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2018 - The Farm

Well, I've been gone a few years from the board, and away from growing peppers, but looks like life is pushing me back that way again. 
 
I recently (last month) closed on a 25 acre farm in Central Illinois with some primo soil, and I'm going to give a commercial grow a test run. 
 
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From up on the roof, when I was doing some roof repairs on the outbuildings. Not much as far as the eye can see, but cornfields...
 
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Has a 4 stall garage and a horse stable on the property
 
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Probably do my grow room upstairs here after I insulate it
 
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Built some doors for the horse barn and patched the roof last month
 
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Anyway just dropped a cold grand on seeds from pepperlover and buckeye, going to hit a greenhouse supplier up for other materials next week.
 
Have plans to build a 30x72' greenhouse in the spring, and a ~1200 sq foot dedicated grow room. Too late really to help with this year's grow, but next year it'll save me a lot of hassle on hardening off. 
 
The greenhouse, I am going to do a piped infloor heat slab, with a horizontal loop geothermal system (I own a mini excavator) that is solar powered. So heating should be nice, uniform, not create heat / cold bubbles, and not dry out plants like forced air would. I build circuit boards in my day job, so I will also build a microcontroller to handle the automated watering system with soil moisture monitors and actuated plumbing valves on the water supply.
 
Also plan on building a "deep winter" greenhouse for year round production. Got blueprints I made from a couple of years back, those are walled on three sides with heavy duty insulation, with the glass wall side angled to face winter solstice, so you can grow in the deep freeze months of the north. In the summer, those get hot enough to use as a natural dehydrator, replace the tables with racks for bulk drying.
 
Only doing a half acre or so of peppers to start with this year, the balance will be put in corn. I can't manage more than that with the labor I have available. (When you start talking thousands of plants, simple tasks like up-potting grow in to hundreds or thousands of man hours...)
 
Going to hire some local kids to help, school has a good ag co-op program for high schoolers, they can get school credit working on local farms. Since the plant out and harvest doesn't conflict too badly with corn, shouldn't have a problem finding labor around here.
 
Anyway, that's the plans.
 
We'll see how it goes.. er.. grows.
 
 
70 trays seeded. Doing another 20 or so tomorrow. Overflow is going out in the bigger basement room.
 
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Tomatoes still doing good.
 
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Even the non-hydro totally organic ones. Wish my peppers liked this damn soil!
 
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Passive hydro test plants still doing textbook perfect
 
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With the high temp, humidity, fans creating a breeze, and subtle smell of fish from the organic fertilizer, I can *just* about kick back and convince myself I'm on a beach, if I close my eyes...
 
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(Clothes became optional in the "sauna" quite a while ago.)
 
 
Chilidude said:
 
Seems awfully expensive stuff, why not take a look at Canna coco a+b or Bio nova nutri forte a+b.
 
Man, it's working good. It's also getting too late to do more experimenting now. Gotta stick with the devil you know! :)
 
TrentL said:
 
Man, it's working good. It's also getting too late to do more experimenting now. Gotta stick with the devil you know! :)
 
No experimenting needed as they should be pretty similar to the stuff i am currently using, also they have been tested to work good in chili growing by other users and are surely much cheaper than the stuff you are using right now.
 
Bio nova coco forte a+b:
 
https://www.amazon.com/Bio-Nova-BNCFB1L-Fertilizer-Substrates/dp/B077TFT819/ref
 
5 litres of both a+b would be 83,5 dollars.
 
Canna coco a+b:
 
https://www.amazon.com/Canna-B-Veg-Nutrient-Developed-Mediums-CANNA-9410005/dp/B003UX4IWA/ref
 
5 litres of both a+b would be 92,95 dollars.
 
 
5 litres a+b of either of those stuff should last you for ages.
 
 
 
The bio nova stuff was named wrong in my initial topic, the right stuff is named Bio nova coco forte a+b and the name/link is now fixed.
 
Ack my bad. The calmag I'm using is suite leaf, the hydro ferts are CX Hydroponics.
 
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=cx+horticulture&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Acx+horticulture
 
And yeah, it's DAMNED expensive. $69 per 5 liter each for coco a / b, but the real killer is in the growth stuff. 5 liters of 11-0-0 is *$169*!!!
 
