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]

Hey you got few chili escapees in the corner, you might want to cut their head clean off.

Haha yeah they can run, just means they'll die tired. (Old long range shooting joke.)

 

[TrentL]

Looking good Trent tomatoes look ready to go outside

Yeah they were ready a couple weeks ago. I don't like that they are getting this big in those 4" pots but nothing I can do about it, there is no more room to be found.

 

[TrentL]

That hiking incident you mentioned, they made a movie about it, I believe its called 127 Hours .


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, I remember that now. I haven't seen the movie. Remember seeing the dude on the local news in salt lake City. They also covered a tornado back in my neck of the woods. Crazy waking up and seeing on the news that a tornado hit a town where you have a bunch of relatives. Sucked, couldn't get through to any of them. I don't like travelling anymore. Every time, seems something bad happens.

 

[TrentL]

By the way, how is "Scrawny?"

Oh he is doing good as can be. No tomatoes yet, flowers don't look right. Spindly things. Dunno if it will make any fruit.

 

[TrentL]

So, I can't help but think, with the spider bite incident and splinter under the nail.... That this could have all been avoided if you maybe, just maybe, wear some gloves? Just lookin out for you buddy. lol

Scar tissue forms better, tougher skin.

Seriously if it had hit ANYWHERE else on my hands wouldn't have got through the callouses. Don't really need gloves, do too much manual labor, my hands are pretty tough, but that splinter found a chink in the old armor!!! Probably why that widow bite didn't mess me up more too, pincers didn't get too far in because of the callouses. I've had bee and yellow jacket stings fail to get through before

 

[Edmick]

Scar tissue forms better, tougher skin.

Seriously if it had hit ANYWHERE else on my hands wouldn't have got through the callouses. Don't really need gloves, do too much manual labor, my hands are pretty tough, but that splinter found a chink in the old armor!!! Probably why that widow bite didn't mess me up more too, pincers didn't get too far in because of the callouses. I've had bee and yellow jacket stings fail to get through before

I was in the medical field for 12 years so my delicate little paws probably don't hold up as well. haha they're getting beat up now though. All sorts of fun little cuts, scratches and bruises popping up. I'm pretty sure i'll be a real man by the time the season is over lol

 

[TrentL]

I was in the medical field for 12 years so my delicate little paws probably don't hold up as well. haha they're getting beat up now though. All sorts of fun little cuts, scratches and bruises popping up. I'm pretty sure i'll be a real man by the time the season is over lol

 
I was a computer programmer and network engineer for 2 decades, my hands didn't know the meaning of the word callous, except for the knuckles, from over 30 years of martial arts, and a decade and a half of playing guitar, which keeps the fingertips on my left hand calloused. 
 
I started doing trade work, remodeling, about 3 years ago. Since then I've picked up concrete work (sidewalks, patios, foundations), heavy equipment operation, carpentry, electrical work, tile install, carpet install, drywall hanging and finishing, roofing, siding, and a fair amount of demolition work. That is when I started to build callouses. After three years doing trade work, my hands look NOTHING like they did when I worked at a desk all day. My callouses are so thick they occasionally peel, or get so rough I have to cut them back a little with a razorblade. 
 
My feet got calloused too, but that was from gardening. I don't know what makes me do it, but I always garden barefoot. Even in the grow room, I go barefoot. Outside pulling weeds? Barefoot. Harvesting? Barefoot. I can't stand to wear shoes when I'm working with plants. I like feeling the dirt under my feet. 
 
So by the end of the season, my feet will be as hard as rock, too.

 

[Chilidude]

It is only a matter of time when you step on a rusty piece of iron with that barefoot walking in the garden, so in the meantime stay safe.

 

[TrentL]

It is only a matter of time when you step on a rusty piece of iron with that barefoot walking in the garden, so in the meantime stay safe.

 
I stay current on tetanus shots. Last one was after a motorcycle crash June 30 2010.  Due for another one in a couple years.

 

[TrentL]

So that big frigging chunk of concrete I ran in to while leveling ground for the first cold frame house was my enemy today.
 
Rented an attachment for my skid loader.
 

 
Thought it'd be easy going.
 

 

 
Six hours later I was frustrated with how little progress I was making.
 

 
So I dug it out more, dug a deeper pit next to it, undercut the heck out of it with my mini excavator, and shoved with all my skidloader's might against it.. barely moved it.
 

 
Identified what I was up against finally. Was a trench poured (monopour) footer with rebar tied in to an 8" slab. Started at 16 feet long; I got it down to about 12-13 feet with 6 HOURS of jackhammering.
 
