Slashroot's 2012 Pepper Season - Superhots under LED

slashroot · Apr 13, 2012

Starting to become a jungle in my grow tent, sadly the Red Manzano has lots of flowers but none set fruit. Hand pollinating and fan blowing on it. I've read everything there is to the problem on this forum, seems none of it apply to my case. Might just be the plant being to young for setting fruit.

A lot of the plants I wanted to grow outside in greenhouse might just be trash, I don't see how the could recover and become healthy plants. Got leaf curls and all kind of bad things going on

The more I look at them the more depressed I feel about my growing!

For some reason the middle plant in the DWC started to curl upwards, while the others in the same system is showing no signs. Makes no damn sense, frustrating

Anyways here's some pictures from this day:

Ebb & Flow

DWC

Soil(The worst plants)

PaulG · Apr 14, 2012

Very interesting following your hydro grow, slash.
Your plants are developing nicely with your care!

slashroot · Apr 14, 2012

PaulG said:
Very interesting following your hydro grow, slash.
Your plants are developing nicely with your care!

Thanks for passing by and having a look

I think my care is killing my plants or something, I'm a total beginner at pepper plants really hehe
Just been going over this forum for weeks, reading almost every thread to learn more!

slashroot · Apr 17, 2012

Things seem to be getting along good. Only annoying thing is flowers dropping, might have been from the ebb flow system watering too much. Now I've cut it down to 3 times a day with 5 minutes each time.

Here's the latest pictures:

slashroot · Apr 18, 2012

It said I was over the limit with pictures yesterday so here is the ones I didn't manage to post:

slashroot · Apr 21, 2012

Things have gone south with almost all my soil pepper plants, thought the trips were gone last time after spraying but their back, big time! Looks like out of all my 70 plants to start with I might have 10-20 left. Took the plants outside in the greenhouse to get the bugs out of the grow tent.

All my hydro plants are still doing alright. Here's some pics, not a lot happening.

This Tepin plant is doing nothing, been there for over two months and still tiny while all other plants are huge.

Weirdest looking plant I got, it's a Devil's Tongue, clearly mutant seed. Just keeping it to see what happens, it's growing but in a mental way!

Prairie Fire plant getting along well in the DWC:

Picture of the whole DWC, surely increase in size in a couple of days:

The flood and drain:

Chili Pyramid in the DWC:

Trinidad Scorpion in my Flood and drain. Leaves are way bigger than my hands!

slashroot · Apr 27, 2012

Maybe my glog is scaring you guys away, too big pictures? I'd sure make them smaller if that's better

Update from todays growth:

Too crowded growth!

Filius Blue ornamental flowering.

Some C. Chinense flowering(Too crowded to see the label)

C.Chinense buds.

Tiny but pretty Prairie Fire.

Chili Pyramid Ornamental with one pepper seemingly growing.

Zimbabwe Birds Eye flowering.

Numex Twilight Flowering.

Two pictures of Manzano/Rocoto peppers producing. Hopefully doesn't drop off this time.

rabid48 · Apr 27, 2012

Some nice looking Plant's there, slash! I'd agree with your conclusion that they are a little crowded, lol. I guess recomended plant spacing only applies when you aren't doing so well that you have freakishly large leaves. Holy cow!

Keep up the good work!

slashroot · Apr 28, 2012

rabid48 said:
Some nice looking Plant's there, slash! I'd agree with your conclusion that they are a little crowded, lol. I guess recomended plant spacing only applies when you aren't doing so well that you have freakishly large leaves. Holy cow!

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for checking out my glog. They're extremely crowded I would say. When I started out I thought whatever why not place six plants in one box because I'm probably going to kill most of them anyway but I was wrong haha

Dunno if that Trinidad Scorpion leaves are normal, now it's like the size of two of my hands :S

SocalChilehead · Apr 28, 2012

Wow amazing plants Slash can not wait to see your results and how are your soil plants doing did you find a solution.

slashroot · Apr 28, 2012

SocalChilehead said:
Wow amazing plants Slash can not wait to see your results and how are your soil plants doing did you find a solution.

Really hope I will get some pods out of this season

My soil plants are actually a lot better now, had many soil problems! All the leaf curl plants I have managed to recover, new growth is normal. Some of the stunted ones I cut back and they seem to give out new healthy growth. Hope this is the direction I am heading the next months too hehe

Pr0digal_son · Apr 28, 2012

Nice grow.Just jad a chancr to catch up. I have a DWC that I haven't tried yet. Planning on using it outdoor this summer.

slashroot · Apr 28, 2012

Pr0digal_son said:
Nice grow.Just jad a chancr to catch up. I have a DWC that I haven't tried yet. Planning on using it outdoor this summer.

