2019 - The Farm

PaulG · Mar 3, 2019

Trent, sorry to hear about your grandmother.
It's hard to lose someone close like that.
Thoughts and prayers with you and your
family at this time.

Good luck getting back into the groove with
your mega-grow. There will be some Rocoto
seeds waiting for you when you are through
with the family arrangements.

Stay sane and take care of yourself and your
family first of all. Looking forward to seeing
you back on the forum.

Ruid · Mar 7, 2019

I hope things are starting to look up. This is easily my favorite glog.

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

We're nearing capacity

Temps pretty stable day / night with the heaters in the building turned off, lights are supplying all of the heat. Was snowing outside when I took this.

MOA scotch bonnets

Big Sun Habanero

You can tell the big sun I potted up earlier are starting to find their legs

Carolina Reaper

Moruga x Reaper

Various hybrids and ultras

Some annuums I accidentally seeded poking up here, those are gonna be producing pods before plantout...

Various types; too numerous to mention individually; for the most part I left a gap between types, until we start cranking out stick labels

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

More various tables;

These are all 7-pot brainstrain on this table, the earlier pot-ups are further along;

The spot with the trays were later filled up with Brown Moruga

7-pot primo, still have a half tray of those to pot-up

Umm.. I forget what these are. I think I moved the caribbean red habaneros here (216 plants), the stick rows are epsom salt tests

Various habaneros

More habaneros

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

I tried getting a full length pic but didn't work out so well. Hard to get a pic of 70' long room that's crowded by lights and plants and stuff.

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

Only room for 406 more plants.

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

Only three trays of the first batch of peppers left in the sprout room;

Oops label here

And one tray of MOA held in reserve, I planted an extra tray after I scorched the first two with lights

Some veggies and herbs;

Those onions don't like the T5's.. kind of self-pruning. They got a heavy dose of fish emulsion wednesday after I nearly killed all of them from lack of water.

Window-sill pepper growing well, about time to pot this one up again already!

I .. uhh, suck at growing flowers.

Some various veggies

I didn't notice these sprout yesterday, so they got leggy on me

Same with these guys

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

PaulG said:
Trent, sorry to hear about your grandmother.
It's hard to lose someone close like that.
Thoughts and prayers with you and your
family at this time.

Good luck getting back into the groove with
your mega-grow. There will be some Rocoto
seeds waiting for you when you are through
with the family arrangements.

Stay sane and take care of yourself and your
family first of all. Looking forward to seeing
you back on the forum.

I'm just about caught back up, just in time. Got 400 more transplants to knock out this weekend, then I should be done with the first batch. We've got 2800 in the grow room now.

I brought on my carpenter to help me churn through transplants. $25/hr is painful but the guy works hard and fast, the two of us managed to knock out over 600 transplants in a little over 5 hours on Wednesday. Then yesterday we did another 160, and mixed up 1.5 cubic yards of soil for Mix I. The two of us potted up more in a 5 hour window, than 4 temps last year that cost me $10 / hr each and 2 workers that cost me $12.50 and $15.00 did in a full day.

Kind of eye opening, at $25 an hour I had a hard working guy that out-produced a crew that was costing me about $70 an hour last year, in less time.

Carpenter was wanting to help get me caught up so we can go outside and work on building shit, next week, so he was as motivated as I was

Ruid said:
I hope things are starting to look up. This is easily my favorite glog.

Getting there, I just about got swept away being too far behind, but finally getting caught back up and on track again.

Whether or not I'll get overwhelmed again is another matter. There's column after column of crop types and everything really starts loading up next week

On top of that schedule which me and my wife have to stick to, I've also got to skin a high tunnel, build ~70 tables for it, build two MORE high tunnels, trench a couple thousand feet of irrigation pipe, get the new well working and online, build all of the irrigation manifolds, and build two 30x70 pole barns this year. Plus run an evening market stand in town, until I can get a couple high school kids properly trained up on it.

So yeah, lots of work ahead of me.

Mildfruit · Mar 8, 2019

This is insane! Im really glad I found this glog. Very impressive with all these peppers, how do you water them? Looking forward to watch this jungle grow big!

Ruid · Mar 8, 2019

Your electric bill must be staggering..

Walchit · Mar 8, 2019

I see your running chains on those T5s

Have you seen the ratchet hangers? They are really nice, I've never seen one break either. I use the cheap Amazon ones. They are about 3 bucks a pair.

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

Mildfruit said:
This is insane! Im really glad I found this glog. Very impressive with all these peppers, how do you water them? Looking forward to watch this jungle grow big!

Well, tonight we dumped 165 gallons of water in the tables w/ 5 gal buckets. Can't direct water them since the well water is too high of pH, have to drop it down with acid a little. So we pre-mix the buckets, then dump them in the tables.

Up until tonight, we were hand watering w/ 1/3 cup every 2 days while they found their legs. Takes about 6 or so labor hours to do all 15 tables this way.

Ruid said:
Your electric bill must be staggering..

