Hi all,
A complete newbie here - long time lurker, first time poster and undertaking my first real grow outside of a few plants on windowsill. Will swing by the Intro's in the next few days to say a proper Hi!
I live in the Wellington region of New Zealand, where it's just not overly warm most of the time.
(Around 22`c/70`f through summer days and 15`c/60`f or so over night, with too much wind. It's then 12`c/54`f in winter down to 0`c overnight, with way too much wind). Nights are pretty erratic, with frosts occurring when you think they shouldn't, and to add to it, we're often in drought for most of the summer. Much of the problem is that we're very much effected by microclimates, meaning from one place to another (even a 10 minutes drive apart) there's a fairly, sometimes dramatic, different set of humidity, temperature, frost, wind/wind chill factors - we've only recently bought the property, so am not sure of the specifics of where we are.
Basically, it's not great for peppers...
...so I thought I would take them purely indoors and eliminate many of the factors. Winter is coming, and being an impatient man, this will let me indulge the budding addiction as soon as I want to.
We've a pretty warm house so I'm taking advantage of that - even when it's single digit `c outside, both the garage and my office sit around 70`f-80`f. I'll be choosing which location, dependant on what my wife decides I am allowed to do, over the coming weeks.
I've started 4 varieties as an experiment, with results I am happy with to date:
Early Jalapeno
Chocolate fatali
Santa Fe Grande
Filius Blue
I'll be planting, likely over the next month, around 8 other varieties. Will give this lot a bit of time, first, to see how well I mess them up.
I've a bit of an unusual setup (?) to date (I think, anyway - not something I've seen) - had some cheap 14w or 18w panels lying around, which I used to use for microgreens, so I thought I'd give them a go. I've no idea what I am doing other than conceptually, so why not add to that potential for failure with a bit of something different on top?
Oncemy babies these seedlings are bigger, they'll go under 36 watt blue/red led single bulbs, which I've read on here have had fairly good success. They've been 'sprouted' for about 8-9 days now.
To start with, though, here's my 'grow room':
Here they are in their wee pyramid of light:
This was taken yesterday:
(Top left around clockwise: Early Jalapeno, Chocolate fatali, Santa Fe Grande, Filius Blue)
(Apologies for the average quality of photo - wasn't the best lighting in the room and the focus is not keen on the height of the subjects).
Not sure what the deal is with the Filius - there're two almost black plants and one fairly green on... will monitor it.
My main question at this point is: when should I separate them?
I over-seeded and got 100% germination... so, oh what a shame, I have to have more plants than I originally thought! They've big 3" jiffy's so there's a bit of room for movement around them, but I'm not sure of when to split so they are strong enough, but without having to tear the roots apart too much.
Any advice would be appreciated!
I'll keep popping updates in every few days or as/if things get interesting. All quite exciting for me, but it's not what many of you are used to in terms of volume - thanks for taking the time to have a look, none the less.
Great community here, by the way - you all seem exceptionally knowledgeable and friendly. Something hard to find.
- GS
A complete newbie here - long time lurker, first time poster and undertaking my first real grow outside of a few plants on windowsill. Will swing by the Intro's in the next few days to say a proper Hi!
I live in the Wellington region of New Zealand, where it's just not overly warm most of the time.
(Around 22`c/70`f through summer days and 15`c/60`f or so over night, with too much wind. It's then 12`c/54`f in winter down to 0`c overnight, with way too much wind). Nights are pretty erratic, with frosts occurring when you think they shouldn't, and to add to it, we're often in drought for most of the summer. Much of the problem is that we're very much effected by microclimates, meaning from one place to another (even a 10 minutes drive apart) there's a fairly, sometimes dramatic, different set of humidity, temperature, frost, wind/wind chill factors - we've only recently bought the property, so am not sure of the specifics of where we are.
Basically, it's not great for peppers...
...so I thought I would take them purely indoors and eliminate many of the factors. Winter is coming, and being an impatient man, this will let me indulge the budding addiction as soon as I want to.
We've a pretty warm house so I'm taking advantage of that - even when it's single digit `c outside, both the garage and my office sit around 70`f-80`f. I'll be choosing which location, dependant on what my wife decides I am allowed to do, over the coming weeks.
I've started 4 varieties as an experiment, with results I am happy with to date:
Early Jalapeno
Chocolate fatali
Santa Fe Grande
Filius Blue
I'll be planting, likely over the next month, around 8 other varieties. Will give this lot a bit of time, first, to see how well I mess them up.
I've a bit of an unusual setup (?) to date (I think, anyway - not something I've seen) - had some cheap 14w or 18w panels lying around, which I used to use for microgreens, so I thought I'd give them a go. I've no idea what I am doing other than conceptually, so why not add to that potential for failure with a bit of something different on top?
Once
To start with, though, here's my 'grow room':
Here they are in their wee pyramid of light:
This was taken yesterday:
(Top left around clockwise: Early Jalapeno, Chocolate fatali, Santa Fe Grande, Filius Blue)
(Apologies for the average quality of photo - wasn't the best lighting in the room and the focus is not keen on the height of the subjects).
Not sure what the deal is with the Filius - there're two almost black plants and one fairly green on... will monitor it.
My main question at this point is: when should I separate them?
I over-seeded and got 100% germination... so, oh what a shame, I have to have more plants than I originally thought! They've big 3" jiffy's so there's a bit of room for movement around them, but I'm not sure of when to split so they are strong enough, but without having to tear the roots apart too much.
Any advice would be appreciated!
I'll keep popping updates in every few days or as/if things get interesting. All quite exciting for me, but it's not what many of you are used to in terms of volume - thanks for taking the time to have a look, none the less.
Great community here, by the way - you all seem exceptionally knowledgeable and friendly. Something hard to find.
- GS
