glog Scandinavian indoor/outdoor grow

Ohjay said:

It's been less than a week since I repotted the final plants but I do think they have taken a liking to their new homes. Not sure if it's my imagination or not but several plants look like they've grown a lot in the past few days:

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Things are looking great Ohjay. I get the same impression that they've grown noticeably in this short time!

Thank you for the kind words @Downriver & @CaneDog.
It definitely feels like I'm doing something right this season and it's been a while since I've had so many plants in picture perfect health. I usually struggle with some oedema, especially on annuums, but this year I have not seen any yet. *fingers crossed*

I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I checked the plants today because it looked like they had grown quite a bit since friday. So I snapped a picture and placed them side by side (from friday & today) and it is absolutely visible on several plants that they've grown quite a bit.
If this keeps up I'm going to have space issues long before I can move plants to the balcony. But I guess that is a good problem to have?


I also started 8 new hydro plants today. In no particular order:

• Aleppo
• Pasilla Baijo
• Numex Suave Red
• Moruga Blackjack DD
• Wild Galapagos
• Scotch Brains XCP
• 7 Pot Cinder F6
• Galapagos Isabela Habanero

This is the first step in my grand scheme (plan?) to use hydro growing to try new varieties.
The next step is to do better documentation of what I have grown, which seeds I have, opinion of pods and plants.
I'm probably small-time compared to some of you, but I do have seeds for somewhere around 120 varieties and I have an excel sheet for documentation purposes but it can definitely be improved, so step 2 & 3 is to update the excel sheet (or create a new one) and start organizing the seeds, because currently they are all in a cardboard box in a drawer. It's kind of a pain to sort through them every time I'm looking for something particular, so better organization is a must. Especially if (read: when) I get more seeds.

Plants are still happy and growing a lot. Space is now becoming an issue and my big grow tent is getting quite crowded and it's hard to water the plants in the back without moving other plants out of the tent:

I might have do something about this during the weekend, we'll see.

Several of the plants are already flowering and both Sugar Rush Peach Striped plants have peppers on them as well as one of the Black Scorpion Tongue. There might even be more, but it's hard to check considering the space in the tent.

No photo of the hydro plants today, but the Peter Pepper has 4 or 5 peppers that hopefully should start maturing soon.
The Yellow Bullet Habanero has started flowering but no peppers yet.
As for the newly sowed varieties for hydro growing it seems to be going well. I have four that have sprouted and a fifth that has just broken ground, so looking quite good. Hopefully the remaining three will sprout soon too.
And I still have on my todo-list to do a bit of a dedicated hydro post to show the different root structures but also to document a bit about the process for growing to have as reference for the future.

And the past couple of days my living room table has looked like this:

I finally started sorting my seed collection and putting them in proper seed pouches made of paper and then putting them in those plastic card collector sleeves, in alphabetical order.
It's slow going with 130+ varieties and making sure I don't mix isolated and non-isolated seeds, but once it's done it's going to be so much easier to find the seeds of varieties I want to grow next.

Man those plants look great!! Good job with them!

Ohjay said:

Space is now becoming an issue and my big grow tent is getting quite crowded and it's hard to water the plants in the back without moving other plants out of the tent

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I'm part of the "overcrowding" team now I have too many plants anyway and I can't walk where I want without moving the pots, but in the early stages (plants only in the growbox) I solved it by removing the mylar sheets and leaving only the skeleton of the structure, so you can walk around it to water and observe the plants better without stress

Note to self, starting in late december might be too early

I ended up moving three plants outside of the grow tent this past weekend. I chose three plants that were shorter than the rest with the idea that the lesser amount of light will make them stretch a bit:


The grow tent is still crowded though and the plants are now getting so large they need some support when moving the pots around. So the plan for the upcoming weekend is to get some plant support material and make sure it's safe to move the plants around.
Anyway, this is the state of the grow tent as of the past weekend:


And a close-up image of the Sugar Rush Peach Striped in the "wide" pot, it's producing a lot of peppers already:


Still waiting for the hydro peppers to mature, but the Yellow Bullet Habanero has started flowering like crazy. No sign of peppers on it yet though:

Okay, this is going to be a very picture heavy update. Don't say I didn't warn you.