The 100 amp main breaker in the grow building was buzzing tonight. Gonna need to get another main breaker soon, think that one is giving up the ghost. The lights draw 12,960 watts, which is 108 amps @120v. The main breaker is 100 amp at 240v, so we draw over half the capacity of the power supply w/ lights alone. Add on to that miscellaneous fans, and yeah, it can draw a lot of power.

We leave lights on 24/7 except the night after bottom watering, we let the pots soak overnight before turning the lights on. Helps spot any that didn't get a good enough dose of water, since the lights keep the tops bone dry, having them off lets me check them in the morning and I'll immediately see any pots which didn't get a complete dose of water. Then we're good for about 3 days. Later on in the grow, we'll have to bottom water every 2 days.. then right before they go out, probably every day and a half.

But yeah, not counting well, exterior lights, soil mix equipment, etc we draw about 9.3 million watt hours per month during the grow at the farm, and another 4.1 million watt hours at home (or 13,400 kwh / month, roughly.)

Our electricity bill is.. high.

Walchit said:
I see your running chains on those T5s

Have you seen the ratchet hangers? They are really nice, I've never seen one break either. I use the cheap Amazon ones. They are about 3 bucks a pair.

20190308_141830.jpg

Yeah I run rope w/ lanyard ties at home. The plastic ratchet ones scare me a bit with the weight of a 4' T5 8 bulb array, considering I'm known to set a few trays or whatever I'm happening to carry on top of lights from time to time. Last thing I want is a little plastic nubbin to break off and kill 108 plants.

Those chains are rated at about 200 lbs each so I can hang off of them if I wanted to.

They are a pain in the ass to adjust, but unless plants get REALLY tall I don't have to mess with them all year. At about 14" height over plants, I get 45,000 lumens in the center of the table and about 12,000 lumens on the edges. I rotate plants about every 3 weeks, whenever I notice the outside ones are getting a little too tall.

Speaking of watering, tonight was the first bottom water. 165 gallons to do all of the plants. 45 trips with buckets (took 10.5 gal each table).

Shut the lights off as we went, just over halfway done here (4 more tables behind me in this pic)

Very weird with the lights off.

Our little helper

All tucked in for the night..

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

Soil mixes G and H (big bulk mixes) are doing well so far. They had 17.5 and 19 lbs of dry fertilizer per batch, respectively. They are pretty weak.

A batch is 5x 30 gal bins of coco coir, and 4 cubic feet (approx 30 gal) of perlite.

Those are mixed up, then I mix dry ferts in to the big batch, to distribute them evenly across the entire batch. This slightly exceeds the capacity of the 1 cubic yard mixer, but I manage (gotta shut the machine off a couple of times and rebalance the load by hand, it bunches up in the center).

Once those are mixed up, I put it in bins, at this point we've got 7x 30 gal bins - the mixer kind of fluffs up the coco a bit, so we end up with over a cubic yard at this point (we gain a full 30 gal bin, over what we put in).

Then I measure out 18 gallons of worm turds, twice. I put in a half load (3 1/2 bins) of coco/perlite, and dump in the worm turds. That fluffs the load up some more - the more you tumble coco the more it seems to aerate.

At that point all of the dry ferts and materials are in. So I dump in 5 gallons of water mixed with 2 1/2 scoops of great white mycorrhizae (for each of the two batches), and mix for a while until there's no more caking of the aggregate material.

We end up, at the end, with 10 1/2 30 gallon bins of potting media.

So on a dry fert basis I'm a little shy since 10.5 30 gallon bins come out to 6.4 dry gal / cu ft, so 30*10.5= 315 / 49 cu ft. 49 / 27 = 1.82 cubic yards.

Even though we only started with 6 * 30 gal bins (coco & perlite), plus 2 * 18 gal bins (worm castings), 216 gallons of material, plus 4 gallons (roughly) of fertilizer, we end up with 315 gallons of potting soil mix.

I didn't anticipate the expansion so my initial G & H mixes were very much on the light side. Most recipes for bulk soil mix call for about 15 or so pounds of dry fertilizer per cubic yard, and I was adding 17.5 and 19 lbs to 1.82 cubic yards (64% and 69.5% of a 'typical dose', respectively).

But, a per plant basis, the soil gets compacted a little in to the pots when we load them - if I leave it very loose, like it is out of the mixer, I'll have "half pots" by the time I plant them out. G batch gave me 1192 pots, H batch gave me 1169 pots, so we're at least fairly consistent on how much we pack in to them - +/- 2% anyway.

On G batch 17.5 pounds of dry ferts were distributed amongst 1192 pots, which gives me 0.014681 pounds per pot, or 6.66 grams of dry fert per pot, total.

On H batch, 19 pounds of dry ferts were distributed amongst 1169 pots, which gives me 0.016253 pounds per pot, or 7.37 grams of dry fert per pot, total.

H batch was 10.6% stronger, effectively.

I batch, just mixed, had 21 pounds of dry fert. I cut back azomite a pound, and increased nitrogen and phosphorous. So it'll be much stronger than G or H batch. On the surface, it has (assuming 1180 pots are loaded), will have 0.017796 lbs per pot, or 8.07 grams per pot, or 21% more fert.