The "bottom" is a foot thick, the "top" over 3 feet thick, and it's every bit of 4 feet deep. This ties in to a good portion of 8" slab with rebar run throughout the chunk. I estimated it at 4.75 cubic yards of concrete; or, roughly 20,000 pounds of dead weight.  The jackhammer would only get small fragments off, at best, this concrete is OLD, incredibly thick, and very well cured.
 
Going to dig an even DEEPER pit tomorrow and then shove the whole damn thing in below grade. No way I'm breaking it up.
 
On to peppers...
 

 
Left lights on continuously or a day and a half. New fan arrangement is working great; my temperature variation over 36 hours was only 2 degrees, right at 80F.
 

 
Much better.
 
I checked on some root development today. This is a big sun Habanero, mix N.
 
Good thick sturdy trunk.
 

 
Perfect root development
 

 
Had a three way tie today on "first flowers of the year." Orange Thai, Sweet French Bell, and Sugar Cane.
 

 

 

 
That's it for today, very tired, and have to start out again early tomorrow on earthmoving..
 

 

[tsurrie]

Nice looking plants. Good luck with that concrete Trent.

 

[CMJ]

Looks like you got your soil problems all lined out. What's in this soil mix N that you have settled on? Im sure you have posted it bit I cant seem to find it.

 

[TrentL]

Nice looking plants. Good luck with that concrete Trent.

 
Thanks! It's going to be another long day today. I pick up the cold frame buildings in *2* days so I was hoping to be a lot further along with this project. I have plants needing to get hardened off!!! Tomatoes need to go in the dirt yesterday! It's all happening too fast!
 

Looks like you got your soil problems all lined out. What's in this soil mix N that you have settled on? Im sure you have posted it bit I cant seem to find it.

 
 
It's buried back in the Glog, a ways. Actually a combination of dry fert and a liquid regimen to kick start microbes without "resting" the soil for a few weeks before use. It works better when it rests a few weeks. Mix N plants are also showing a bit of a P deficiency over time that I'm having to address in later fertilizer runs, not quite enough in there.
 
It's a combination of coir, perlite, and worm castings for a base, with blood meal, azomite, seabird guano, and kelp meal added as dry fertilizer. Kick started with Great White, alaskan fish emulsion, liquid bone meal, and synthetic cal mag (because I'm using unbuffered coir, I have to run cal mag periodically, as needed to address P and Mag deficiencies).

 

[PodHopper]

This is the Glog of the year.  Filled with Guns, The Walking Dead, ER visits, and spectacular looking plants.

 

[Chilidude]

And look what you did to my poor Naga morich plant, when you said it needs more nitrogen:

 
I literally added less nitrogen and look how green it compared to the older picture, the only difference now is that i added the power of the 180w led in the mix.
 
This plant i feeded with B'cuzz coco 10ml/10ml few days ago, so they actually needed less fertilizer than before to grow better so dont overfeed your peppers if they dont need it as it will only lock them down and they will not grow.
 
Sort of learning experience for this year too, as it seems all fertilizers are not created equal and some of them may need lower EC number compared to the one i have used to grow chilis with much higher EC number.

 

[Blitz527]

Beautiful property, amazing barn. Love it. I can't wait to see what you do with it.

 

[Chilidude]

 
 

 
Great picture of the coco coir roots, are you going to do any re-potting to a bigger containers any more?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[TrentL]

 

 
 

 
Great picture of the coco coir roots, are you going to do any re-potting to a bigger containers any more?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
Yes the isolation plants are going in #15 pots. 4-6 plants per isolation cage, times 33 cages. That's 132 to 198 plants. We gotta bust up a LOT of coco for it. 

 

[TrentL]

Calling this place - actually called them yesterday but was before they opened, when they called back I was earth moving so didn't hear the phone.
 
http://ellisproducts.com/products/coir-buster/coirbuster-limited/
 
That machine will devour these stacks of bricks I got.
 

 

[TrentL]

And look what you did to my poor Naga morich plant, when you said it needs more nitrogen:
 
 
I literally added less nitrogen and look how green it compared to the older picture, the only difference now is that i added the power of the 180w led in the mix.
 
This plant i feeded with B'cuzz coco 10ml/10ml few days ago, so they actually needed less fertilizer than before to grow better so dont overfeed your peppers if they dont need it as it will only lock them down and they will not grow.
 
Sort of learning experience for this year too, as it seems all fertilizers are not created equal and some of them may need lower EC number compared to the one i have used to grow chilis with much higher EC number.

 
That wasn't me, that was walchit, edmick, and cmj
 
Rapid growing shoots always start off yellow for a few days. 
 
Five-day-old transplants, yellowish and fast growing
 

 
Two week old transplants
 

 
Also see this when you correct a deficiency and they take off fast. Like giving P to a deficient plant; it'll grow so fast after correcting a deficiency it wrinkles and yellows before it catches up and greens back up, as it flattens back out.