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idosimon's 2012-2013 Hydroponic Indoor Bahamian Goat Pepper SCROG

Time to kick off my very first glog! This is going to be something special and the first time somebody has ever done something like this that is was well documented with plenty of high quality pictures! This glog will be periodical and less comprehensive than my glog over at xPonics, but you can still expect a lot of activity on here!

I'm going to be growing this pepper indoors and hydroponically in my room. The setup I will be using is going to be a DWC bubble bucket with a 250w MH for vegetative and a 250w HPS for flowering.

For those of you who don't know what a SCROG is, it stands for Screen of Green. It is a technique used by cannabis growers with the aim of increasing surface area and leveling the canopy. How one does it is to install a chickenwire screen or make your own screen. You top the plant so that it has many main branches. However, instead of letting it grow bushy, you train the branches up into and around the screen, creating a "screen of green". I'm not going to include pictures of cannabis doing this because it may be NSFW for some people, and I aim to keep this thread SFW. But you can do some googling to get an idea of what I am talking about.

By doing this, one essentially creates an even canopy of (in this case) leaves, since I'm assuming the peppers will grow under the screen. This will allow me to bring the light in closer, giving the plants more energy. Hopefully this will give me a higher yield, but it may just give me larger peppers. I will be using a "U" shape screen for this, to maximize my area in relationship to the usable light I have.

I will keep the plant in a vegetative state until the screen is either 60%-80% full (I haven't decided yet, with cannabis it should be 60% because the plant stretches a lot in flowering but I am unsure how much peppers will stretch in flowering. If anyone has any insight to this, it would be greatly appreciated!)

My parts list is as follows:

1. DWC Bucket (1)
2. Hydroton
3. Rapid Rooters for germination (1)
4. Bahamian Goat pepper seeds (3)
5. Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Grow (1)
6. Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Bloom (1)
7. Superthrive (1)
8. Sunblaze 23" 23 watt T5 6500K (1)
9. 18 watt CFL 6500K with reflective fixture (2)
10. 250 watt MH with reflective fixture and ballast (1)
11. 250 watt HPS with reflective fixture and ballast (1)
12. Ponics Pump (1)(A testing unit graciously provided for me by Zero Mile Farms)
13. Nikon D40x and photoshop (1)
14. iPhone 5 and Snapseed (1)

I think that is all of the components to this grow, but I will update it if I forgot anything.

Now for pictures!!

Here are the seeds, provided to me by windchicken:
h7Y3O.jpg


And here are the sprouted seedlings, as of 12/24:

og0MF.jpg
 
Click to expand...
Jamison said:
How do you plan on keeping this vegging?
Click to expand...

I'm going to be keeping it in a 18/6 light cycle with the MH while only giving it the grow solution. Once I want to flower, I will start reducing the length of the day by 2 hours per day until it reaches either 14 or 12 hours of light, I can't decide which one yet. I will also be adding bloom solution during this phase, which will signal the plant to start flowering.
 
Pepper plants veg and bloom all at the same time. There is no certain photo period which will signal flowering.
 
Jamison said:
Pepper plants veg and bloom all at the same time. There is no certain photo period which will signal flowering.
Click to expand...

Do you have a source for that? Because I've always thought that each plant has a circadian rhythm of light that they follow. Either way, the grow solution without bloom should be enough.
 
Well then if peppers are day neutral, then the grow solution will still be enough to at least keep the blooms from either forming or pollinating. I will also be pruning the blooms until the plant gets to the screen.
 
Very nice. I've grown many superhots, but not yet the Butch T... I have seed, but am not yet sure if I will give it a go. Last year I grew a Douglah x Butch T that was divine...
 
I think this sounds interesting. I know pepper plants don't react to light like cannabis does. Hell, you can throw cannabis into flower without a veg. phase just by starting the seed right into a 12/12 cycle. There is a lot we can learn though from the cannabis growers. In fact, there is book called TLO by a guy named REV. Anyone interested in growing ANYTHING organically would benefit from that book. Tons of great information in there.
 
