Trent's 2014 Grow Log - COLD COLD COLD

Love all the bhuts and naga morichs on there!

You have a great list. 28 ow is great. Good luck Trent.

yeah the overwinters were babied pretty good this winter. EPIC battle against aphids, took 3 rounds of qty1500 ladybugs before I finally became victorious. Trick was isolating the room completely (looks like a germ lab now, everything is sealed off 100% with plastic and duct tape), and of course, timing when to start feeding the ladybugs artificially.
 

 

 

 

4-8-2014 pics
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rest of the images here;
 
http://imgur.com/a/xSsWK#0

OCD Chilehead said:

You have a great list. 28 ow is great. Good luck Trent.

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When I lose an overwinter it makes me sad. I've got enough CFL light in there, 12x 150 w, and 12x 200 watt equivalent, that it looks like the sun is in my basement... it's maintained them pretty good. 
 
I also have a self contained oil space heater in there which keeps it a nice 80-85 farenheit. 
 
Now that the sprouts are growing up and I've gathered what pure ripe pods I could from the overwinters (for seed stock), I've been putting an oscillating fan on them 8-10 hours a day on medium.
 
The 4 (soon to be 5) overwinters that I managed to kill all died from the same cause - overwatering. 
 
Now I "lift" each pot up to feel if there's any doubt. Sometimes the top 1-2" of soil will dry out but leave the bottom completely saturated - a phenomenon of the mix I'm using that I wasn't prepared for. (Just miracle grow and shults, the shults stuff fares better).
 
 

Spicegeist said:

Love all the bhuts and naga morichs on there!

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Thanks! 
 
Last year I went overboard on the ultrahots and ended up with a couple *thousand* pods north of 1m scoville... most I dehyrdated in to flake, some I gifted.  It's about a lifetime supply for me.
 
Acid reflux kind of changed my palate a little, too, I can't handle the same level of "gut burn" that I used to. I'll still binge occasionally on Butch T tacos and Moruga jerky, don't get me wrong, but man do I pay the price for it heavy.
 
This year I'm filling out some paperwork and getting inspected so I can actually sell things (properly and legally). Not interested in selling hot sauce / etc, don't have enough talent, knowledge, or time there yet. But I'd like to sell some plants and pods, at least. You know. Spread the heat.
 
This year I changed things up and balanced it out better, lots of milder stuff in the mix this year.
 
I also changed seed supplier to Judy, who helped in that regard with the huge bag of freebies she tossed in with my big seed order. 
 
Stuff I'd never HEARD of before!
 
So I'm going to try to be a more "well rounded" pepper head this year and appreciate all of the peppers - mild ones included.
 

Thats a bummer on the OWs that died. It made me sad last year when the season ended. Let them naturally die. Saved 5 for OW. They didn't make it. Looks like your making up for it this year. Great photo log you got there. Thanks for sharing.

Man I tell you, the hardest part of the year for me is late fall. The ground plants made it to October 25th last year.
 

 

 

 
Between the Blight that got my tomato plants (heavy rain early season.. was inevitable)... and the first frost.. ugh.
 
Whenever I look at those photos it feels like I got kicked in the nads.
And, I don't feel TOO bad about the overwinters. The first time I tried was 2012-2013, and I lost all but two! I'd dug up and brought in a dozen, and by the next spring I had 10 brown broken stalks and 2 which *BARELY* survived. They never really recovered fully, but I *did* manage to get pure pods off of them this winter (2013-2014).

Ack. I left my oscillating fan on too long today.  Forgot to shut it off before I went to karate tonight... so it was on 12 hours total.. and the paper cups dried out. Like BONE dry.

Sprouts leaves started wilting.. which combined with the wind of the fan... not good.

Hoping I didn't kill any off. Avoided the temptation to deluge them tonight, but gave them a good sip of water. 
 
I lost a white bhut last night for reasons unknown. 
 
Hoping I don't wake up tomorrow and discover plant-Armageddon in the basement.

The 28 Overwinters moved outside for their first taste of real sunlight since 2013... crossing fingers. I watered them last night so I'm hoping they don't wilt.
 
They're looking pretty fugly right now.. lots of bare branches.

 

 

 
And the predators have already moved in....
 

Friday update. Can't believe how fast these are growing now that they've all been transplanted.
 
I haven't lost any more from TPS but I'm going to do a cull soon on slow / no growers.
 
Album here for 4-11-2014
http://imgur.com/a/WhBEc#0
 
Some selected images...
 
Smokin Eds' Carolina Reaper

 
Naga Morich

 
Butch-T

 
Douglah

 
7-pod Long (Roots already trying to break out of paper cup...!)

 
Misc. Habaneros

 
The Jalapeno tray (well, one of them). Next year I start Jalapenos and Cayennes about NOW, not 4 weeks before NOW.

 
Misc 7-pods

 
Brown Moruga

 
Monster Naga

First off, I love the glog.  Great looking plants, great looking selection.
 
