Ohjay is doin' the Coco in 2018

Ohjay · Jan 3, 2018

The final variety then...
It's a Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Yellow.

I have to consider this another experiment. I've never done any overwintering or cutting back a plant.
The image above is from the beginning of november.

Yesterday the plant looked like this:

Seems it didn't want any rest, so now I'm putting it back under my lights. Hopefully I'll get some pods a lot earlier this year.

As for planting the seeds, I plan to do that this weekend unless something unforeseen happens.
Which brings me to two questions for you, dear reader.

Do you need to flush coco plugs to get rid of salt, just like the coco blocks?
Should the plugs also be wettened with water dosed with CalMag or will that fry the seeds?

Ohjay · Jan 6, 2018

Spent the morning getting the seeds in dirt and coco.

Now the impatient waiting begins...

NeedsWork · Jan 7, 2018

Ohjay said:
Now the impatient waiting begins...

The hardest part of the season.

That scorpion looks fantastic! What's your secret? It is going to be a monster this season.

Best of luck this year!

Malarky · Jan 7, 2018

Good luck with your season! I greatly enjoyed you glog and photography last time

Ohjay · Jan 8, 2018

NeedsWork said:
The hardest part of the season.

That scorpion looks fantastic! What's your secret? It is going to be a monster this season.

Best of luck this year!

Thanks!
Not sure if I have a secret, I barely know what I'm doing most of the time. Perhaps it's the mythical green thumb...
Or it's just genes in the plant because it was definitely one of my best producers ever. I'll see if I can dig up a photo of it from last season.

Malarky said:
Good luck with your season! I greatly enjoyed you glog and photography last time

Thanks!
I'll try to bring out the big boy camera at times for some more good photography

Ohjay · Jan 12, 2018

First hook goes to CGN 23209:

Going away for the weekend and am hoping to come home to more :pray:

As for the overwintered Moruga, it is now under lights and I did some more topping because it was getting a bit wild.
Kinda hard to see in this picture but there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of new growth at the nodes.

I did promise some images from last season of the Moruga and I managed to dig up a couple:

Definitely not the best images, but I didn't document last season very well.

NeedsWork · Jan 12, 2018

That's a happy plant! What are you using for dirt and light?

Ohjay · Jan 17, 2018

NeedsWork said:
That's a happy plant! What are you using for dirt and light?

Nothing fancy really.
Dirt is BioBizz Light Mix. The only reason I use it is because I have never had aphids or any other nasty critters with it.
Light is a Mars Hydro II 400: https://www.mars-hydro.com/led-grow-light/buy-mars-ii-400-led-grow-light-forsale
Nutrients might be interesting too and that is simply GHE FloraMato and FloraMicro.

Yesterday I came home from my weekend trip and had a lot of new hooks. 14 out of 20 varieties so far.

Since I planted two of each I'm still missing a lot of hooks plus none of the seeds planted in the coco plugs have germinated.

But that is old news.When I woke up today I had more hooks and even one from a coco plug.
Will take a new photo tomorrow I think.

As for the weekend, I spent it watching the Miracle in Minneapolis!

stettoman · Jan 17, 2018

Luck on the grow!

And I hope you aren't a hardcore Vikes fan. I grew up with them (I remember Norm Van Brocklin!) and they ain't nothin' but a heartache! Their "other" star receiver, Adam Thielen, is from my home town. I graduated high school with his Uncle Pat...

Chilidude · Jan 17, 2018

Ohjay said:
Nutrients might be interesting too and that is simply GHE FloraMato and FloraMicro.

That combo have been my go to coco grow nutrient for few years now, works just amazing.

Have had good success using only coco+airpots without any additives like vermiculite, but this year i was thinking of adding some perlite to my coco mix for better drainage, because coco already retains a lot of water by itself so adding vermiculite is kind of not needed in most situations depending your place of growing.

If you need any help mixing a working rations of ghe floramato/floramicro using coco as a growing medium, that have been working fine to me for a few years now, just ask away.

Genetikx · Jan 17, 2018

This is a good lookin grow and love seeing those ow's this time of year. Best of luck O!

Ohjay · Jan 18, 2018

stettoman said:
Luck on the grow!

And I hope you aren't a hardcore Vikes fan. I grew up with them (I remember Norm Van Brocklin!) and they ain't nothin' but a heartache! Their "other" star receiver, Adam Thielen, is from my home town. I graduated high school with his Uncle Pat...

Thanks!
Well.. I think I qualify as a hardcore Vikes fan since I have season tickets, live halfway across the world and still go to many of the home games (but not all, yet).
Hopefully the decades of heartache will end soon, but we'll just have to wait and see. With that said, I'm also a "new" fan. Only been following the Vikes since 2011, so I've missed most of the bad moments in Vikings history.

Chilidude said:
That combo have been my go to coco grow nutrient for few years now, works just amazing.

Have had good success using only coco+airpots without any additives like vermiculite, but this year i was thinking of adding some perlite to my coco mix for better drainage, because coco already retains a lot of water by itself so adding vermiculite is kind of not needed in most situations depending your place of growing.

If you need any help mixing a working rations of ghe floramato/floramicro using coco as a growing medium, that have been working fine to me for a few years now, just ask away.

Thanks!
I actually plan to follow Blisters recipe for everything coco related, which means sifting the coco to get rid of the finer grain to make the coco more airy and then I won't need perlite or vermiculite.
I'm also going to use his formula for nutrients and mainly use FloraMicro and FloraBloom.