You should really get your DWC going, it's worked great for me. Only mistake I did was topping the reservoir they are sitting in with water, which you should never do. The roots should always have so free air for the roots. I kinda drowned them which caused edema even though I have lots of air from air stones. They have recovered now though

It's just a good thing to remember every time you change reservoir water, not to top it all the way

You may know this already, though I would just share in case.

gnslngr · Apr 29, 2012

Interesting grow Slash- I would look at ventilation, and lighting.....blossom dropping can also be temp thing -but I am assuming your temps in the tent aren't over 90 Deg F?
You are right about the crowding-it will cut off the air circulation and block a lot of light(low light levels will also cause dropped blossoms). We have a few hydro guru's here, spongey 600 does DWC-drop him a pm, he is pretty awesome with responding to questions. Doing a great job for just getting into the pepper scene! Search the forum for hydro growers and just pm, or any of us for that matter-if we can help, we will, or point you to someone who can!
Great pics ,by the way!

slashroot · Apr 29, 2012

gnslngr said:
Interesting grow Slash- I would look at ventilation, and lighting.....blossom dropping can also be temp thing -but I am assuming your temps in the tent aren't over 90 Deg F?
You are right about the crowding-it will cut off the air circulation and block a lot of light(low light levels will also cause dropped blossoms). We have a few hydro guru's here, spongey 600 does DWC-drop him a pm, he is pretty awesome with responding to questions. Doing a great job for just getting into the pepper scene! Search the forum for hydro growers and just pm, or any of us for that matter-if we can help, we will, or point you to someone who can!
Great pics ,by the way!

The temperature stays between 68f to 86f, so I'm close to the 90f you mentioned. I would say the average temperature is 79f.

You sure are right, having it extremely crowded will cause problems! I guess many of my problems are because of that, just blowing a fan on the plants wont fix it.

There is nothing to do about it now right? Pulling a couple of plants up would damage all the others I think? By this time I think all the plants roots are intertwined in the hydroton.

Better leave them the way they are until I decide to cut them back for the season?

Thanks for stepping by, appreciate your feedback

slashroot · May 1, 2012

Thought I would post an update. Still fighting edema with one of my plants in the flood and drain system. I have a water schedule now that only water at the time that the plant start to wilt a bit but it still manages to produce more edema. It's only that one plant doing it though, the others are edema free in the same system.

Picture of the Edema affected plant:

More Manzano flowers setting peppers:

Picture of the 3 crowded systems:

The DWC getting out of hand:

gnslngr · May 2, 2012

Hey it hard to fight first season enthusiasm! You might try pinching some buds back to reduce the numbers-less to support may help the blossoms complete the cycle. The temps are ideal....I'm still deciding if I want to go with DWC this year, most likely I will wait til "winter" when I could pay it a lot of attention. Cutting a few branches back shouldnt hurt anything , with such huge leaves I still wonder about your light issue?
I gotta ask ..Norway AND China? Damn seas are picking up here...it screws up the bandwidth for our internet connection!

PaulG · May 2, 2012

Hey, Slash! Your grow is looking good; just too much success
leading to overcrowding, I guess! It's interesting watching the
hydro process; I'm amazed by how great the plants grow in those
systems. Anyway, keep up the good work. Looks like you will be
rewarded soon with some nice pods! Good luck your way, bro!

slashroot · May 2, 2012

gnslngr said:
Hey it hard to fight first season enthusiasm! You might try pinching some buds back to reduce the numbers-less to support may help the blossoms complete the cycle. The temps are ideal....I'm still deciding if I want to go with DWC this year, most likely I will wait til "winter" when I could pay it a lot of attention. Cutting a few branches back shouldnt hurt anything , with such huge leaves I still wonder about your light issue?
I gotta ask ..Norway AND China? Damn seas are picking up here...it screws up the bandwidth for our internet connection!

I don't think I can get myself to cut branches off! I would think I have enough light with my 600w LED light but I'm not sure if my distance is good or bad. Of course the bottom leaves won't get much light because of the crowded growth.

Honestly so far I find hydroponics much easier than soil. None of the stupid pests and everything is running by itself mostly. All it takes is a bit of learning curve and change of reservoir water every two weeks.

PaulG said:
Hey, Slash! Your grow is looking good; just too much success
leading to overcrowding, I guess! It's interesting watching the
hydro process; I'm amazed by how great the plants grow in those
systems. Anyway, keep up the good work. Looks like you will be
rewarded soon with some nice pods! Good luck your way, bro!

Thanks for stepping by. I wouldn't say I'm successful yet though, sure would like to get other types of pods than Rocoto. Kinda boring if I only get Rocoto pods to produce this year. Time will tell, think I should get some more plants producing soon

So crowded that hand pollinating is hard and I don't trust my fan to do all the work for me, should I?

slashroot said:
I don't think I can get myself to cut branches off! I would think I have enough light with my 600w LED light but I'm not sure if my distance is good or bad. Of course the bottom leaves won't get much light because of the crowded growth.

China is in the location because I spend a lot of the year there

Honestly so far I find hydroponics much easier than soil. None of the stupid pests and everything is running by itself mostly. All it takes is a bit of learning curve and change of reservoir water every two weeks.

Thanks for stepping by. I wouldn't say I'm successful yet though, sure would like to get other types of pods than Rocoto. Kinda boring if I only get Rocoto pods to produce this year. Time will tell, think I should get some more plants producing soon So crowded that hand pollinating is hard and I don't trust my fan to do all the work for me, should I?

slashroot · May 8, 2012

The Rocoto/Manzano peppers has gotten quite a lot bigger than last time

How big are these peppers at full size?

Red Habanero with it's first pod producing. Might be more in the crowd that I haven't noticed!

Cobincho plant putting out pods & flowers

The DWC, all plants flowering. Pods might start to set, fingers crossed!

Some shots of the crowd: