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.
 

 

[TrentL]

Just a crazy amount of plants!
 
What will more crazy is dirt day!

 
Yeah there's (best guess, need a final census) roughly 2,850 peppers and 250 tomatoes out there now.
 
I'm starting another ~600 tomatoes, ~150 melons, and 144 peppers at home. The peppers will be selected out to grow in isolation cages and finished indoors this fall to harvest at least one round of pods around november or so. That'll put my seed harvest safely AFTER all of the harvest and production crap. 
 
We are picking up a new building (literally) this week, a 24x96' long cold frame building, which I will use to harden off plants, and get some tomatoes in the ground early (we're nowhere close to median frost date yet; that's still 2 1/2 weeks away. The first building is for hardening off isolation - get these guys outside for some UV light *but* also protect them a little from any potential herbicide drift. The second and third cold frame buildings will be used for early plant out and will protect *some* of the crop against herbicide drift; as well allow some later harvests on some of the late-start chinense.
 
Going to be changing the landscape soon. Those cold frame buildings I'm putting in are BIG
 
3 buildings, 24w by 96l, with 6' sidewalls; they will give me 2,300 sq feet of "indoor" growing space that should extend the harvest by a few weeks to a month this fall, protecting from the first few hard frosts. Plus, they can be opened up this summer so I can let rainwater do some of the hard work for me.
 
This fall, before winter sets in hard, we'll erect more cold frame structures so they are ready next spring. Probably 10-14 in all, although, we'll need to see how finances are doing. I'd like to have 23,000 sq foot of cold frame buildings for transplants, then a ~2300 sq foot greenhouse for sprouting. But we'll see how it goes.
 

I'm already stressed about dirt day and you have 50 times more plants than I do lol

 
Hired labor, friend. I can't do it all myself. I'd be digging holes until harvest.

 

[Walchit]

I guess it's propped on a pot or something too lol, I thought you had the perfect balance going on

 

[TrentL]

That on sticky trap is living dangerously on that ledge lol. I was kinda worried about that plant next to it

 
Haha it's actually resting level on the pots on the right edge, and the window sill on the left edge. It's not going anywhere. 
 
That's the spot that I identified they were climbing up to get on the table, based on dirt trail and chew marks on the insulation paper.
 
There's spring traps every 2 feet or so all along the tables they got on, half full 5 gal buckets of water next to the legs (in case they feel like a fatal swim for a drink), sticky traps, bait stations downstairs, as well as some *seriously* heavy duty rat poison bait chunks set out which a buddy of mine picked up from a nearby grain silo. Those are so potent you have to wear personal protective equipment to place them or pick them back up again. 
 
We won't have a mouse problem for long.

 

[Chilidude]

Ok so two new problems.
 
First, one tray got a whiff of 2,4-D herbicide while being transported from my house to the farm. A half dozen plants were exposed to a very faint dose of 2,4-D. The squiggly center vein and rapidly deformed leaves are a dead giveaway, seen it before; the year my garden got wiped out, about this same time of year;
 

 

 
Actually one of my early Naga morich plants growing in a small pot had similar thing going on with it's leaves and it definitely didnt get any pesticides, but you might have slight calsium thing going on with those plants.
 
 
Calcium is important for cell division and its deficiency is characterised by distorted new growth and weakened stems. New leaves have a twisted, bubbled appearance and edges can become necrotic. Old growth is not affected as calcium is the least mobile of elements. If calcium is deficient during fruiting, plants may develop Blossom End Rot, with sunken, necrotic patches developing at the blossom end of pods.

An application of CalMag (Calcium Magnesium feed) can help but it would be unusual for there not to be sufficient Calcium in garden compost, it is more commonly a problem of nutrient lockout. Excessive nitrogen and/or potassium hinders the plants ability to take on calcium, so check you are not feeding excessively.

Calcium deficiency can also be the result of low transpiration. If your pots are continually dry, this could be contributing to the problem and you should alter your watering regime
 

 

[TrentL]

If all of that don't work I'll sit out there with a 22 target handgun and shoot 22 short CB rounds at them. I'm not above using firearms indoors to kill pests. I could drop a mouse on the run at 70 feet with a headshot, with my Ruger match pistol.

 

[Chilidude]

Bring in few cats and they will solve your problems by destroying both your chilis and the mouses too.

 

[Walchit]

When I was in highschool my friend had that Ruger, it was probably the most accurate thing I've ever seen. I would get a pellet gun for indoor pests though lol

 

[TrentL]

 
Actually one of my early Naga morich plants growing in a small pot had similar thing going on with it's leaves and it definitely didnt get any pesticides, but you might have slight calsium thing going on with those plants.
 
 
Calcium is important for cell division and its deficiency is characterised by distorted new growth and weakened stems. New leaves have a twisted, bubbled appearance and edges can become necrotic. Old growth is not affected as calcium is the least mobile of elements. If calcium is deficient during fruiting, plants may develop Blossom End Rot, with sunken, necrotic patches developing at the blossom end of pods.

An application of CalMag (Calcium Magnesium feed) can help but it would be unusual for there not to be sufficient Calcium in garden compost, it is more commonly a problem of nutrient lockout. Excessive nitrogen and/or potassium hinders the plants ability to take on calcium, so check you are not feeding excessively.

Calcium deficiency can also be the result of low transpiration. If your pots are continually dry, this could be contributing to the problem and you should alter your watering regime
 

 
I can guarantee you those aren't short on ANYTHING, and what I'm seeing is herbicide drift. They got a whiff while being transported; there was heavy spraying going on the day we potted those up about 8 miles north of the farm, I drove right past to the sprayer in the field. I know *which* farm it was; but can't do anything because they weren't drifting stuff anywhere close to my farm; was close to my HOUSE though, where I was bringing them from. The rest of the tray looks perfect, and they were all done the same way. The rest of those trays were in boxes; THIS tray was just setting on the seat in my truck next to me. (Ran out of boxes)
 
This is a picture of 2,4-D drift damage (a bigger whiff) before it killed off half my garden in a past year;
 

 
Causes the plants to literally "grow themselves to death"
 

 
The squiggly center vein coupled with rapid, irregular growth, is a dead giveaway.
 

 

[TrentL]

Bring in few cats and they will solve your problems by destroying both your chilis and the mouses too.

 
Back in 2012 I had one cat knock two starting trays off of my bench, then it pissed in another, killing half the tray, and finally, it jumped down and crapped in the dirt that had spilled all over the floor. This year, there were TWO doors they had to go through to get to plants; the grow room was dedicated with it's own door, so if they managed to get down in the basement, they still couldn't get to the plants. Cats are HORRIBLE around plants.
 

When I was in highschool my friend had that Ruger, it was probably the most accurate thing I've ever seen. I would get a pellet gun for indoor pests though lol

 
22 cal BB or CB caps! Basically it's just primer and a projectile, they won't punch through a 2x4. Wouldn't want to get shot with one, but won't cause much of any damage to a structure!
 
BB caps turn your 22 in to a high powered BB gun.
 
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1018164377/rws-ammunition-22-bb-cap-6mm-flobert-18-grain-round-ball
 
CB caps are a little more potent, but still, usually only a 20-30 gr projectile travelling subsonic.
 
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1301367227/cci-ammunition-22-cb-long-29-grain-lead-round-nose
 
I have a 1300fps air rifle that shoots faster and harder than my 22 pistol would with those.

 

[Chilidude]

It looks like the herpicide sort of blocks the normal nutrient travel to the plant and the plant thus kills itself.

 

[Walchit]

Those varmint rounds for 22 are cool too, with the little caps full of bb's. Idk if that's the same as what you were talking about

 

[TrentL]

I use that Ruger for teaching kids to shoot, builds confidence to have something THAT accurate.
 

 
It will put match grade 22 cal projectiles through the same hole at 50 yards off of a rest. 
 
I got pretty heavy in to smallbore years back, even did smallbore coaching and ran smallbore matches.
 
Ammo costs are .. tough to swallow though. It is nice to have some olympic grade ammo around though.
 

 
That's an expensive sport to play in. 
 