I know of one other person who lost a chocolate hab OW other than me.  Thankfully, that was the only one I lost.  Primo looked rough for a while too.
 
I too will never use Jiffy soil again for potting plants.  I do like the pellets, but once they get a set of trues, I am potting up to 3 1/2 inch pots.
 
I also don't like the peat pots.  They tend to suck the water away from my plants and they get nasty looking on the outside.  Plastic 3 1/2s are cheap and reusable.
 
If you like some of my pods and we both have extra, we could do some trading if you like?  I've been wanting to try the big sun hab to see if I like it enough to plant and I see I have quite a few habs that you aren't growing.  The great people on here turned me onto some very good peppers and I like passing it on.
 
Good luck on your grow this year.
 
I also feel your pain on tomatoes last season.  BER got me for the first time ever.  Still managed to can 60 quart I believe, but I had 4 rows of tomatoes lol.

HillBilly Jeff said:

First off, I love the glog.  Great looking plants, great looking selection.
 
I know of one other person who lost a chocolate hab OW other than me.  Thankfully, that was the only one I lost.  Primo looked rough for a while too.
 
I too will never use Jiffy soil again for potting plants.  I do like the pellets, but once they get a set of trues, I am potting up to 3 1/2 inch pots.
 
I also don't like the peat pots.  They tend to suck the water away from my plants and they get nasty looking on the outside.  Plastic 3 1/2s are cheap and reusable.
 
If you like some of my pods and we both have extra, we could do some trading if you like?  I've been wanting to try the big sun hab to see if I like it enough to plant and I see I have quite a few habs that you aren't growing.  The great people on here turned me onto some very good peppers and I like passing it on.
 
Good luck on your grow this year.
 
I also feel your pain on tomatoes last season.  BER got me for the first time ever.  Still managed to can 60 quart I believe, but I had 4 rows of tomatoes lol.

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Thanks!
 
Yeah I'm not doing the peat cups again. I did them last year and forgot about the mold issues. They also prune the damn roots instead of letting them circle a little.  Next year I'm doing conventional 3" plastic cups, then migrating up to 1 gal if needed.
 
I've already got 2 of my Roma plants in #3 pots this year. I started them a weeee bit early (considering I'm not planting out until mid-May). They're going to take over my grow room by then. I swear I'll go down there one day and those Roma's will be saying "FEEEEED ME SEYMORE"... 
 
Back to those paper/peat pots; on an overwinter I had which died, when I pulled it out for the autopsy I'd found that the original 5" paper cup it was in was no longer really there (had degraded), but the roots never grew out and occupied the rest of the 17" pot I'd transplanted it in to. I didn't have that problem in the ones that went in the dirt garden. Those had extensive root systems. I'm speculating there was a PH imbalance from the peat pot degrading OR from roots which it pruned decomposing - kind of made a 'root shield' in the bigger pot.
 
On the flip side, the plants that went directly to ground stayed in their cups, had no transplant shock whatsoever, and grew to be MONSTERS. I had 14' high tomato plants (they folded over on themselves, but MAN they got huge).
 
I'm 10000% up for trading / swapping when I get these blooming and isolate them. I'm going to try to build up pure seed stock for future grows and will undoubtedly have excess.
 
Anyone local to Central Illinois who wants to pick up some freebies, let me know. I have room for 120-140 peppers, tops, and have over 280 sitting here in 3" pots. 

Changed my lights from 12/12 to 15.5/8.5 today to hurry them along some. Planning on a plant out date of May 10-11 or 17-18. 

I like what I see here!
 
Good luck this season, plenty of peeps up your way growing in the cooler temps. My brother is one, and seems to do well, maybe even better than me here in the heat.
 
I used Jiffy pellets this season, and intend to go another route next season. They stay too wet, I cut the mesh off, but they rot the stems if ones not careful.

TrentL said:

Changed my lights from 12/12 to 15.5/8.5 today to hurry them along some. Planning on a plant out date of May 10-11 or 17-18. 

Click to expand...

      Love your glog Trent,I'm in the same boat on plant out date.Had to uppot some today with 6 weeks to go.

Dew when I transplant, I'm kind of a hard-ass about it. Sprouts are so resilient when they're only sitting on the first pair of true leaves that it's damn hard to kill them.
 
I use 72-cell burpee trays (experiments with jiffy failed), cut the individual pods out as I transplant. I slit them up the side, carefully take the mass of peat & root in to hand. Then, over a bucket, holding the base of the sprout (gingerly), I knock off as much peat as I can. 

Peat is hydrophobic when dry and hydrophilic when wet, not exactly what you want around your roots. GREAT for germination but sucks for long term growing. So I don't want any excess peat making it in to the first transplant pot; creating a wet or dry zone around the roots is something I try to avoid.
 
So I flick the roots (gently) over and over again until the peat all falls away - or mostly so. it helps if you let the pots get semi-dry as it'll mostly just fall away from the roots. If they're wet, it clumps, and then becomes a real pain in the butt to try to get excess knocked off without damaging the roots.

