2019 - The Farm

TrentL · Apr 11, 2019

1885 transplants done today. tired.

Orekoc · Apr 11, 2019

As you should be. Just wow. You are :onfire:

TrentL said:
1885 transplants done today. tired.

HydroPepper · Apr 11, 2019

Just caught up on a couple of week's worth of posts... I'm green with envy (not as green as your plants though!)

Keep it up Trent! I hope you can get the temperature under control in the new greenhouse without too much effort.
Good luck man

TrentL · Apr 11, 2019

Closing in on 5,000 peppers in inventory, 156 types now potted up. Still two trays of seed peppers left to go as well as another tray of Reapers.

tsurrie · Apr 11, 2019

Awesome Trent! It's a joy browsing through your glog. Thanks for keeping us posted.

TrentL · Apr 11, 2019

Another long day. We had to mix more soil so that took up the better part of 2 hours. I got shade cloth pulled back a little (to open up a slit of direct sun, that'll sweep across the plants as the sun marches across the sky), rearranged the entire greenhouse, stocked in the new irrigation stuff that showed up today, and transplanted about 100 tomatoes. Wife got plants watered upstairs. I fed chickens, watered chickens, etc.. etc.. Just another day of chores on top of a mountain of work.

Devv · Apr 11, 2019

TrentL said:
Also even with fans on it hit 92F in that greenhouse yesterday, outside temp was 72F.

I may need to add misters.

I'm wondering...why the shade cloth inside the tunnel. I only ask because down here I always see them on the outside.

BTW, one hell of a job so far. I hope you kill it this year and make some $$$$

TrentL · Apr 11, 2019

Devv said:
I'm wondering...why the shade cloth inside the tunnel. I only ask because down here I always see them on the outside.

BTW, one hell of a job so far. I hope you kill it this year and make some $$$$

It's just temporary for hardening off. 50% shade for a few days, then I open up slits between the 20x24 sheets.

Instead of dragging peppers in and out of the shade (which would be quite a chore, with 5,000 peppers) I let the sun marching across the sky do the heavy lifting for me.

The slits I open between sheets will grow a little every day until the plants are hardened off.

Creates an aperture that causes direct sunlight to sweep across the plants, so instead of moving plants.. the sun moves.

Incremental amounts of sunlight each day, this way, just need to roll it back a little at a time.

Only way I could think of to do large scale mass hardening off.

TrentL · Apr 11, 2019

As far as why inside, well, it's only gonna be there for a little, and I couldn't figure out a way to roll it back incrementally like that on the outside of a 24x96 tunnel. Or how to secure it for that matter.

Tunnel is getting 50+mph direct wind right now.

We'll see if it's still there in the morning.

PtMD989 · Apr 12, 2019

Is there a wind rating on the new building?

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TrentL · Apr 12, 2019

PtMD989 said:
Is there a wind rating on the new building?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nope. We'll find out how strong it is this year though, I'm sure we'll see some 70+mph storms blow through.

PtMD989 · Apr 12, 2019

Well I have faith in your workmanship [emoji16]
You don’t do anything halfassed [emoji16]

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Devv · Apr 12, 2019

Well I knew you had a good reason, I was just wondering..

I think the building should hold, the covering may hate it down the road, after Mrs.UV has had her way

Hopefully we won't read any such reports..

TrentL · Apr 13, 2019

$420 in filter and plumbing

All of the plants are out

Had to turn on some heaters last night

Totally empty upstairs now

luvmesump3pp3rz · Apr 13, 2019

such a huge undertaking with so few hands. i wish you all the best with the grow, harvest and sales this year. :cheers:

edit, spelling

Boyan · Apr 13, 2019

A little late, but suddenly in the future come in handy ..

TrentL said:
Shit these are getting too big, too fast. They're about a month ahead of where they were last year, hell, they were about this big when I planted them out! Definitely did much better with the soil mix this year!

In such cases i increase air flow and/or reduce the temperature in the room (a couple degrees).
Second is simple, but first always brings additional benefits - stems become stronger, thicker and in the future also bring advantages.

My head is spinning on the number of types of peppers.. :shocked:

Let everything grow and make money! (ringing of coins)
After several days of absence, I am always very happy to see that Trent, step by step, turns big plans into reality. Bravo!! Easy to talk of course. But let all the forces, time and money return with a profit and happiness at memory for each family member. The latter, it seems to me, is priceless :rolleyes:

Hawkins · Apr 13, 2019

By far one of the best GLOGs ever created. Also Trent is such a great dude, has given me tons of info. The equipment and scale he has is what I hope strive for one day. Can't wait to see all his plants with all the colors of peppers on them.