However, that's a bit misleading. Compared to H mix, it has 13% more total ferts, but these are loaded heavier on the 13-1-0 blood meal, 0-22-0 rock phosphate, and 0-16-0 fish bone meal, bumps calcium and magnesium substantially, while cutting down on stuff that adds K (which coir is already abundant in). There's 20% more blood meal, the same amount of kelp meal, 9% more rock phosphate, 100% more fish bone meal (was zero in mix G, 1 lb in mix H, stepped it up to 1.5 lb in mix I.) That'll give me more calcium and more available phosphorous, maybe too much?

I know for a fact that 17.0 lb of rock phosphate is moderately lethal to plants, while 8.75 might stunt growth (verdict still out on mix F), so I bumped it from 5 lb to 6 lb on this latest test.

So I'm sure I'll need to give the ladies in G and H, a slight bump with liquid fertilizer a couple of times, fish emulsion, etc, as they grow.

But I plan on stepping up the dose about 10% or so each batch until I find a point of either diminishing returns or harm plants, from this point on.

Have to do the same thing with tomatoes, melons, and a host of other stuff, try to find the optimum potting soil for each. (Strawberries are loving mix G right now.. so that's promising.)

I'll be starting a FEW, not many, tomatoes this weekend in some leftover G and H soil to see how they fare. They get so big so fast, I really don't want to start the bulk of the tomatoes until April... but this will give me time to do a little test & tweak. I know from some university studies I've read, that peppers and tomatoes need vastly different nutrients at different stages of growth, so I'll try to find a mix that works individually for each, rather than try to shove a general purpose one out.

TrentL · Mar 8, 2019

I do have an LD50 on the dry ferts, Mix A has now been 50% lethal to plants - it was a small hand mix. Scaled up to the same size as the big mixes, it had the equivalent of 36 lbs of fertilizer. Mix C was also very, very lethal to plants, it had the equivalent of 70.7 lbs of dry ferts (I got my half cups and cups mixed up, don't ask...). Anywho.. I know somewhere between where I'm at now (17.5, 19 lbs, and now 21 lbs) and 35 lbs I start killing plants.

So goal is to creep up on the dry ferts until I see a degradation of growth, or some toxicity signs in growth.. then I'll back off to that previous level and begin tweaking the various amounts of each component until I land at the "perfect" mix for peppers.

Then do the same for tomatoes, etc...

By this time next year I'll have some *really* good soil for peppers ready.. already got the Amazon seller account created... lol.

ETA:

There is a *noticeable* difference in behavior of each fertilizer blend between c. chinese, c. bacaatum, and c. annuum.

So I may end up with a "best blend" for each of the various species of peppers. Aji's, especially, behave much differently than c. chinense to the different fertilizer mixes.

There will not be a "one size fits all" for optimal seedling growth. There will be a "this is the c. chinense potting soil", "this is the c. annuum soil", etc.

I'll have enough data this year to have a best blend for c. chinense, c. bacaatum, c. pubescens, c. annuum, c. fructesens, and c. eximinium, so it'll be neat.

Since I'm growing for a full-term in isolation with these mixes, I will also have comparison yields and other information by the end of the year, to really nail down what is best.

Next year, there'll be no more guesswork. The only experiments will be "do I change mixes at each pot-up stage", as mature plants will need more / different fertilizers than young plants.

Walchit · Mar 9, 2019

I'm glad your doing all this testing so I don't have to.

TrentL · Mar 9, 2019

Walchit said:
I'm glad your doing all this testing so I don't have to.

There's a surprising lack of any good research out there w/ regards to using coco as a non-sterile grow media. Lots of folks use it for passive hydroponics, either coco a+b or fish hydrolysate/etc, but there's a lot of challenges using it as a long term organic media that has active biological elements breaking down dry fertilizers.

Once I get to a good mix for various types of plants, I'll send samples off to a lab to get the Guaranteed Analysis labeling made. Then off to OMRI, for organic labeling.

Then we'll be ready to sell the stuff.

Lots of experiments left, using mycorrhizae, there will be different results with different "hold times" as the batches will begin breaking down organic nutrients right after they are mixed. I was worried about that until I saw the spectacular results of last year's 100% fatal mixes doing so well this year. Seems the longer you hold it, the better it does.

So I'll be doing some testing to see what sort of lead time is best; it's possible we may end up mixing "next years" soil this fall, or whatever, and allowing it some cook-off time before bagging it.

Devv · Mar 9, 2019

Good research Trent

PtMD989 · Mar 10, 2019

For your power usage, would solar or wind turbines be a possibility? Maybe a possible tax break in there? People love that kind of stuff, possible marketing plus. Green energy and organic [emoji106]

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TrentL · Mar 10, 2019

PtMD989 said:
For your power usage, would solar or wind turbines be a possibility? Maybe a possible tax break in there? People love that kind of stuff, possible marketing plus. Green energy and organic [emoji106]

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Nope, there is a big wind farm about 5-10 miles away from us and they have a lifetime easement on every parcel of land in this part of the county, prohibiting any structures 50' tall or more.

I was looking at solar, but right about the time I was gonna pull the trigger the tarriffs w/ China started and prices about doubled overnight.

PtMD989 · Mar 10, 2019

Well that sucks [emoji3525]

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