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BeagleStorm vs 2011 - My Chile Grow Log

Ok first up is some photos of my over wintered plants. Scorpion, Naga Morich, Chocolate Bhut, and 2 x Harold St. Barts. More of an experiment... I have never tried to over winter plants before. Did not super prune the plants or the root balls. I just left them in their pots out in the semi-cold during early November and most of the leaves started falling off. Then I did a minimal prune to remove any remaining leaves and to clean them up a bit. Gave them a cup of water each and threw them in my parent’s garage. I gave them a second cup of water last weekend. They seem to be doing great. One plant had what seemed to be a few Aphids so I sprayed it with Organocide but they have been bug free for the last month. I want to keep them in pots, so I think I will need to transplant them into fresh soil and maybe bigger pots this spring. Just not sure how I am going to do it or what process I am going to use. I do know that I am going to keep them at my parents so they do not pass any nasty critters to my seedlings before spring comes. Any recommendations?

OverwinterA.jpg

OverwinterB.jpg
 
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Found a bag of worm castings last week, so I stopped by the hardware store and pet store and presto:

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This is my first time trying to make Worm Tea. I followed SS's recommendation using 2 cups worm castings, 1/4 cup molasses and had to guess on the water... I added about 2-3 gallons. Going to let it brew until my plants need their next watering probably about 48 hours or so. Should I put my heat mat under it? I would think it would grow better warmer than at the 68-70 degrees the house is at. Also, can I give it full strength to the young plants or is it better to dilute it?
 
Excellent Beag. I scooped up my first bag of worm castings today and will begin making my first batch of worm tea tomorrow. Spent some time reviewing the procedures today. Good luckl with it.
 
Cool I should start a brew like you. Well mine are prb too small for that stuff still. Cool cant wait to see it work its magic.
 
Beaglestorm said:
Found a bag of worm castings last week, so I stopped by the hardware store and pet store and presto:

2011-03-05_17-42-40_38.jpg


This is my first time trying to make Worm Tea. I followed SS's recommendation using 2 cups worm castings, 1/4 cup molasses and had to guess on the water... I added about 2-3 gallons. Going to let it brew until my plants need their next watering probably about 48 hours or so. Should I put my heat mat under it? I would think it would grow better warmer than at the 68-70 degrees the house is at. Also, can I give it full strength to the young plants or is it better to dilute it?
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I got my worm tea set up going today. I T'd the 2 air outlets to make 4 tubes and 4 stones hoping to get more aeration evenly distributed. Don't know if that matters, but it was cheap, and I always have to over do things. My wife graciously donated a panty hose that I used instead of the filter bag. Also, I got an aquarium heater to keep the heat up FYI. I don't know if you noticed, Beaglestorm, the videos and literature I saw all said to use the worm tea pretty quickly after it is done, before the beneficial organisms die.
 
Ha got the part about using it up fast.... missed the part about needing a filter bag. Is that to put the castings in? I just mixed everything up in the water. Lol well let's see what happens.
 
Michael, use it as is strained from the bucket for that recipe. If you want a stronger tea that you can dilute because you need more volume use more castings and fill the bucket to within 4 inches of the lip. Dilute at the required ratio and add more molasses to the diluted solution.

Chileaddict, I use 4 stones as well, two lines teed into 2 stones each.
 
Silver_Surfer said:
Michael, use it as is strained from the bucket for that recipe. If you want a stronger tea that you can dilute because you need more volume use more castings and fill the bucket to within 4 inches of the lip. Dilute at the required ratio and add more molasses to the diluted solution.

Chileaddict, I use 4 stones as well, two lines teed into 2 stones each.
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Is the straining necessary? I just poured the liquid off the top and left the majority of the casting at the bottom. I figured a little bit of the casting getting put into each pot could not hurt. Next time I will use a filter bag. Oh and for future reference your recipe using 2 cups of castings and a 1/4 cup of molasses is based on using how much water? Thanks SS it has been 2 1/2 days since I applied the worm tea. Plants look great except for a little incident yesterday. I have a fan on my plants to keep the heat down. I asked my wife to move it to blow from the other side of the room. I was not clear and she moved it but did not point the fan at the plants. Got home and plants were at 97 degrees. Got some curled leaves but overall nothing to loose sleep over. It was only for a few hours.
 
Here they are late Monday night right after watering with the Fresh Worm Tea. These are my Habanero's, Scotch Bonnet's, Habalokia's, and Scorpanero's

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Here they are Thursday morning (2.5 days later).

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Here are my Scorpion's (back) and 7's (front) on Monday night right after applying the worm tea.