At that point I'll hold the plant in the cup to size it, put some potting soil in the cup to where I want the roots to sit. Then I hold the stem as I carefully put in potting soil around the roots, trying to keep them spread out. When the cup is about 1/2 full I gently tamp down to firm up the soil a little, then fill it to the top, and tamp down again leaving about a 3/8" depression below the rim of the cup (so I can gauge water pours easier). I try to get the roots /stem as deep as I can while keeping the true leaves about 1/4 to 1/2 inch off the surface of the soil. 
 
If I have more sprouts than the next size pot up, I'll cut all of the sprouts of a series out of the pods, lay them on the table side by side, roots exposed, to compare root structures. I select out what to transplant based on root strength, not leaf size.
 
Once I have them secure in their new home I put them in a drip pan and over-water the living crap out of them. 

I've never had transplant shock doing this, even exposing the roots temporarily under strong grow lights.  This year I lost only 1 of 284 transplants. Last year I lost none. I killed a white Bhut by pinching the stem too hard.
 
After that initial transplant and dousing, I water often enough to keep them moist. I tend to water more often with less water, instead of going too long and dousing them heavy. I found drying out sprouts too much will cause them to grow sluggishly, turn pale green, and wilt.  If you keep them a consistent moisture they tend to do much better without grow/stall/grow phases.
 
Two weeks in I start adding in nutes, 4-8-4 (diluted 50% lower than recommended).  Two weeks later I go full strength 4-8-4. A week before they go outside I hit them with 12-8-8 to pack in some nitrogen for an early boost - always get some leaf drop when I take them outside as they lose the broad shade leaves pretty quick. The extra nitrogen helps them spring back FAST and bush out.
 
After they are in the ground I hit them with liquid 12-8-8 two weeks and one month in, then switch to 8-12-12 when I let them start podding up.
 
This system worked pretty good last year and I had a hell of a good harvest from mid summer through October.

Sounds like you have it dialed in!
 
Good info there!
 
This season has been different for me, as I made major changes in my garden over the fall|winter. It probably hurt this years grow, but will help over the long term.
 
Keep it green!

Nice glog! Inspirational grow list too!

Thanks guys. I'm in my third "serious" year of growing. I'd dabbled before but in 2012 "sh*t got real, yo". (That's when I got in to the superhots) 2013 was a big year, but I went WAY the hell overboard with supers.
 
By the end of the year I'd thought that I'd done permanent damage to my intestinal tract. Finally got righted out over this winter, but I was nervous there for a while.  
 
I'm still going to grow more than my rightful share of 1+ mil scoville, but I'm trying to "expand my pepper horizons" and gain a more diverse palate. There's just so many damn varieties! So when the time comes I'm hoping to do quite a bit of swapping this year to try some stuff I didn't grow.
 
This year I'm also trying to learn more about the "science" side of things, keep better records, etc. I've got a soil test kit for the macro-nutrients, but still learning about some of the minors.  Been reading through other glogs trying to get ideas. I can already tell some of the things I want to change up for next year (and I'm not even in the dirt this year... sigh).
 
First, my grow room is pretty good size but not very well organized. Next year I'm doing shelves instead of tables. Trimming my overwinters back further so they're not so high maintenance. Changing from CFL's to LED's. Ditching peat paper pots and going with normal plastic ones on the 10/20 trays. And... hopefully, the big one: Try to make my own soil. Buying potting soil at walmart or wherever, is frigging expensive as hell.  Especially when I run 30x 5 gallon pots every year to supplement the ground space.
 
I'm wanting to be a bit more self sufficient so I need to learn how to compost. We live in the country so finding horse or cow crap is as simple as driving up the road to the neighbors. But I'm a city kid, this growing stuff is still pretty new to me. Before I moved out here the only "country" thing about me was I liked hunting, fishing, shooting guns, and driving my muscle car fast on the back roads...
 
All the "work" type country stuff is new to me.
2012 was the year I discovered I had a latent and previously unknown "green thumb".
 
Garden was on a hillside, gentle slope, and I terraced it gently and built a "lock" system with PVC. So one row fills up.. overflows to the next... to the next.. etc.

 

 
This is my 14 year old boy (now 16), 6' tall, standing in front of my row of sunflowers that finally topped out at 14' tall.
 

 
Built my own cuke and pea supports with bamboo...
 

 
 
Regarding soil; 
 
When I moved out here, this was the lake behind my house.
 

 
It's slowly filled in over the years from ag runoff, and someday will make a heck of a garden area.
 
(I'm sitting in a spot that would be in the right of the frame on the first photo; it's just a field with a stream now....)
 

 
I'm just glad THIS crap is over.
 

 
Random Garden Buddha pic. Wife got him for me in 2012.
 

 
2013 we upgraded his digs a little.
 

 
Random dog pic.
 
This is my pup Marley, with my 4th grade daughter Zen.