But before that, I would love some input/help on an issue I've encountered with my hydro plants. They are now so top-heavy that they have a tendency to fall over once they use up 2/3 of the water. I thought about rigging up a grid with strings (as can be seen below) but quickly abandoned the idea. My second idea was so dumb I won't even mention it (but it can be seen in the photo below).
I've toyed with the idea of placing a strong magnet in the bottom of the coozies since the shelf is metal, but I'm not sure...
So, any tips, advice or things of the sort about how to prevent them from toppling over?



So, this past weekend I got the supplies for giving my plants some well-needed support, but I couldn't add them while the plants were in the grow tent, so all plants were taken out of the tent and while I did that I figured I should take a photo of each plant to share with you guys. So without further ado, a chili plant fashion (?) show:

Black Scorpion Tongue (wide pot):


Black Scorpion Tongue (not so wide pot):


Sugar Rush Peach Striped (wide pot):


Sugar Rush Peach Striped (not so wide pot):


Trinidad Moruga Scorpion White (wide pot):


Trinidad Moruga Scorpion White (not so wide pot):


Papa Joe's Scotch Bonnet (wide pot):


Papa Joe's Scotch Bonnet (not so wide pot):


Thor's Thunderbolt:


Bonda Ma Jacques:


Habanero Brown Egg:


Scotch Bonnet Brown:


Bhut Jolokia Peach:


Murupi Amarela:

I do think there is a bit of a difference in the plants I have in two different types of pots, but it could just as well be the placement in the tent that's the cause and not just pot size. But it will be interesting to keep following the progress of those plants.

I knew I had pods on the Black Scorpion Tongue and Sugar Rush Peach Striped plants, but I noticed I also had pods on the Habanero Brown Egg.
Most plants are flowering already as well.

This was the state of the grow tent once the plants were back in:


Anyway, speaking of pods, I think there is something wrong with the first pod I got which is a Sugar Rush Peach Striped. There is a brownish discoloration on it (it's on both sides) but it doesn't seem to spread so not sure what it might be:

Things are progressing quite nicely, and when I looked at my first image on this page I can't believe the amount of growth that's happened in a month. Most of the plants are quite big and are flowering and/or setting pods.
We are beginning to have decent weather now and night time temperatures are reaching 5-10 degrees Celsius (41-50F) so perhaps I can start moving the plants to the balcony soon. Since it has glass windows it should retain the heat from the daytime pretty well so it will probably be warmer than the outside temperature.

Anyway, the first pod I got on the Sugar Rush Peach Striped is maturing:


And the plant is loaded with pods, this image doesn't even show all of them:


The Habanero Brown Egg is also producing a lot of pods. A small sample:


The hydro plants are doing their thing as well and the Aji Verde has also set quite a few pods now:


The "bad" thing with the Aji Verde is that the pods want to grow upright and they are quite heavy, so I had even more issues with the hydro bottles falling over.
I'm not proud of my solution, but it seems to be working

Things are really looking good. What a great start to the season!

This past weekend I got to eat the first fresh pod of the season, a Sugar Rush Peach Striped:



A very, very tasty pepper. Very fruity and sweet flavor with mild heat that builds a bit slow and then lingers in the front of the mouth.
I suspect it could've been hotter if I had waited with harvesting it but if I had to guess it was somewhere around 30K SHU and I had no issues at all eating the whole pod, despite my, currently low, tolerance.

Speaking of pods and specifically ripening pods, I do have a ripe Peter Pepper Red that's ready for sampling and there are some Yellow Bullet Habaneros that have ripened as well. We'll see how soon I try these out.

