leaf drop in the days after, but as you can see they've all bounced back happier and healthier than before. Had me a little worried with how bad the leaf drop was, but it worked out for the best in the end.

Before:

After:

And just because I thought that big gaping hole in the bottom of the mountain was, well, gaping, I made a decoration to put in front of it.

Do you have a shot of one of the skull plants with red pods?

I'll probably have to bring them in and wait for them to ripen the pods before I can fully cut them back for winter. Not 100% on if they'll get there in time before the weather goes bad on me or not.

Heh, for some reason, if you constantly chop and torture a pepper plant, it tends to be fairly slow in producing fruit. Who'd a thought?

This'll give it the last few weeks of acceptable outside weather to leaf back out some before it comes inside for the winter.

Weather is getting cooler now, slowing it down a bit. Which is good, I think. Slower growth, smaller leaves, getting it used to having less strong sunlight, should hopefully help in overwintering it. At least thats my theory, it surely has nothing to do with just not wanting to clean out the space to bring them inside yet.

I don't know what you do for a living but I bet people would be willing to pay money for that kind of artwork.

Kevin