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. 
 

 

 
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...
 

 
 
Has a 4 stall garage and a horse stable on the property
 

 

 

 
Probably do my grow room upstairs here after I insulate it
 

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

 

 
 
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.
 

 

[Edmick]

 
Worm castings add 1-0-0 NPK plus some sulfur so they will develop faster.
 
What this is telling you is you need to give the other tray a diluted fertilizer; they've "stalled out".
 
The first tray with worm castings will stall out quickly as well as it won't have any significant source of phosphorous.
 
5-1-1 Fish emulsion (2 tablespoon per 5 gallons) + 0-11-0 liquid bone meal (2 tablespoon per 5 gallons) + 2 teaspoons calmag / 5 gal is what I've been using on seedlings.
 
That's a 20% dose as what I'm using calls for 2 tablespoons per gallon on mature plants.
 
If you are using hydro nutes modify accordingly; 20-25% for first leaves, 50% once second leaves are mature and 3rd leaves are forming, after 3rd set of leaves I crank it up to 100% rated dosage. But your mileage may vary. Also, check your hydro a+b stuff to see if it's already got cal-mag, if it does, don't add from another source like I did.. it causes iron, magnesium, and other lockout if you OD them on calcium..
 
DO NOT GET DRUNK AND ADD 2 TABLESPOONS OF EACH PER GALLON. I left my notes at home and read the containers instead, after a few beers, and f'ed up about 400 peppers and tomatoes horribly bad. (Finally traced down the source of my problems at the farm after reviewing my notes). I gave them the FULL STRENGTH that a full size mature plant needs and also overdosed them on calcium / magnesium by using.. uhh, tablespoons.. instead of teaspoons.. (which is 3x dose)
 
Hopefully they'll .. uhh, "grow out of it.." 

I've started dosing dyna gro grow formula at 25 percent strenght. It's a 7-9-5 and has cal mag with trace already in it.

 

[Chilidude]

 
 check your hydro a+b stuff to see if it's already got cal-mag, if it does, don't add from another source like I did.. it causes iron, magnesium, and other lockout if you OD them on calcium..

 
Just found the fine print in the B'cuzz coco a+b NPK values on my bottles:
 
6-5-13
 
Used the NPK info i found in the internet previously and it was slightly off.
 
I noticed that something was very wrong with my c.baccatum leaves and all my chilis did have problems with normal growing, turns out that with my current dosage i have been feeding my plants with too much Potassium and it have caused calsium lockdown and who knows what else too.
 
Have to slightly adjust the dosage to even portion of 15ml part a/15ml part b to see how will the plants respond. Easy to make pretty stupid mistakes like that when you are trying new fertilizers, that you have not used that much before but the good thing is that is still have plenty of time to correct my mistakes...

 

[TrentL]

I flooded the 4" pots that were affected each with 1 cup of water, two days ago, to flush at least some of the excess fertilizer out. Tonight I'll go out to see how they are doing. Hopefully things are looking up, and I don't have a bunch of dead plants.
 
Walking away for a couple days after making a big adjustment keeps me from doing anything else
 
"Sink or swim, bitches"
 
Will post pics tonight of the comparison; either recovery, or carnage, yet to be determined...

 

[TrentL]

'maters getting big. Gonna have to raise the lights .. again...
 

 
Peppers getting big too. 
 

 
Took my car this time, feels good to get it back on the road and not drive the big red honking pickup truck...
 

 
2015 GT w/ Roush stage 2 supercharger, american racing headers, full 3" catless stainless exhaust w/ corsa extreme cans, carbon fiber driveshaft, mcleod twin disk RXT clutch, steeda vertical links, Tremec T56 Magnum XL transmission (replaced the chinese getrag transmission), ford racing half shafts, and a bunch of other shit. Puts just a hair over 800 rwhp to the ground. 
 
 

 

[TrentL]

Still packing peppers out to the farm, delivered another ~200 tranpslants today. 
 

 
The older ones are coming along well. They're due for another run of fertilizer today. Waited for the larger ones to start showing some signs of deficiency before hitting them again; after overdosing a table and a half of seedlings, I'm wary of piling more on to them until they're *really* ready for it.
 

 

 
This part of the grow is turning out to be rather grueling. I haven't been posting as many updates because of the long hours I've been working, split between the seedlings and sprouts at home, tending to the ones at the farm, and working two jobs other than horticulture.
 