No picture of the hydro plants this time, but I had a weird thing happen to the Peter Pepper plant. One day when I checked on it it had dropped about 60% of its leaves. Not sure why and what happened, but several branches have since dried out as well. I think I was a bit slow with giving it new water at one point and perhaps that's the reason why.
We'll see what happens with my Yellow Bullet Habanero plant since I noticed today that it had drank all water and was very, very unhappy. Maybe it will react the same way.


Still waiting for better weather outside... April is doing its thing and some days we have 20 degrees Celsius and other days it's barely above 0. I'll have to wait until the beginning of May, at the very least, before I can consider it safe to move the plants to the balcony.
But I really, really need to give the plants more space. In the following photo I had not watered the plants for a week so they were a bit droopy:


The plant in the upper right corner is about 150cm high, but I guess it will drop down a bit when it has more space. Anyway, the plants in the back are all very tall and are obscuring some of the other plants. So it will be real good to move some of the outside as soon as temperature permits.

A couple of detailed pod photos to finish off this update:

Looks like many more of those stripey will be ripening soon! The last few weeks before plant out always seem to be challenging for me, with trying to keep everything watered and happy. Fortunately it won't be much longer now.

CaneDog said:

Looks like many more of those stripey will be ripening soon! The last few weeks before plant out always seem to be challenging for me, with trying to keep everything watered and happy. Fortunately it won't be much longer now.

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Yeah, there's a few about to ripen on the plant in the photo and I have one more Sugar Rush Peach Striped plant that should have ripening pods any day now.

I thought I could wait till June before figuring out what to do with all the peppers, but the way things are going I need to have some plans in place before the end of May.
Powder, sauce and drying is a given I think, but what else? Been thinking about brewing chili beer (Habanero Sculpin was a fantastic chili beer), maybe try my hand on doing jams as well? Good problem to have I guess

Update time, and a little bit of everything in this post.

First off, a small harvest from my hydro plants. Yellow Bullet Habanero and Peter Pepper Red:


Was away for a few days and came home to a near dead Yellow Bullet Habanero plant, didn't think it would recover so I harvested what I could. But it recovered and kept all unripe peppers as well, so should give me another 20-30 peppers or so.
The Peter Pepper has now filled it's purpose, I've gotten a few pods (4) and have saved isolated seeds in case I want to grow it again, so the plant has now been turned into compost.

Speaking of Peter Pepper, here's a couple of photos from the one I saved seeds from:




Fairly low heat but still packs a punch and has that typical "prickly", "stingy" annuum heat that I really, really dislike.
Nothing really special in terms of flavor either, a bit fresh and hints of bell pepper.

And here's one of the Yellow Bullet Habaneros I've tasted:




Feels way hotter than it's white counterpart and despite its small size it gets plenty hot.
It's a bit hard getting flavors from them since they are so small, but there are some citrus notes.
Going to keep eating these as a way to start building up my tolerance again so I can be a little bit more prepared for the super-hots this year.

I also decided to move the plants to the balcony. We still have fairly low night time temperatures (5°C / 41°F) but I think it will be okay. They seem happy this morning at least. And if the weather forecast is correct for the coming week then spring is finally arriving in full force, which will help. Anyway, some balcony photos:




I can't believe all those plants fit in the grow tent because now the balcony is full and it's twice the size, at least.
And I couldn't quite fit all plants in the balcony, which I was prepared for, so five plants remain in the grow tent:


And if you remember, I moved three plants outside of the grow tent due to space issues about a month ago (or was it two?) and it's quite a significant difference between the tent plants and the ones that relied on sunlight.
Here's a sample comparison where the left plant is from the tent and the right one has relied on sunlight:


While we're on the topic of comparisons, here's the state of the plants I grow in two different types of containers.
Starting off with Trinidad Moruga Scorpion White (unfair comparison because the left plant was very droopy due to lack of water):



Black Scorpion Tongue:



Papa Joes Scotch Bonnet:



Sugar Rush Peach Striped:



That last one is really difficult to compare because the plant in the wide pot has so many pods that the branches cannot support the weight (they were propped up against the tent walls) and it has also grown really weirdly because the main stem is really short and then it has very long branches. After moving that plant outside I actually noticed that two branches had nearly snapped off due to the weight of the peppers, so I gave them some support and hope they recover.

