• Blog your pepper progress. The first image in your first post will be used to represent your Glog.

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. 
 
NzpDT8g.jpg

 
TrugNBb.jpg

 
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...
 
BZXHqMp.jpg

 
 
Has a 4 stall garage and a horse stable on the property
 
dHjylEo.jpg

 
GCjcX18.jpg

 
2N9v0Yf.jpg

 
Probably do my grow room upstairs here after I insulate it
 
HYVOyF0.jpg

 
Built some doors for the horse barn and patched the roof last month
 
NNO9Tcg.jpg

 
zfOwha1.jpg

 
 
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.
 
 
TrentL said:
 
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.
 

The most challenge time i am having is in the early summer and in the end of the season, so i am going to use the warmers in both cases to not screw up my harvest.
 
You grow in a greenhouse right? You make use of any reactionary mass for storing heat at night? Black painted water barrels, etc?
 
 
 
TrentL said:
You grow in a greenhouse right? You make use of any reactionary mass for storing heat at night? Black painted water barrels, etc?
 
 
 
I have this 8 square meter big greenhouse now and it is build on top of a terrace wooden floor and under that is a huge slab of concrete:
IMG_20170526_203329_1.jpg

If the concrete slab where to warm up during the day, it would keep the greenhouse nice and warm during the night time. The huge problem i had in the last season that the summer was very cold all the time and this slab of concrete stayed cold all day long.
 
First batch grow totals. I don't expect many more seedlings from this batch. I still have a few popping in tray 31 & 32 but that's the end of it;
 
I neglected to keep data on Mix M transplants when I potted them up, I'll have to go fix that up soon-ish.
 
S7TNgtg.png

 
This is "round 2", some of which has started sprouting. Tomorrow I put down the "community trays" that will use seeds folks on this forum sent me. I'm thinking about 16-20 trays worth will be added to this list tomorrow. Going to be crowded in here! My wife was a saint and cleared out a big chunk of basement for me to lay out trays today.
 
vqnnJPF.png

 
9 of the trays on this list are sprouting already; but I haven't taken counts yet. Getting things IN the trays right now has priority
 
uZLQlua.png
 
Chilidude said:
 
I have this 8 square meter big greenhouse now and it is build on top of a terrace wooden floor and under that is a huge slab of concrete:
If the concrete slab where to warm up during the day, it would keep the greenhouse nice and warm during the night time. The huge problem i had in the last season that the summer was very cold all the time and this slab of concrete stayed cold all day long.
 
I'd almost consider ditching the white (tarp? Fabric? foam insulation?) and painting the slab black, so it would absorb heat.
 
ETA: Whoops, re-read that and see there's a wood floor separating them. Can you shove insulation through the wood floor? Or between it and the slab in any way?
 
Another thing you could do for passive heat is plumb pex flexible pipe through there and hook it to a water heater, I guess. That'd give radiant heat.
 
Black 55 gallon drums would also soak up a LOT of warmth but at the cost of floor space.
 
When I pour the slab of my greenhouses later this year I plan on installing piping in the slab, and hooking a geothermal heat pump to it. That way the slab itself becomes my heat source. Solar to battery bank to store energy during the day, to run the geothermal system at night, which should be basically free heat after I pay the equipment off. Then the other 10 months out of the year sell the excess solar power to the grid.
 
 
 
 
 
TrentL said:
 
I'd almost consider ditching the white (tarp? Fabric? foam insulation?) and painting the slab black, so it would absorb heat.
 
The concrete slab is pretty dark already as it has some kind of concrete glue on top of it and the tarp is on top of the wooden terrace to protect the wood from damage and besides i cant do any huge modifications to the apartment i a living now, because i dont even own it. :rofl:
 
Chilidude said:
 
The concrete slab is pretty dark already as it has some kind of concrete glue on top of it and the tarp is on top of the wooden terrace to protect the wood from damage and besides i cant do any huge modifications to the apartment i a living now, because i dont own it. :rofl:
 
I edited my post, at the sacrifice of space, you could do some black water containers? Or if not at sacrifice of space maybe some 5 gallon buckets of water painted black then set the pots on those? 
 
Those would catch light, convert it to heat, and you'd have a little heated platform under the pots.
 
TrentL said:
 
I edited my post, at the sacrifice of space, you could do some black water containers? Or if not at sacrifice of space maybe some 5 gallon buckets of water painted black then set the pots on those? 
 
Those would catch light, convert it to heat, and you'd have a little heated platform under the pots.
 

I got few 200 litre black huge plastic barrels at my disposal, but this year i prefer to start my greenhouse growing in the late may and early june.
 