TrentL · Apr 14, 2019

Got some 250 strawberries out yesterday, 25 black raspberry plants, and 250+ onions in the dirt yesterday.

Quite the temp swing. Low of 39, high of 96, in the greenhouse.

Interesting study on mycorrhizae, last year I'd batched together about three bins of potting soil from the first 300-ish dead plants last year, mixed it together, split it into three sections, and added 3 different amounts of mycorrhizae. I never got around to using it because it "cooked off" and I ended up finding a different mix. Anyway this year I planted a bunch of plants in it. G1 had 80 transplants, G2 had 101 transplants, and G3 had 80 transplants. (G1 and G3 were also used to test direct sprouting on a couple of trays of peppers, so less peppers were potted up in to it).

Here's freeport orange scotch bonnets, G3 left G1 right, same exact soil, only diference is in the amount of mycorrhizae I added last year.

It's odd that over 2 months after potting up, one soil type still grows healthy while the other shows obvious fertilizer burn and nitrogen toxicity.

Some more G1 plants grouped together.

In that batch, G1 got 40 oz mycorrhizae solution, G2 got 28 oz mycorrhizae, and G1 got 20 oz mycorrhizae. Otherwise soil composition was identical and storage was identical (30 gal plastic bins stacked in the corner of the basement, temp controlled).

The weird thing is G1 grew faster than G2 and G3 for quite a while (2 months) then suddenly starts showing toxicity of nitrogen, dark green coloration, obvious fert burn. These were all side by side in the grow this year, and the problem was replicated both at home and farm, across a couple hundred plants, all plants got same water, same light, same everything.

TrentL · Apr 14, 2019

The only conclusion to draw from the above observation is mycorrhizae - not just the presence of it, but the quantity of it - can radically alter the long term curve of nutrient availability in soilless mixes.

Think about it - that soil rested for a full YEAR before being used. You'd think the myco would have turned all of the unavailble nutes in to available ones. They did indeed "cook off" a lot of it, as the batches went "hot" (physically, 110-120F) for a while after being mixed, as they were so nitrogen heavy (something on the order of 40 lbs of blood meal and 20 lbs of kelp meal per cubic yard, if you scaled up).

Anyway last year that mix was fatal to peppers, 99.9% of them (I had one sole survivor out of 500ish plants), because it had so much nitrogen in it. After resting a year, it worked fantastic, though, growing peppers at several times the rate of the new soil mixes. However, eventually the stronger mycorrhizae population again has caused toxicity, after two months of use.

Really strange effect, not something I anticipated at all.

Which means, of course, I have to do another long term study of the current organic potting soil mix to see how it does after various time spans. I mean, I can't control how long bags sit on a shelf after I mix and distribute them, right? I know it's good for a year but I don't like how this went on that batch, that means a couple months after planting in it, given (some certain conditions), it could become toxic again if the nitrogen counts are too high.

Something new to work on anyway.

For what it's worth the newer mixes of soil are much weaker as far as nutrient content and micorrhizae solution. Each cubic yard gets 3 gallons of myco @ 2 teaspoon / 3 gal added at time of batching, which is a 5.7x increase in material (173 dry gal / yd vs. 30 gal in G1/G2/G3), at a solution 2/3 the strength of previous. G1 was 40 oz @ 2 tspn / gal ratio, G2 was 28 oz @ same, G3 was 20 oz at same. By comparison the new soil mix gets more mycorrhizae:

Old
G1 = 0.31 gal myco @ 4.6 cu ft = 6.73 %
G2 = 0.21 gal myco @ 4.6 cu ft = 4.56 %
G3 = 0.15 gal myco @ 4.6 cu ft = 3.26 %

Current
I0 = 3 gal myco (at .66 strength) 1.98 @ 27 cu ft = 7.33 %

Nitrogen levels are much, much smaller though; G1-G3 consisted of failed experiments mix A through F last year, batched together and set to rest;

Aggregate of component fertilizers scaled to weight

This year's mix, by comparison, is very, very tame on nutrients.

TrentL · Apr 14, 2019

The only thing I can surmise is that after a period of time the bins went anaerobic after they were sealed for a year, and the bacteria stopped doing their thing. Was good availability of everything for a period of time after reopening, until they ramped up their little bacterial #'s again over the first couple months, and started digesting the rest of the nutrients, at which point the mix went (once again) toxic.

If that's the case, eventually the nute burn will clear (if the plants don't die, from roots being burnt) and they'll grow like gangbusters once again until plant out. Or they'll live long enough to get planted out, at which point, they'll have less intense nutrients in the dirt to use.

Also, if that's the case, at some point G2 and G3 will also get nute burn as they're just on a slower microbial curve than G1 was.