Transplanting is tedious; but the wife and I can knock about 200 of them out in about 6 hours or so, including time to mix the soil, give them their first liquid fertilizer dose, box them up, and haul them out to the farm. It is hard to calculate exactly how much because the works gets split up over several days. One day I'll mix 8-10 cubic feet of soil up, that takes all night. Wife spent a couple of days writing out tags with UV resistant ink - over 2500 of them! Then transplanting, lining them up in another room, giving them each 3 oz of their first fertilizer treatment (about 5 gal per 200 plants, metered out in 1/3 cup doses). Then they all get loaded up in to boxes, hauled up the stairs in to the car, driven out there, hauled in to the farm, up the stairs, and then placed on tables.
 
It's time consuming, back-hurting, hot sweaty work, and the repetition of it is ... annoying. It was "interesting" and kind of fun the first 2 or 3 trips out. Now it's just another job we gotta do, lost it's novelty about 800 plants ago.
 
The biggest change from past year grows is the detachment factor. When gardening I'd get to know each plant. Each had a little quirk, a personality, a "feeling" associated with it. Every plant was a separate entity and you'd get to know their branches, their size, their personality, as it were. I can still remember how my 7-pot chaguanas overhung the garden and got in the way when I mowed the grass, or how my big (now deceased) Irish Wolfhound went charging through the garden after the cat one day, and split the trunk in half, which I repaired with plastic and paracord. 
 
These plants are anonymous. When one dies, it gets lined up in a pile for the soil to get recycled later. There's no "getting to know you" factor, because there's so many of them. I can't even post nearly all of the pictures I take - repetitious and it would be just another job I have to do. I take pictures of each table when I go out just so I have points of reference, but only choose a select few to post because.. good grief, if you've seen one table full of peppers or one tray of sprouts, you've seen 'em all.
 
It is grueling work, the repetition alone is enough to drive a man to tears, but it is what it is. I've transplanted and moved somewhere around 1200 peppers to the farm at this point; I still have over 30 FULL trays left to do (and those are LOADED, averaging over 60 live plants per tray). This last load to the farm was  one QUARTER of the Turkish Cayenne and Sweet Charlstons. Two trays, plus another half tray of something else I can't remember, and it was a table full of peppers at the farm, and took two vehicles to transport them all out there. And I have so many more trays left to do...
 
With all of the annuums now maturing I have to keep up a pace of something like 300 transplants a day to get them done in the next week. And it hit at the worst possible time; got one residential construction project now going full tilt, and a huge job from a Very Big Company at the tech company ongoing. Trying to juggle two companies, 7 different subordinate employees who answer to me, and various vendors and contractors on top of this is taking a severe toll.
 
So Monday morning, I bring on two new workers to help. It's the only way I can possibly keep up.
 
 

 

[Chilidude]

How is the coco fertilizer growing progressing, Have you tried the Bio nova coco forte a+b stuff?
 
 
Bio nova actually have pretty good base line fertilizer schedule for the coco forte a+b:
https://www.bionova.nl/downloads/fertilizing-grow-schedules
 
The basic one seems ok for chili growing, but i would just make it more stream lined one to make it as easy as possible without any extra fluff.

 

[TrentL]

How is the coco fertilizer growing progressing, Have you tried the Bio nova coco forte a+b stuff?
 
 
Bio nova actually have pretty good base line fertilizer schedule for the coco forte a+b:
https://www.bionova.nl/downloads/fertilizing-grow-schedules
 
The basic one seems ok for chili growing, but i would just make it more stream lined one to make it as easy as possible without any extra fluff.

 
No haven't yet, I've only got one hydro table left. The other failed experiments have recovered and are back on organic fertilizer.
 
The one table I have out there I've been using this stuff;
 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YBI142K/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YBH3FVY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
They're doing "meh." The organics are WAY ahead of the hydro. I think part of that was I had been adding calmag on top of the hydro, which caused some calcium toxicity, mag lockout, and iron lockout. That is starting to straighten out, so they should take back off again.
 
Today the hydro table got it's scheduled normal dose (minus the cal mag, just A+B), at 80% strength.
 
The other tables at the farm got 5-1-1 fish emulsion and a 20ml / 4 gal (5ml / gal) dose of cal mag. The established plants got a 100% dose of 5-1-1, the 2 week old seedlings got 66%, and the 1 week old seedlings got 33% dose.
 
I have 1 table of "duh" peppers that are in total lockout. I hit those with an accidental calcium overdose. I didn't remember to dilute the organic cocktail down 2 weeks ago and whacked them with 100% 5-12-1, and mis-dosed the cal mag w/ tablespoons instead of teaspoons. So they got something like an effective 26% calcium and 9% magnesium. Which should have, and has been showing to be, a perfectly fatal combination.  The Amish Paste I hit with that bad mix have had ~20% fatalities (roughly) and the peppers about 5% fatal; but ALL of them are totally stalled out on that table.
 