Genetikx said:
This is a good lookin grow and love seeing those ow's this time of year. Best of luck O!

Thanks!
OW is really growing on me and I might try to do it with more plants at the end of this season.

Chilidude · Jan 18, 2018

Ohjay said:
Thanks!
I actually plan to follow Blisters recipe for everything coco related, which means sifting the coco to get rid of the finer grain to make the coco more airy and then I won't need perlite or vermiculite.
I'm also going to use his formula for nutrients and mainly use FloraMicro and FloraBloom.

I have never sifted the coco myself in maybe 3-4 years of growing in coco and the plants have grown very nicely and the plants have been full of pods in the end of the season, but of course Finnish weather makes it a bit of a challenge to ripen those said numerous pods in the end of the season.

However my rations for those nutrients have been:

Small plants in the beginning of season:
10ml micro/10ml mato added to 10 litres of water.

Bigger plants in the beginning of summer and growing/making chilis pod inside:
10ml micro/15ml mato added to 10 litres of water.

When you move the more mature plants outside to greenhouse and it is time to start flowering:
20ml Micro/30ml mato added to 10 litres of water and i keep this ration until the season is about to end.

When the outside season is about to end and all plants are starting to ripen their pods:
10ml micro/15ml mato added to 10 litres of water.

I have found out via extensive experimenting, that if you water the chilis with too strong fertilizer water mix, when growing in coco medium it will do more harm than good to the plant in overall pod production, as too strong fertilizer mix will saturate the coco medium over time.. That is how i found out, that i never should go over that 20ml micro/30ml mato ration in growing season.

Also in 2016 growing season i found out that, this stuff works great in coco growing:
https://www.amazon.com/BCuzz-Atami-Nutrition-Growth-Hydroponics/dp/B00K0G5I24

B'Cuzz Atami Coco Nutrition A & B

Pretty much overall the same as that ghe stuff, but it is about half the price and works with the same rations too. :rolleyes:

Ohjay · Jan 18, 2018

Chilidude said:
...

Great stuff, thanks!
Do you ever measure your water for pH & ec/tds/ppm after adding nutrients?

Also, do you start using nutrients straight away when the seeds have germinated or do you let them grow some leaves first?

Chilidude · Jan 18, 2018

Ohjay said:
Great stuff, thanks!
Do you ever measure your water for pH & ec/tds/ppm after adding nutrients?

Also, do you start using nutrients straight away when the seeds have germinated or do you let them grow some leaves first?

I have a bluelab truncheon ppm meter to test the fertilizer mix and i never had any trouble with water ph to speak of.

Now that you mentioned about the small seedlings, i first germinate them inside a mini greenhouse using a small rockwool cubes and just add plain water until their stem is straight, then start adding 5ml Micro/5ml mato per 10 litres of water(measured ec number of 0.6- 0.8 is good) inside the mini greenhouse for the rockwools to soak the fertilizer up.

Once you see the first real leaves starts to form in week or two and the small plants starts to grow some roots inside the rockwool, it is time to soak the coco medium with a 10ml micro/10ml mato fertilizer mix and move the small plants with the rockwool to the small pots with the fertilized coco medium.

Then you can start watering the small plants with the 10ml micro/10ml mato fertilizer mix until they are big enough to start flowering and then i just start fertilizing them with the 10ml micro/15ml mato mix until they are ready to go to the greenhouse in their final place.

This is how my small plants are right now with the plastic lid removed under a 120w led light:

Those beautiful rockwool cubes are so easy to transfer to the pods once the roots sets and i also bury the small seedling stems inside the coco, because the chili starts to grow roots along the buried stem.

Edit: Bought some perlite to mix with the coco medium and i will use that with the small plants to add some nice drainage to the coco medium to test how they like it.

Ohjay · Jan 20, 2018

Pretty decent germination rate, as usual. 27 out of 37 seeds have germinated so far and at least one of each variety except for the TMS Caramel.

A couple of them have started their true leaves already as well.

I also mixed up a batch of RO water and nutrients for the coco plants, but it might be a tad too nutrient rich at the moment. It's at ~550ppm (0.5 factor).
This whole eC/TDS thing is so confusing because most people only talk about eC or ppm but don't mention the factor or if it's in milli- or micro-siemens.
pH was good though at 5.8.

Another thing about the RO water that's bothering me is my "RO machine"... I thought I had pretty decent water pressure but I might have to rethink that.
It took me roughly an hour to get 5 liters of RO water... which will end up being a pain to fill my ~50 liter tank for the drip-system.

The OW is still doing quite well. Getting a lot of new growth and it's going to be a bushy plant this year I think:

I do have these yellow spots on the older leaves though, but I think it's just magnesium deficiency so I will feed it with some CalMag from now on.
I couldn't get rid of the old soil because the root ball was simply too compact so there is almost no nutrients in the pot.

Chilidude · Jan 21, 2018

I had those spots in the old leaves many times and they also may be a sign of too much watering, but i would not worry too much about anything, if the overall plant looks ok and it produces flowers\pods normally.

Trident chilli · Jan 21, 2018

Nice O/W soon be pushing out flowers ... all the best for your coco grown and a fruitful season

D3monic · Jan 21, 2018

Everything's looking great, best of luck this season