Plus, it's from Australia and Amazon doesn't have much supply available for the US.
 
So yeah, I probably WILL end up shopping this one around a bit.
 
 
TrentL said:
Ack my bad. The calmag I'm using is suite leaf, the hydro ferts are CX Hydroponics.
 
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=cx+horticulture&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Acx+horticulture
 
And yeah, it's DAMNED expensive. $69 per 5 liter each for coco a / b, but the real killer is in the growth stuff. 5 liters of 11-0-0 is *$169*!!!
 
Plus, it's from Australia and Amazon doesn't have much supply available for the US.
 
So yeah, I probably WILL end up shopping this one around a bit.
 
 
Holy f**k, that is really expensive stuff for what it is. Both of those high quality coco a+b fertilizers in the links are pretty much the same stuff and there is no need to buy expensive stuff no more for similar growing results, so i urge you to shop around some more.
 
 
Chilidude said:
 
Holy f**k, that is really expensive stuff for what it is. Both of those high quality coco a+b fertilizers in the links are pretty much the same stuff and there is no need to buy expensive stuff no more for similar growing results, so i urge you to shop around some more.
 
 
Yeah I definitely will. I have to figure out how much I'm going to need. My starter trays are sucking down 20 oz of water each per day (mostly evaporation, big surface area and warming mats don't help matters). That's 10 gallons of water a day just on starter trays. 
 
By the time I get all the seedlings out to the farm, in the beginning they'll probably continue to use about 2 oz a day, depends on how dry the air is. 50+ gallons of water a day just on seedlings once it's populated (at 2 oz a day evap/usage, it'll go up from there as they grow).
 
To fill each table to 1/2" (the pots I'm using have about a 1/8" gap where the drain holes are, which would give each pot 3/8" of bottom soak), that's 7.4 gallons per table. 36" by 96" by 0.5" = 1728 cu/in, with 231 cubic inches to a gallon, that's 7.4 gallons per table. Times 15 tables. So to do a single feeding I'd be looking at 111 gallons of mixed nutes. 
 
Every week. 
 
Will the soluble hydro stuff "work it's way up" the coir? Or do you have to top water the doses in? That'll require a lot less; say, 3oz per pot feeding once a week, would only be (216 plants per table * 15 tables = 3240 plants * 3 oz = 9720 oz, divided by 128 fluid ounces per gallon, = 75 gallons.
 
So by top watering 3oz doses of nutes each week I would save about 40 gallons of water and nutes.
 
Better top water the plants with the coco a+b stuff as the bottom watering doest seem to work well with coco coir and save the used fertilizer solution to be used again:
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/67301-easy-method-to-filter-recycled-hydroponic-fertilizer-solution-used-in-coco/
 
Before use, be sure to check the EC value of the used stuff and if it is too strong, just add more water.
 
These pictures i took just minutes ago with epsom salt mixed with the B'cuzz a+b:


It is pretty clear to me by now, that the coco coir needed to be buffed up with the epsom salt(more magnesium).
 
Yeah I just re-dosed my hydro pots with CalMag again today, along with the other "half" of the 11-0-0 and 1-2-2 for the week. 
 
The sign I look for is the "cupped up" younger leaves. If they're cupping, they are short on mag.
 
And they are constantly wanting to do that, it seems, growing in this coir. 
 
 
Crazy thing though, I started my "shift" today about 16 hours ago, giving all of the old organic pots that are failing miserably a good starter hydro dose.
 
By the time I was done with my 16 hour "shift" they were already straightening up and getting greener, and some had - I swear - DOUBLED in size.
 
Those suckers were STARVING for nutes.
 
I need to pH test that soil again sometime this weekend to see if it's drifted very far off the 6.5 water I've been giving it. I don't think it has. That organic soil still smells *fantastic*, but it's just not breaking down the organic stuff fast enough. 
 
Next year, I need to start my organic soil stuff in like December, so it's ready to go by the time I'm transplanting in late Feb.
 
 
And in other news, 16 hour shifts are becoming the "normal" routine on my days off from the day job... which kind of sucks. Because now I'm working 80-90+ hours a week (or more). No down time is wearing on me.
 