To me there looks to be a slight difference in the plants where the ones in the wider pots have been growing a bit better, especially the two chinense varieties. It's not a huge difference but it's there, and if I had gotten my hands on some even wider pots then maybe the difference would be more apparent.

Things are continuing to look good, Ohjay. If spring's on the way like you're hearing it's going to be a jungle in there soon!

What an update!
Balcony looks amazing, the green, oh, it's gonna be a beautiful year there! And they flower already!

"Flat" Sugar Rush Peach Stripey - I have one or two peppers which grew that way in a tent, they look so cool in comparison to "one steamy big leaves".

Now, let this warmth come and see the pepper crazyness explode!

Any of you have experience growing Aji Verde or Bhut Jolokia Olive?
I'm wondering if my pods are ripe or if they are some ways off still...

This is the Aji Verde, the photo makes it look more red than it actually is, it looks more orange:


And this is the Olive Jolokia, I know it won't turn red, but am unsure of the proper green color. This is a much darker green than the pods have when they develop:

I'd expect an olive pepper to ripe from a green to a slightly mustard color (genetically it should be a yellow pepper with a mutation that retains chlorophyll)

SatanicFlatIron said:

I'd expect an olive pepper to ripe from a green to a slightly mustard color (genetically it should be a yellow pepper with a mutation that retains chlorophyll)

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Thanks, yeah I would sort of expect the same. But info is scarce about this specific type so you never know.

I think I forgot to mention that I've tried the Black Scorpion Tongue a while back.
Very interesting pepper with a distinct apple flavor and also a hint of smokiness. Very, very tasty and would probably make amazing sauce and powder. Hopefully my plants will kick into gear and I get a lot of these peppers so I can try my hand at a sauce with them.
Anyway, heatwise they are probably around 100,000 SHU and thankfully they don't have that extreme prickly/stingy annuum heat. It's still prickly but not nearly as bad as some other annuums.




I also tried the Aji Verde earlier this week.
In contrast to the Scorpion Tongue, this was a forgettable experience. No specific flavor but it was very juicy, to the point that it actually squirted fruit juice when I cut it open. I have eaten two peppers by now and both have been the same. I harvested the remainder and will try a green one as well as more red ones to see if anything changes.
Heat is probably around 30k SHU and even though it is a baccatuum it did have a similar prickly heat to an annuum.





These photos of the hydro plants are a couple of days old, in the first one you can see the Aji Verde on the left and the Olive Jolokia on the right.
The Aji Verde has now been made into compost, it has served it's purpose while the Olive Jolokia is loaded with peppers and I'm eagerly waiting for signs that they are ripe:




The leftmost plant in the second photo is a Trinidad Scorpion White. The plant is absolutely huge for the small container I'm using and it's flowering a lot. Haven't seen any peppers yet though but it's just a matter of time. Here's another photo of it:


I mentioned that the Olive Jolokia is loaded with peppers and my Peach Jolokia in soil is trying desperately to catch up.
It now has tons of small peppers forming:


Next time I'll focus on the balcony plants I think. We've had some good, but also really bad weather but thanks to the shelter the plants get on the balcony it seems that they are coping just fine, even though we had somewhere around 5C (42F) during the night and also during the day a few times the past weeks. On the other hand we had some 20C (68F) weather as well and then it gets upwards to 35C(95F) on the balcony, if not hotter, so quite the swings in temperature.

But I do want to share my two stripey boys... or well, one stripey boy because my other Sugar Rush Peach Striped plant doesn't grow true. The peppers mostly taste the same though, but I'm thinking of scrapping the plant that doesn't grow true. We'll see though...