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Here they are today (2.5 days later)

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The 7's are the slowest growing of all of them. Everything else seems to be growing quite a bit faster. I have some purple veins in my plants and a lot of leaves are pretty wrinkly. I remember reading on the Botanicare site that if you are using RO water on your plants, which I am doing... they recommend using Cal Mag every feeding since the RO process removes a lot of the minerals. So I broke down and decided to go all in this season... Since I have so many plants I am going to try some limited comparison between using worm tea, fish emulsion, and seaweed against .... these:

BotanicareSuite.jpg


Now before anyone gets excited that it will be a highly controlled and well documented test... it probably won't be but I am hoping to have say 2 sets of the same 5 container plants on each and see what happens.
 
Wow Beaglestorm, I think your biggest challenge is to not over fertilize. So many choices at your disposal. I am anxious to see them come harvest time. Did you foliar feed or apply the worm tea to the soil? Or both? I started feeding mine the worm tea a few days ago. I'm also experimenting with germinating seeds in diluted worm tea. Keep up the good work and nice photos.
 
chileaddict said:
Wow Beaglestorm, I think your biggest challenge is to not over fertilize. So many choices at your disposal. I am anxious to see them come harvest time. Did you foliar feed or apply the worm tea to the soil? Or both? I started feeding mine the worm tea a few days ago. I'm also experimenting with germinating seeds in diluted worm tea. Keep up the good work and nice photos.
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Thanks, CA! I agree about over fertilizing. I am worried about that too. From what I have been reading the fish emulsion and seaweed extract wont burn the plant and I have been adding it in an alternating fashion to every watering for the past month. I have only been using like 1/4 to 1/2 strength the whole time. I was not planning on going full strength till they get outside. I have not foliar fed yet, but I am eager to start as it seems like it will be so much easier and from what I hear just as effective. My first batch of worm tea went into the soil. I was thinking the whole point of brewing the tea is to culture a nice brew of microbes and beneficial bacteria in addition to the natural nutrients it has. (I thought that they eat the sugars in the molasses and multiply) I can comprehend them keeping the soil and roots healthy but I don't know if the microbes would be beneficial via foliar feeding. I know the wonderful inherent nutrients of the castings would be sucked up by the leaves but the other microorganisms I have no clue. I also may have the whole concept wrong so at some point I will foliar feed the worm tea. Anybody else care to comment.

Also I want to foliar feed because last year I had a big problem with drainage and possibly PH. I think they both affected my plants ability to uptake nutrients and stunted their growth. Hopefully foliar feeding them this year will allow them to handle a little more of my bad gardening skills than last year. LOL
 
Here are some updated pictures of my plants exactly one week after applying the worm tea. (They also got a half dose of Epsom Salt in the water last Friday). I am watering about every 4 days with weak ferts every watering. Plants seem to be growing well except for the wrinkled leaves. They are growing out and staying low with nice large leaves. Must be all the blue (6500k) light. Anyway, that suits me fine for now as I only need them to last another 2 weeks in the house.

7's (back) and Scorpions (Front)
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The center of my grow area - a little bit of everything
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Habaneros, Scotch Bonnets, Scorpalokias, Habalokias, and Scorpaneros
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Thanks MM. Just got home from work noticed that a few of the plants have dry soil and are droopy. The majority have the soil still moist. I think I'm forgetting that as they get bigger they drink water faster. This is going to be a challenge to manage all these different sized plants in such a small tightly packed space. Weather has been great so I think I may transplant a few of the biggest into their final 5 gal pots this weekend. For mow, I think I can manage about 10 pots outside if I have to bring them in for a cold spell.
 
Well I am going to push the envelope with the fertilizers. I got my Botanicare bottles delivered yesterday and after reading the instructions, they recommend administering it at every watering. The dosages seem pretty weak, so what the heck... I poured it on last night…

As a side note, it is interesting to read that the Liquid Karma ingredients says it is derived from Kelp. That is what I have been giving my plants the whole time. The Prow grow is fish emulsion (Prow grow smells much better) with some extras (hopefully they are worth the 4x price). Also what I have been giving my plants already. Both of those are not supposed to burn plants so I am even more encouraged to start the Botanicare fertilizers immediately. Basically it a combo of Pro Grow Soil and two supplements Cal-Mag (recommended every watering if you are using RO water) and Liquid Karma. Next time I think I will try foliar feeding.

It is starting to get hot (mid 80’s all next week) but nights are still in the 40’s so I will delay my plant out another week. Out of all my plants, the 7’s are the only slackers. I don’t know if it is because they are slower growers but they look healthy so I am not worried about it yet.

Finally I can’t wait till these plants are in the garden under irrigation. Watering these 137 plants one by one is a PIA. (Ok I actually do enjoy it... but it takes way too long to do.)
 
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