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Bhut Jolokia hydroponic Grow Log

Hello all, i've just stumbled upon this site and it looks like a good place to present my grow log in progress.

I'm currently growing Bhut Jolokia in hydroponics system with light nutrients and compost tea.

I'm using 5 gallon bucket top-drip system with 2.5 gallons of water in each bucket. Airstones are also present in the bucket for a DWC type effect also.

Hydraton is the medium in my net-pot-lids.


Under 500watt equivalent CFL, and 100 watt incandescent (for warmth)


My peppers are currently on week 7.

I am trying to learn as much about indoor cultivation as possible, and hopefully can start hydroponic greenhouses in the future for lage-scale pepper production.

I wish to try to cross-breed peppers in controlled envoronments in the future also.



Here are my seeds @ start

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I used lemon juice and water to bring the rockwool cubes to a ph of 5.5 - 6



I then placed under 100watt incandescent bulb for heat / light untill sprouts appeared.

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Once roots appeared in bottom of rockwool, I transplanted into the hydroponic setup


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Here is about 1 week in the hydro setup

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Heres my lady at about 4 weeks

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Here is a comparison from about 5-6 weeks. A good show of heavy growth in 5 days.

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And here is my latest picture at 7 weeks. Very heavy growth along the stalk. I have defoliated 10 or so leaves to allow air/light to hit the others. I have made 1 clone so far, still waiting to see how that turns out.

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roots! going crazyyyy!

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I have some T scorpions coming in 3 differeent varietys. i will keep posting as I continue on. Thanks for checking it out, hopefully i'll be successful!
 
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I totally reccomend DWC at this point. I have tried just drip/hydro into the medium, but once I really made the roots totally submerged they took off. The plant has also done great in response to the DWC switch. Just make sure to keep the water circulating and aerated.
 
Video Update on Youtube




Flowers are getting numerous, roots are strong and growth is exceptional. Hopefully I'll have peppers in the next 2 months. Keep ya fingas crossed.


Also expanded my grow area today, getting ready to add 4 more bhuts into 5 gallon DWC setups. Ta da!
 
Flowers are looking good! Hopefully willl open up soon.

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She's gettin Huge!

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youtube update also


wish me lux!
 
First flower has officially opened!

gonna get a better camera than the one i'm using to get a good picture.


Got some small brushes and stuff, gonna start moving pollen around once a few more open, then i'm gonna harvest a few flowers once they open into a jar and freeze to hopefully preserve the pollen for later use.


:)
 
aspore said:
First flower has officially opened!

gonna get a better camera than the one i'm using to get a good picture.


Got some small brushes and stuff, gonna start moving pollen around once a few more open, then i'm gonna harvest a few flowers once they open into a jar and freeze to hopefully preserve the pollen for later use.


:)
Click to expand...

That's great news with the flowering, before you know it you'll see the pods forming. I see you have a fan, that helps to provide movement of the branches.
 
Bushy indeed, growing nodes like crazy, splitting off at every node, flower pods at every split so lots of flowers hopefully!


I tried to get a pic of the flower just now, and promptly broke it off :(. It's cool tho, becuase it was way before the others, so I don't think it would get very pollinated by hand anyways. I have it in a jar, gonna try to get it to produce some pollen later hopefully...anyways.

Here it is.

still waiting for a good camera so....pic suck for now.

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man, nice looking plant! my DWC guys are growing slowly as i do not have room for indoor, mine are growing on my balcony here in SD its about 9-10" tall. but the temps are cooler right now which is prob slowing growth down some. now that i think of it, i might as well start a winter DWC balcony grow thread! :)

good job on the documentation! it was fun to read and look at the progress your plant ahs made! :dance:
 
I'm running 2 CFL's @ 150 watt equivalent, and 1 100 watt incandescent, for heat mostly.


Looking into some bigger stuff, but good right now.
 
Thank you.

Two other questions please sir. Are you adjusting your nutrients based on EC, TDS, pH, judging based on experience, etc? If you use an EC/TDS meter, how do you know where to start at when setting everything up for your plants?
 
