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Powellbanger's Adelaidian Balcony

Hi All,
Thought I may as well start a grow log and show you my peppers and introduce myself a bit
 
I'm 26, live in Adelaide, South Australia and immigrated here from England in 2001.
I work for a major IT corporation as a Subject Matter Expert for a major Australian bank. My day to day activities are improving processes for things that don't actually matter and figuring out how to get pointless tasks completed quickly so that some guy in Sydney can do whatever unnecessary thing they wanted to do by close of business.
 
Due to my talent of being adequate at whatever I try instantly, this season has been the first time I've decided to give some plants a go and get the most out of my afternoon-sun facing balcony. I've not killed anything yet and peppers seem pretty easy- here we go!
 
This is my habanero. I bought this from a local hardware store as a seedling and it had 3 pairs of leaves on it. I bought it on Sunday 27th November so I've had it 9 weeks now. I took about 80% of the leaves off of it last week and there is a lot of new growth on it already. I trimmed it because it was growing into itself a bit and I wanted it to be a bit more V shaped with the leaves going out. It's the middle of summer here in Adelaide and if you look closely you can see it dropped many of it's blossoms today. It was 31 Celsius. 36 tomorrow but should be 25-30 and cloudy for the next week it should flower properly soon
 
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This was a gift that I received last week- an Ebony Fire. The fruit tastes amazing, really sweet. Got a nice heat to it as well but nothing crazy. The fruit starts black and then goes red. I'm going to aim to get it a bit taller then prune it into something that looks pretty
 
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These are my cayenne peppers that I started really late. These sprouted late December and I've been keeping just the bottom set of leaves and the newest growth on them. I'll get rid of them soon and leave just one of them but I wanted to see how the plant would react to only having one set of leaves and how it would grow doing this
 
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Lastly, these are my bolivian rainbows that just sprouted today. My girlfriend wanted me to make a chilli bonsai plant and these are the stereotype of chilli bonsais. I almost killed them today by putting them in the window and they completely dried out lol. 
 
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Hi Powelly, great to welcome another Aussie to THP.. yes even though you are a South Australian your still welcome ;)

Actually I have fond memories of SA I have family there.

Btw just wandering why you started cayenne seeds this late when you could by seedings pretty much anywhere that sells plants?

Good luck
 
Jase4224 said:
Hi Powelly, great to welcome another Aussie to THP.. yes even though you are a South Australian your still welcome ;)

Actually I have fond memories of SA I have family there.

Btw just wandering why you started cayenne seeds this late when you could by seedings pretty much anywhere that sells plants?

Good luck
 
Heya,
I wanted to give them a go from seed as it's more "fun"
 
I'll be able to move them indoors during winter. However the lowest mean temperature for my area is 7 Celsius in July and I've never seen the temperature in my car below 5 Celsius so I'm hoping I can just leave them outside all year
 
Powelly said:
 
Heya,
I wanted to give them a go from seed as it's more "fun"
 
I'll be able to move them indoors during winter. However the lowest mean temperature for my area is 7 Celsius in July and I've never seen the temperature in my car below 5 Celsius so I'm hoping I can just leave them outside all year
True it's more fun and the experience doesn't hurt either!

You can leave them outside no worries as long as they get sun preferably morning. It gets down to 1-2 here some nights and mine spring back in September.
 
So it seems that 8/12 of the seeds have sprouted. Not too bad considering that I just put them in standard potting mix. I put the seedling tray in a kitty litter tray and filled that a bit with water to make a pseudo wicking bed. 
 
One or two of them are growing a bit weird however. Plenty of redundancy in them though so it's a non-issue as I'm not growing for profit
 
Jase4224 said:
Are they heated? 28 degrees C will pop them all up.
 
It was the temperature naturally when they all were planted lol. 
Perhaps in the future I'll be more careful with it- no need for now
 
If it keeps a consistent temp of 26-28 you can expect them to start popping up within a week. You can get cheap heat mats with thermostats for reptiles.
 
The new bolivian rainbow seedlings are now showing their first pair of leaves
 
The weather has been overcast in Adelaide in the latter half of this week unfortunately
The cayenne plants are all going good as normal
The habanero plant is showing signs of a calcium deficiency - new leaves are growing round and a bit curly. I'm going to trim the plant so it only has 6 main branches and next time it's due for a watering I'll add in some calcium along with compost
 
Does calcium work in a foliar spray? Should I remove all that new growth that's affected?
 
Yesterday was really hot and it got up to 44 Celsius on my balcony
The cayennes dried out a bit and were wilting when I got home, some of the leaves are really burned as well! Pretty crazy but they are all alive
 
The good news is it seems that the habanero isn't dropping it's blossoms any more and is very close to opening up
 
Powelly said:
Yesterday was really hot and it got up to 44 Celsius on my balcony
The cayennes dried out a bit and were wilting when I got home, some of the leaves are really burned as well! Pretty crazy but they are all alive
 
The good news is it seems that the habanero isn't dropping it's blossoms any more and is very close to opening up
Your Hab may take a while but when the weather cools it should pod up. Don't be too disappointed if it's flowers drop for now.

Lol Perth had fires two days ago now it's constant rain! Yesterday was 19. Weird weather..
 
Habanero is pretty large now and the flowers have almost opened
Nothing has really happened with the cayennes but I got rid of all but one of them. They are a bit taller.
 
Repotted the bolivian rainbow into a self watering pot. I was going to make one myself from a few of the guides here but when shopping for parts I found a pot that does the same thing perfectly. There was a lot of shit ones there too though. You also fill this one from the side and the hole also acts as the overflow. Hopefully mosquitoes don't like to lay their eggs in hydroponic solution.
 
I filled the container with premium potting mix with some slow release fertiliser that doesn't seem to do much at all (Osmocote- my habanero still yearns for nitrogen) and then mixed in 5L of vermiculite. Container is about 300mm across the top
 
I'll post pictures of plants when it's a bit sunnier and the habenero has some flowers
 
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