I *vastly* under-estimated the amount of time that'd have to be invested in this grow.
 
 
TrentL said:
Yeah I just re-dosed my hydro pots with CalMag again today, along with the other "half" of the 11-0-0 and 1-2-2 for the week. 
 
The sign I look for is the "cupped up" younger leaves. If they're cupping, they are short on mag.
 
And they are constantly wanting to do that, it seems, growing in this coir. 
 
 
My c. baccatums are the worst ones for the magnesium thing, they will cup up instantly if there is a shortage of magnesium, but that is very easy to solve with the epsom salt.
 
Coco coir needs a small storage/buffer of magnesium all the time to not make the plans lock up, either by using coco coir specific fertilizer long enough or by using the epsom salt/CalMag.
 
 
The bottom line is that you cant ever become too good at chili growing, as there is always something new to discover in chili growing. :rolleyes:
 
Those purple stems are a dead giveaway too. Phosphorous gets in short supply quickly too. I'm already noticing the purple stems fading back to green on quite a few plants that I gave a booster shot to, today.
 
The stem goes purple, then the meat of the true leaves, and by then the plant is probably toast (I have yet to get one to "pull out" of a P deficiency once more than 20% or so of the true leaves go purple, they ultimately die). I have about a dozen plants which are in hard core P deficiency right now. This also seems to be VERY variety specific. My big sun Habaneros and a few others are serving as my canaries on this phenomenon. Reapers and various 7-pots seem to be particularly troublesome with P deficiencies too.
 
I did NOT expect that going in to this. I figured (within chinense/annuum/bacaatuum) that nutrients would be "same same" for all plants, but that's just not true. Some fall victim to shortages WAY the hall faster than others.
 
Meanwhile yellow fatalii and Aji Cereza seem to be particularly sensitive to Mag deficiencies.
 
That'll prove useful when they hit the field; knowing that there's "sensitive" plants out there that I can keep an eye on for pending nutrient deficiencies.
 
 
I have developed my fertilizer dosages over the years to work for both c.baccatum and c.chinense without any issues to make my growing as easy as possible in the end. I like to keep my chili growing KISS=keep it simple, stupid.
 
Caramel bhut jolokia:
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Minimum 100 pods in this jolokia plant in the same time.
 
Moruga scorpion:
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My moruga plants was pretty small, but still it was full of pods.
 
Aji fantasy:
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Aji lemon drop:
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I dare you to even begin to count those pods you see in those pictures and they do tell more than any text ever could how my growing methods worked in the end.
 
 
Heh I've had a couple go nuts on me in past years grows.
 
Run of the mill Bhut Jolokia
 
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Tazmanian habanero
 
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Another bhut jolokia:
 
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I had a 7-pod chaguana and a big sun hab that made *huge* amounts of pods one year. They were on the drift-edge side of the garden when I got 2,4-D herbicide drift from a neighboring field. It drove them in to overdrive just before flowering, and MAN they produced a few hundred pods each. 
 
Didn't make up for  the plants it KILLED, but still, those plants went stupid with production.
 
Every couple of days I was getting picks like this;
 
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Picking and washing almost became a 2nd job. Factor in dehydration and grinding and it pretty much WAS a 2nd job.
 
And that was 270 plants.
 
This year I've already got 5,000 seeds in the dirt.
 
Which scares the living shit out of me.
 
 
 
Your pictures look something like i had in the end of the season 2014 with the main harvest being 35 litres and i do hope is to have similar harvest again or even better if the summer is good enough.
 
 
This year i am planning to put two frost warmers inside the greenhouse to keep the temperature inside from falling under 10c.
 
Chilidude said:
Your pictures look something like i had in the end of the season 2014 with the main harvest being 35 litres and i do hope is to have similar harvest again or even better if the summer is good enough.
 
 
This year i am planning to put two frost warmers inside the greenhouse to keep the temperature inside from falling under 10c.
 
Your conditions are definitely challenging!!! 
 
We get summer temps average upper 90's in the late summer. Any flowers that haven't set pods by late July or early August will just drop off. Then I'll get a "bonus round" of flowering that'll set in early September, and *might* be ripe before first frost in October.
 
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