 

[Walchit]

Shotshell is what I'm talking about, saw it at the bottom of one of your links lol

 

[TrentL]

It looks like the herpicide sort of blocks the normal nutrient travel to the plant and the plant thus kills itself.

 
No, it's a synthetic auxin. Auxins are the nervous system of a plant, tells it "hey it's time to grow.." or bloom or root out or whatever. (No different than say, rooting hormones)
 
In THIS case, the synthetic auxin enters the plant through the foilage and screams GROW GROW GROW.
 
Doesn't do jack to nutrient uptake. Just floods the plant with signals to trigger massive cell division and growth.
 
The thing is, if the plant SURVIVES.. oh lord. It's something else. I had a habanero plant survive a relatively decent dose one year and it put on several HUNDRED pods. Never seen anything like it, there were clusters of 20-30 habanero pods on every node. I had to feed it loads of fertilizer to keep up.
 
The ONLY countermeasure you have against 2,4-D, if you catch it IMMEDIATELY, is to give the plants rooting hormones. If you are VERY lucky on timing and dose, it will help balance out the auxin signals in the plant, and it won't kill itself off by growing itself to death.

 

[TrentL]

Don't get as much time to do rifle matches anymore, unfortunately. I only got to participate in one last year. That's a high power event, where I brought my SCAR17S and played in the match rifle division.
 

 
The match I used to run, for years, was an NRA approved high power and smallbore event. Turned in scores for national registration, etc. It was fun, a lot of work, but met a lot of folks, and taught a ton of people to shoot.
 

 
Another event under not so nice conditions;
 

 
I also taught f-class long range (600-1000 yard) shooting.
 

 

 
Nowadays I just do solo long range shooting out at a buddy's farm. (At least, until I get backstops up on my farm)

Shooting at a half mile here against a 2/3 scale IPSC metal popper, with a 35 mph gusty crosswind. Was a hell of a hard day of wind call.
 

 
But I don't miss.
 

 
I can also hit the 12" plate 100% of the time at a half mile with the iron sight 7.62 in the same wind conditions.
 

 
(I shoot high master level in F-Class long range shooting)
 

 

[CMJ]

Jeez man, talk about multi-talented! I bet you fly planes too, huh? Please tell me you dont fly planes too......

 

[TrentL]

This is the cold frame house I'm getting
 
http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/24-foot-cold-frame-6-foot-sidewalls/cold-frames
 

 
Cost for a 24x96 w/ 6' sidewalls and 4' centers is $5,564.
 
Concrete will be a couple hundred more, for pouring the pillar footers. Also need to price lumber for the base (requires treated lumber, and we have to frame our own end caps up)
 
One will get gravel in it, it will be for overflow, hardening off, surplus plant sales, whatever. 
 
The others I build (there will be more) will go in to the field proper, to cover crops. I will use poly early summer and late fall to protect against frost, and give them a bit warmer temps. Summer the poly comes off, and shade cloth goes on, for the crops that need a bit of sun protection. 
 
I'm going to start ground prep early next week, we should be picking the structure materials up later in the week, and hopefully have plants in it hardening off by around april 25-27.
 
The others we build will go in to the field, proper. Should give us some protection against post-emergent herbicide drift from nearby farms, as well as get the growing kicked off a little faster since they'll raise soil temps a bit. 
 
 
 

 

[TrentL]

Jeez man, talk about multi-talented! I bet you fly planes too, huh? Please tell me you dont fly planes too......

 
No, I don't fly planes. 
 
Nor do I do plumbing. If I so much as LOOK at a water pipe, it ruptures.
 
In fact, if I ever want to change careers, I could be a pretty effective plumbing repair salesman. It seems every house I walk in to suddenly develops plumbing problems. I've walked past a faucet before and had the handle blow off and shoot water 10 feet in to the air. EVERY valve I turn starts to leak. 
 
It's... just that bad. 

 

[TrentL]

(Which is why this whole "drip irrigation" thing scares the bejeezus out of me. I guess, though, that stuff INTENTIONALLY leaks so maybe I'll do just fine with it???)

 

[Chilidude]

God dammit, are you sure you have any money left after building so many buildings.