Two days ago I flushed them with a cup of water each pot, to flush as much shit out as I could, no effect, total lockout. Today I tried the ultra-low PH trick to see if I could get things moving - at very low pH. At ultra-low pH (in this case, I watered them with 3.5!) calcium goes "unavailable", while Magnesium, Molybdenum, Boron, Iron, and Copper, and Zinc are good to go. It's the only way I've found to knock plants out of a total lockout - and I discovered it completely by accident a few weeks back, when accidentally added 1 tablespoon of pH down per gallon instead of my normal .8 teaspoon per gallon. (Whoops!) It was the profound recovery of those plants which made me research what might have actually happened with the ultra-low pH mix.
 
 
After hitting those "assumed dead" peppers with 3.35 pH on accident they went from this;
 

 
to this;
 

 
Over the course of 2 short weeks.
 
Which was spectacular considering they'd gone 2 weeks with zero growth and the occasional death.

 

[TrentL]

2 weeks of those ^ mentioned above (1 week prior to the pH down accident, and one week after), was spent on A+B Bio Nova, by the way. They just went back to fully organic last weekend.
 
So I have used bio nova. It's just right now I'm not.
 

 

[TrentL]

Also worth noting...
 
Just about lost the farm.
 
Took a 4 hour nap after I got home from working on drywall & fertilizing the hydro plants Saturday eve. Got up about 11:30 PM, headed out to farm about 12:30 AM to fertilize the ~900 or so organic plants. Get out there, in the middle of mixing water, and I'm like "What the fuck is that loud buzzing sound from downstairs??"
 
Blower motor was seized on one of the two LP ceiling furnaces. The limit safety switch didn't trip, exhaust pipe was overheating. Wouldn't have been too much longer before the roof caught fire and the whole fucking building went up.

 
Well, this is proof that old man naps are a good thing. If I'd had the energy to fertilize all of the plants earlier, the building likely wouldn't have been there in the morning. Instead I go out in the middle of the night to do it, and catch the failure.
 

 

 

[TrentL]

Some other notes;
 
I'm watering (normally) at 5.8 pH. I'm only trying that ultra-low pH trick to try to recover those locked out plants. That is by no means a "normal" thing, just a last resort before I toss them out and plant extra tomatoes to take their place.
 
8 tables are empty, 7 tables are occupied at the farm, now. About 50% there.
 
I counted up what is left at home, 1781 peppers waiting to be transplanted. Which is 8.25 tables worth at the farm. So just about right.
 
That leaves me with the 4 tables at home for "other shit" once those are moved out. Going to do another 648 tomatoes (216 ea of Rose organic, Nepal organic, and Moskovich organic), and 162 melons (mix of Eden's Gem melons, Divergent (cantaloupe), and Crimson Sweet watermelons). 
 
There will also be a special tray of peppers sowed with forum member contributions. Those will be a special reserve and raised indoors/outdoors then overwintered until ripe pods are formed, after the rest of the stuff goes out to the field. HOPEFULLY I will have the greenhouse done by this fall which will give me some extra time on those - maybe until mid December. The chinense you guys sent, won't be ripe enough to pick until November or December, but if I get the greenhouse done it'll work out OK. 
 
Besides, that'll give me some fresh pods clear through mid winter.
 
And that'll be a full house and farm. 
 
In other news, GrowAce issued a credit memo and says they are refunding the 11 of the T5 lights that I never received. Have to re-order from another vendor Monday. I only received 19 of the 30 I ordered ~45 days ago.
 
 

 

[Chilidude]

2 weeks of those ^ mentioned above (1 week prior to the pH down accident, and one week after), was spent on A+B Bio Nova, by the way. They just went back to fully organic last weekend.
 
So I have used bio nova. It's just right now I'm not.
 

 
Once that Growth Science A+B supply have run out, maybe start hitting the hydroponic coco coir plants with the right dose of the Bio nova coco forte A+B(perhaps start with 15ml part A/15ml part B to 10 litres of water) and nothing else added in there.
 
Just check the ph of the final solution is ok, because your water is not too good at all and you should be good to go until they go outside.

 

[TrentL]

If they don't start looking better soon, I may switch up what I'm using. They aren't doing so well with the growth science stuff, but again that's probably my fault for putting in cal mag supplement. Should have thought that through better. I was adding 3% calcium and 1% mag on top of what the Growth Science stuff provides, which is already a whopping 5.5% calcium and 2% magnesium. The stunted growth, upturned yellowish leaves, and some purple here and there is dead giveaways of calcium overdose. Calcium toxicity shows up as magnesium, iron, and manganese deficiency, if I recall correctly.
 
