2019 - The Farm

BlackFatalii · Jan 15, 2019

An impressive list! Good luck with your 2019 season!

TrentL · Jan 15, 2019

BlackFatalii said:
An impressive list! Good luck with your 2019 season!

Thanks! It's going to be interesting, for sure.

Vast majority of these types are going to be in this, we'll get anti-thrip/aphid/etc screen on the sides when they go outdoors. Just the screen alone is like 3k, pretty big part of my available budget this year.

Going to build tables and cover them with sturdy hog fence, try to make it a bit easier on my back (and reduce the amount of 6mm irrigation tubing)

SpeakPolish · Jan 15, 2019

And he is back. Better than ever

TrentL · Jan 15, 2019

SpeakPolish said:
And he is back. Better than ever

Well that's to be determined. But the infrastructure and soil mix equipment will make this a LOT easier on me this year.

Spent over 20 grand on soil mix equipment, had to rewire the big garage at the farm to handle the load. Other than test that it turns on, I haven't used it yet. Soon! We'll be busting up some coco coir blocks soon.

On another note, we've got everyone seed orders ready now to send out, took a little longer than I thought it would. We missed the mail cutoff today, our post office closes a little early. But now we've got some packed inventory ready to go as well, wife and I counted out about 10,000 seeds over the last two days, need to find a faster way of doing that. All told I've got over 458,000 seeds in inventory (a *lot* of that is vegetables though). And that's not counting beans (which aren't counted) or most of the pepper seed inventory (which also 95% of hasn't been counted).

Need a damn seed counting machine.

The non-pepper list is also very long! If anyone is interested I can post up all the other goofy stuff we're growing.

Zippy · Jan 15, 2019

The scale is mind boggling for someone who does everything by hand. I'm wishing you the best in this upcoming season. This will be one to watch.

TrentL · Jan 15, 2019

Zippy said:
The scale is mind boggling for someone who does everything by hand. I'm wishing you the best in this upcoming season. This will be one to watch.

Outside soil mixing (this year) we still DO everything by hand. Water, seed, transplant, plant out, stake up, etc.. all by hand.

I managed 3200 pepper plants last year, looking to do about the same. Last year the big hang-ups on doing the isolation seed crop was by the time we got the high tunnel done, temps were high enough I was getting flower drop, so no joy on isolated seeds. The other big HUGE problem was mixing soil for the pot-up to 15 gallon pots, no way in hell I could mix that much soil by hand. My soil mix equipment showed up too late to be meaningful for last year.

But.. it's there this year. So I'm not intimidated by the prospect of needing some 20 cubic yards of potting soil. That's just an afternoon of work.

karoo · Jan 16, 2019

Good luck for 2019! I will be watching and following.

What is the endgame for all those peppers.?

Trident chilli · Jan 16, 2019

Looks like you are really going to give your plants a great start with your new soil mixer .... all the very best and what a list you have for 2019. Customers at the local farmers market are going to have a very wide choice

HydroPepper · Jan 16, 2019

2018 was a fascinating read, I'm sure 2019 will be the same if not better! Following with a keen eye...

Good luck with everything!

Have the new boreholes been completed (mentioned last year) to help with the volume of watering required later this season?
And how many days since the last incident?

m1hagen · Jan 16, 2019

Good luck with everything Trent. I hope you don't go through all the problems you had last year. I'll be watching!

TrentL · Jan 16, 2019

karoo said:
Good luck for 2019! I will be watching and following.

What is the endgame for all those peppers.?

Vast majority are for isolated seed production. We'll be selecting a dozen or so varieties across the heat range for market / wholesale / internet sales. Only ones for sure on the volume plant-out list this year are Aleppo, Tekne Dolmasi, MOA scotch bonnet, Habanero, and Reaper (or some hybrid thereof).

Trident chilli said:
Looks like you are really going to give your plants a great start with your new soil mixer .... all the very best and what a list you have for 2019. Customers at the local farmers market are going to have a very wide choice

Of the 200+ types we're growing most will be in isolation. I'll be selling excess pepper, cucumber, and tomato plants off at the earliest markets. We'll plant a dozen or so varieties out in to the dirt in quantity, the rest will be growing for seed stock. Goal is to end 2019 with 200+ individual varieties on the web store in USDA certified organic seed.

HydroPepper said:
2018 was a fascinating read, I'm sure 2019 will be the same if not better! Following with a keen eye...

Good luck with everything!

Have the new boreholes been completed (mentioned last year) to help with the volume of watering required later this season?
And how many days since the last incident?

The well is dug, pump still has to go in, pump house has to be built, 8 irrigation manifolds have to be put together, 120' of underground electrical trenched, and ~1600 linear feet of 3" 20' pipe still has to be acquired and buried. LOTS of work on irrigation this year ahead of me. First priority is getting high tunnels built, but as soon as I cover them in plastic I'm gonna need water, so it's also a very high priority to get all my ducks in a row on irrigation. Last year's manifold didn't survive the winter, our first hard freeze hit so fast I was still busy with teardown and had a bunch of pipes freeze and crack.

m1hagen said:
Good luck with everything Trent. I hope you don't go through all the problems you had last year. I'll be watching!