TrentL said:
 
I edited my post, at the sacrifice of space, you could do some black water containers? Or if not at sacrifice of space maybe some 5 gallon buckets of water painted black then set the pots on those? 
 
Those would catch light, convert it to heat, and you'd have a little heated platform under the pots.
 
I got few 200 litre huge black plastic barrels at my disposal, but this year i prefer to start my greenhouse growing in the late may and early june. Besides i dont need to rush the plants inside the greenhouse any time soon, as i have the growing space needed next to the big window inside my apartment.
 
If i keep the plants inside long enough for the roots to really start growing inside those 10 litre air-pots, i am then better off putting them inside the greenhouse in a later date.
 
I have about 2,5 months to go before the summer starts here, so i have plenty of time to make the chilis grow big enough.
 
One quick note... in my experience, mature Chile's only need a pint of water each twice a day in the heat of summer with the plastic IRT mulch. It'd probably be less with enough mulch... say about 4 inches of straw for example.

Jeez Trent, you and Janne are quite the mad scientists yourselves! [emoji6]

Sent from my SM-S327VL using Tapatalk
 
TrentL said:
Heh I've had a couple go nuts on me in past years grows.
 
Run of the mill Bhut Jolokia
 
 
 
Tazmanian habanero
 
 
 
Another bhut jolokia:
 
 
 
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;
 
 
...
 
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.
 
 
 
Trent, man, those are some GREAT photos! Getting me pumped for chile season this year.. I took a bunch of pictures like that of my plants just absolutely loaded with pods, I'll have to take another look through and post some. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.
 
What did you wind up making with that bountiful harvest? Sauces, flakes, pickles, jellies, etc.? I still have tons of pepper products on shelves in my pantry just from the ~76 plants I grew last year.. This year I think I have at least 20-30 more lol. I am almost through my firecracker flakes though, I'm using those constantly.
 
fcaruana said:
 
Trent, man, those are some GREAT photos! Getting me pumped for chile season this year.. I took a bunch of pictures like that of my plants just absolutely loaded with pods, I'll have to take another look through and post some. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.
 
What did you wind up making with that bountiful harvest? Sauces, flakes, pickles, jellies, etc.? I still have tons of pepper products on shelves in my pantry just from the ~76 plants I grew last year.. This year I think I have at least 20-30 more lol. I am almost through my firecracker flakes though, I'm using those constantly.
 
 
Mainly sauces, flakes, salsa, hot pickles, etc. I ended up with a stuffed deep freeze (I bought a deep freeze specifically for peppers) and ended up throwing quite a bit out, even after making a few dozen pounds of dehydrated flake, about 40 bottles of sauce, etc. 
 
Those frozen pods have come in handy for a couple things; taught the dogs to quit chewing on things (chair legs, work boots, etc) by rubbing ultrahots on them. 

And taught the raccoons to stay the F*** off my lawn. See them in the garbage? Great, toss some ripe pods on top. They'll go after them first and then you won't see them again for months.
 
Ppbf7Nw.jpg

 
G3QtHQv.jpg

 
oSysQXN.jpg

 
PoTOERh.jpg

 
2apwLNW.jpg

 
0SenbmZ.jpg

 
XIR4RTj.jpg

 
3r03mVv.jpg
 
Edmick said:
Any buyers lined up for this years harvest?
 
Nope. I'm doing this all on faith. :)
 
Seriously the plan at this point is to get some commercial dehydrators and process the hotter pods in to flakes and powders, for shelf-stable storage. That lets me have some inventory on hand.
 
Secondary plan is individual plant sales and sweeter pod sales at farmers markets. Hopefully make some farm to table restaurant connections there. My mother and a friend's mother will be doing one farmers market down in the Springfield area; I will be heading the other way and doing a couple up further north.
 
Tertiary plan is to get a smoker and do hot jerky sales the 10 months out of a year that it's not being used to make smoked pods and flake and powder. 
 
Well, got 84 trays now... 71-84 were stuff from Justin, and took most of the day (I wish I had a faster process for seeding trays, it's SO damn time consuming). Will get some more down tomorrow with the seeds from Devv, Andy, and the rest of you hooligans. 
 
 
 
I'm gonna hire help next year for seed starting. It was so frustrating and time consuming  My wife barely talked to me because I was in such a bad mood. It sucks!
 
Looks like Justin hooked you up with some good all purpose pods the whole family can love. Should go over well at the farmers market. His seeds pop really well for me (except for Dopey lol but hey, that's an unstable cross)... Love that they're always well washed and healthy looking seeds
 
Back
Top