That liquid bone meal I added to the mix in too high of concentration did the same thing. It's *13%* calcium, which is 2x the amount that stalled out the hydro grow! The recommended dose of that stuff per the label is 2 tablespoons / gallon, which is crazy. Once at that rate was enough to kill / stunt seedlings. More mature plants tolerated it, though. 
 
Too much calcium is highly toxic, because it locks out those other micronutrients - magnesium, etc. And I'd overdosed those little guys with 13% on the liquid bone meal + 3x the dose of cal mag (which added another 9% calcium, for a total of 22%... ugh). 
 
It's tough to find the right balance, but I'm getting there, slowly and painfully, but getting there. Have some good results going on others. If I quit making mistakes, like mixing up teaspoons and tablespoons.
 
I *almost* did the same damn thing again tonight. I finished mixing in calmag with the 5-1-1 fish emulsion, looked down at the spoon, and went "oh hell."  I'd added 60mg of cal mag each to a pair of 4.5 gal buckets. 
 
So I split that up across 3 OTHER buckets and filled them, for 20ml/4.5gal, which diluted the fish emulsion down to 33% as well. Then did a pair of buckets at 100% 5-1-1 (9 tablespoons, added 6 on top of the 3 from the split), second set of buckets got 6 tablespoons (3 tablespoons from the split + 3 more), and the remaining two buckets were left at 1/3 dilution.
 
Those went to established, transitional, and seedlings respectively. 
 
Nearly all of the plants were showing signs of mag deficiency so the 20ml / 4.5gal of cal mag was needed. Next time they need fertilized I'll probably go back to 5-1-1 fish emulsion / 1/3 dose bone meal / 1/2 dose cal mag. Which would put it at 5-6.5-2 + 5.5% calcium + 0.5% magnesium. Then the following week as a rest, back to a mundane 5-1-1 w/ 3% calcium / 1% magnesium.
 
Also forgot to mention earlier.. I already have flower buds on some of the Chinense.  I've had buds on annuums before plant out before but never on chinense.
 
I can't top them either, they are already forked like crazy and bushy as hell.
 
 
What calcium overdose looks like;
 

 
That plant was non-terminal and is greening back up.
 
The lights are strong enough these plants are maintaining a compact, well forked build.
 

 

 

 
 
 
 

 

[Chilidude]

Heh, i think you need more helping hands more than ever right now and you need to get more rest. Not sleeping enough and working too much is a deadly combination for your plants.

 

[TrentL]

"Take to farm"
 

 
"Something ain't right after that last fert run"
 

 

 
 
"FLUSH THE POTS!" (2 days after flushing)
 

 
"OK that's working"
 

 
"Much better-er-er"
 
 
 
Meanwhile there is a veritable ARMY of Annuums waiting to get transplanted
 

 
 

 

[TrentL]

Heh, i think you need more helping hands more than ever right now and you need to get more rest. Not sleeping enough and working too much is a deadly combination for your plants.

 
Well, to be honest at the point I mixed up tablespoons and teaspoons a couple weeks ago, there was more than a fair amount of alcohol involved.
 
Today was just fatigue, though. Which is why I'm bringing on some more help. I hit 1,080 hours of labor for 2018 this week... in the first 3 months. Most folks work just a bit over 2,000 hours in an entire year, I'm already over halfway there.

 

[TrentL]

Turning in to a damn jungle up in hea!
 

 

 
 
Started 3 new hires this week. One general laborer, to help me on stuff like soil mixing, heavy lifting, etc, and two older retired ladies who will do transplanting, watering, recordkeeping, etc.
 

 
 

 

[Chilidude]

Good job, now you might get some well earned rest for yourself.

 

[TrentL]

Yeah I plan on actually taking a "weekend off" - first time I'll have any downtime since early January!
 
We got 7" of snow Sunday on Easter, along with a state wide smashing of our previous April 1 low of 20F degrees; we hit -2F on Monday morning.
 
Looks like winter is being a stubborn bitch this year.
 

 

[chocolatescotchbonnet]

Yeah I plan on actually taking a "weekend off" - first time I'll have any downtime since early January!
 
We got 7" of snow Sunday on Easter, along with a state wide smashing of our previous April 1 low of 20F degrees; we hit -2F on Monday morning.
 
Looks like winter is being a stubborn bitch this year.
 

Same here.. April 2nd morning looked like middle of winter snow covered trees.. April 3rd.. Hail and Thunderstorms.. rest of week highs in the 40's F !!?

 

[Edmick]

It's a high of 78 here today. Haha sorry I had to rub it in