I know from experience, no matter what nutes I'm using, I want to target ppms at a certain level. I usually was running like this:

0-40 ppm starting out
200-300 once roots are good and into the water
300-600 for good veg growth
700-1000 was for flowering.


With peppers tho, it seems the like to hang around in the 400-600 stage when flowering, but I'm only now learning this.


Peppers went like so:

0-50ppm starting out
100-200 untill roots got healthy (4-6 in long)
300-400 untill I topped the plant
400-600 after topping and into flowering.


I have changed my nutes once flowers formed, I started running the 'bloom' of my nutrient lineup (Xnutes).

Now I'm out of all nutes, and probably gonna buy GH nutes because they are the next best thing I've used other than Xnutes.


I run PH @ 5.5-6.0, I always seem to go over 6, so I'm getting some PH down if GH still gives me the same PH problem. I have had curled leaves due to PH being too high, so that's a personal problem of mine.


I will get a 5 gal bucket full of fresh tap water to the level I desire, then I add my part 1 and stir , then part II and stir, testing PPM untill it gets within 5 of what I wish. I let sit for a few mins, then add anything else (nothing at the moment) and place plant back into res.


As far as the 'where to start' question, I am not sure what you mean , but I usually have a 6-9 PPM with my tap water, and adjust from there.


so PPM and PH are my important factors.
 
The where to start question is about the starting point of ppm's for nutrients and where to go from there as the plant grows. Which you've answered better than anyone I've been talking to recently.

Do you start from whatever ppm your water is and then add the 50ppm, etc? Or do you use an RO system to reduce the solids in your water and start from 0?

Thanks again.
 
I just use tap water, without filtering or anything. It usually starts off at 5-9 ppm , then I'll bring it up to whatever ppm I need with nutes. I follow instructions for the nutrient variety. I think my Xnutes was wanting 15ml gallon of grow, and 20ml a gallon of micro. So I was adding appx 75ml/grow and 80mlmicro to about 4-5gals and then testing the PPM at that point. Usually following the application rates have put me in very good range of PPM. I just only add enough Bloom/Micro now for 3 gallons, and my PPM is coming out at 500-600. My peppers seem to like it here. It all depends on plant also I belive, some might like more PPM than others, so it will vary with each grow I believe. I'm still fairly new at the peppers so I'm still learning as I go!
 
Not second guessing you by any means but here in Spokane our aquifer water(tap) comes out from 150 to 300 ppm and we have supposedly good water. After filtering through a small boy particulate filter it will come down to 90ppm, and with RO filtering it will come down to below 10ppm. Have you calibrated your meter lately? Or do you guys in the SE just have way better water?
 
Your right Spokane, I was incorrect earlier in my post about the PPM out of tap, instead of 5-9 like I said, it's actually about 36. I just tested my tap @ 36 so I'm guessing that's about right. We have really good city water here in my town, but its not as low as I forementioned. Sorry! :/ Good catch tho, the other portions of my nutes are the same tho.


I'm actually having troubles now, I have had a few flower pods fall off now, and I'm thinking because I haven't fully switched to 'bloom' nutrients, and still have nitrogen heavy nutes in the resevoirs. I'm currently in the markted for some good nutritnes to help me get these ladies to pod up, I'm thinking again about that Gen organics box, just so I have some stuff to test out. I think a high level of nitrogen is making them too green and not keeping the flowers.
 
Question: I have ripe, pollinating flowers all over my plant. Could I send some of the flowers in a small jar/container to somone else, and they could use the pollen from that flower to cross-polinate their own plant? That should help those who only have 1 or 2 types to cross more strains than they are growing, without having to grow a bunch of differents and be worried about accidental pollination?


If this would be feasable, I have about 10-20 pollen producing flowers I could harvest, place in airtight, small container, and ship them to others with flowers ready to be pollinated.

I think it would work, so if we started exchanging flowers around here, we could get more crosses every season, and closer to hottter peppers!
 
Aspore,
It seems that Bhut Jolokia plants will always drop their flowers and pods at first. It has done that to me the last few seasons and you can find a lot of posts here from growers having the same issue. Its like an old engine that takes awhile to warm up but once that choke opens, its game on.
 
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