Kramer Chids said:
I think this sounds interesting. I know pepper plants don't react to light like cannabis does. Hell, you can throw cannabis into flower without a veg. phase just by starting the seed right into a 12/12 cycle. There is a lot we can learn though from the cannabis growers. In fact, there is book called TLO by a guy named REV. Anyone interested in growing ANYTHING organically would benefit from that book. Tons of great information in there.
Click to expand...

Hm, I'll definitely take a look at that book, thanks for the recommendation! Although I'm not growing my hydroponic plants organically, I am trying to be a bit more organic oriented with my outside soil based garden.
 
UPDATE: I thinned out the other two seeds that sprouted, so now I am left with a single seedling. This is it on 12/28, after 4 days of growth since it sprouted:

jdruY.jpg


And here is a top view:

0WhMd.jpg


Sorry for the low quality iPhone pictures, they should improve greatly once I bust out my DSLR :D
 
Will be following along. Many things (ie techniques and basic grow know-how) can be brought across from growing "other" plants and in fact there are a lot of very knowledgeable growers and great articles pertaining to those "other" plants. If you are bringing those skills (especially knowledge of light colour temps nutrient requirements and root zone health) across then you should have no troubles growing some great Chilli's.
However be aware that certain things (such as light cycles to induce flowering, and flushing of nutrients for the end of the grow etc) will not translate across at all.
Best of luck looks like you are off to a great start. Make sure that little seedling is getting some air movement to thicken that stem up and keep the air circulating in the grow space.
 
Trippa said:
Will be following along. Many things (ie techniques and basic grow know-how) can be brought across from growing "other" plants and in fact there are a lot of very knowledgeable growers and great articles pertaining to those "other" plants. If you are bringing those skills (especially knowledge of light colour temps nutrient requirements and root zone health) across then you should have no troubles growing some great Chilli's.
However be aware that certain things (such as light cycles to induce flowering, and flushing of nutrients for the end of the grow etc) will not translate across at all.
Best of luck looks like you are off to a great start. Make sure that little seedling is getting some air movement to thicken that stem up and keep the air circulating in the grow space.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know that the nute flushes are pretty much bs, and from this thread I've learned more about the light cycles. And good call on the air movement, I totally blanked on that.
 

UPDATE:

Here are my peppers as of 1/16:
J61psPB.jpg


waWy5lU.jpg


And here they are as of 1/19:
ugO4tqb.jpg


You can see the second set of true leaves coming in, however I am worried that this is growing too slowly. I know that hot peppers, especially chinense grow a lot more slowly than other plants such as basil, but should they be growing this slowly? There are no roots poking out of the cube yet. I try to keep it moist, however I'm not home all the time so it does dry out a lot.

Any suggestions on making it grow faster or is this considered a normal rate of growth for something such as this? It's about 2-3 inches away from a T5 light.
 
Looking good Ido!

I found this pik in my last year's grow log of the seed tray where the Goats started out...Since I didn't use lights or heat mats, all my seeds were much slower to germinate than yours, but it may be useful to see the progress of the Goats relative to the other varieties. As you can see, at the one-month mark the Goats had not even hooked, while several of the others were already reaching for the sun.

P2250004.jpg


I believe your babies are right on schedule....
 
windchicken said:
Looking good Ido!

I found this pik in my last year's grow log of the seed tray where the Goats started out...Since I didn't use lights or heat mats, all my seeds were much slower to germinate than yours, but it may be useful to see the progress of the Goats relative to the other varieties. As you can see, at the one-month mark the Goats had not even hooked, while several of the others were already reaching for the sun.

P2250004.jpg


I believe your babies are right on schedule....
Click to expand...

My plant has actually been growing quite a bit quicker the past couple of days. I don't know if its just reassurance from your post or not, but I have noticed an increased rate of growth. I can even see a small white root poking out of the cube. I'm guessing that in a couple of days to a week I will transfer the plant into my DWC.

Here are more pictures from today. Imgur seems to have compressed the colors, but they look much more green and vivid in real life than in the pictures here. I'll oversaturate them next time to compensate for it

I98xwEO.jpg


nA7ICKq.jpg


And my favorite picture from today:

AxSS2l1.jpg
 
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