You and me both!!!! I had my fill of problems last year. This year has to be easier. I can't physically get through another year like last year. Damn near ended up in the hospital, lost 13% of my body mass and my hair was falling out in clumps by September. I went from 186 lbs to 162 lbs, and I started out the year lean and muscular, so by the end of the season I was losing a lot of muscle mass. It took me over two months to get back up to ~180 lbs.

Going to update the list soon, once I pick up some additional seeds from Justin. Started my cart last night on his store. Will be pushing 300 varieties once I fill in some blank spots w/ that order.

TrentL · Jan 16, 2019

Added non-peppers to original post. Probably be talking about some of them at some point.

I'm probably not running many experiments this year, with the volume of stuff, and just me and wife working the farm this year, won't be time to handle any tracked experiments / data collection.

m1hagen · Jan 16, 2019

That list is insane. Good luck.

TrentL · Jan 16, 2019

m1hagen said:
That list is insane. Good luck.

The worst part is recordkeeping, to remain compliant with national organic program. I have to track seed-to-sale on every-damn-thing.

I've got to track every last thing done to each variety; when it was ordered, when it was received, when it's seeded, how much was seeded (and how much remains), when it's transplanted, every fertilizer or amendment used in the ground it's in, daily field observation log (I accomplish this by taking pictures periodically, mostly), when it's harvested, amount harvested, how / if / when / who cleans it, when it's transported, how it's transported, who it was sold to, how much was sold and when, etc.

At the annual audit, they will randomly pick several varieties and I have to walk them through the entire history of that from where I ordered the seed through who bought it, and everything in between.

So the biggest problem with doing a large variety of stuff isn't necessarily the work of growing it, but tracking all of it. Using excel because mostly it'll be cut & paste.

Orekoc · Jan 16, 2019

Wow! I had no idea that it was this complicated. By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Side note, just got an e-mail that my seeds are on the way from you! Thank you.

TrentL · Jan 16, 2019

Orekoc said:
Wow! I had no idea that it was this complicated. By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Side note, just got an e-mail that my seeds are on the way from you! Thank you.

You betcha! My wife got more hours on seed packing than I did, so she deserves the lions share of the credit.

I did, however, most definitely win the "most snot" award. Even with a respirator, which admittedly was ill-fitting due to my beard, I managed to lose about a gallon of snot doing the ultrahot seeds.

My wife, apparently, is fully immune to pepper dust, as she didn't so much as sneeze ONCE, without a mask.

Hell I walked by the table last night and my mouth started burning. I have no idea how she can hover over a big bowl of 20,000 ultrahot seeds breaking up seed from placentas, and not so much as sneeze or sniffle. Meanwhile, our kids, which were totally isolated from the seed counting activities upstairs, were sneezing and coughing.

Anyway, hats off to the missus, because she's got a much higher tolerance for airborne superhot particles than I do.

TrentL · Jan 16, 2019

Ordered another batch of seeds from Justin. Brings me up to 215 distinct varieties (after eliminating dupes in the list where multiple seed sources)

7 Pot Brain Strain Chocolate AU
7 Pot Bubblegum (BBG7) Bhut Chocolate
7 Pot Bubblegum (BBG7) x Apocalypse Scorpion (No Calyx)
7 Pot Cinder F3
7 Pot Douglah
7 Pot Jonah
7 Pot Jonah Yellow X SB
7 Pot Lucy
7 Pot Nebru
7 Pot Primo Chocolate
7 Pot SR Strain
7JPN
Aji Pineapple
Apocalypse Scorpion Chocolate
Bahamian Beast Mustard Stinger F2
Bahamian Goat
Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Giant Chocolate
Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Rust
Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Solid Gold
Black Pearl
Brazilian Brain Strain Chocolate
Brown Reaper Cross
Devil's Nagabrains Chocolate
Elysium Oxide Scotch Bonnet
Fatalii Chocolate
Genghis Kahn's Brain
Habanero El Remo
Habanero Roatan Pumpkin
Jigsaw x Moruga
Jonah's Yellow Brain
Machu Picchu
Mako Akokosrade
Monkey Face Red
Nagabrains Chocolate
Negro de Valle
Pimenta Black Bhut
Sandra's Giant Orange (Long Pheno)
SB7J Yellow
Scotch Bonnet Sweet Moruga Brown
Scotch Brains (7 Pot Pheno)
Skunk Chocolate
Tepin x Lemon Drop
UBSC x SB
Vallero
WHP 027

I think that's it for the list building this year. That'll be a handful to keep track of.

High tunnel population density will be tricky, can't have dissimilar plants rubbing up against each other. Probably build some skids that are meshed in, which I can move around with the skidloader forks, with any spare mesh I have left on the rolls; especially for the bigger plants. The #15 pots will constrain their size a little, so they won't / shouldn't grow TOO gargantuan. Still, I've seen #15 potted chinense eat up a 6' diameter before.

tsurrie · Jan 16, 2019

Still not enough huh ?

Impressive list/lists. Will be following as usual as everything is always interesting and very inspiring when it comes to your grow.

Good luck with everything this season.
:cheers:

PaulG · Jan 16, 2019

Geonerd said:
As read by William Shatner?

Your list is crazy.
Your whole grow is crazy.
I can't comprehend that many chilis, but your
great grow logs help me to understand :think:

Looking forward to another great season on
the farm!

Oh, yeah, good luck with the new equipment.
That will be a boon, for sure!