2019 - The Farm

TrentL · May 25, 2019

Special batch for some special plants. These grow so much faster than peppers and tomatoes that I kicked up the nitrogen a bit. And since it's a starting soil, omitted the perlite. Want to see if I can cure some oddball things from happening (taproots heading up instead of down, plants wandering around forever before emerging, etc). I think they'd been bouncing off of perlite chunks and going the wrong way. We'll see.

Although, the current crop is growing very, very well.

Tight intranode spacing

TrentL · May 25, 2019

Those are 2 weeks 1 day and counting

Peppers are in holding pattern waiting to get planted out.

PaulG · May 25, 2019

Those are beautiful starts, Trent. No stretching at all.

Man, hoping you can get those peppers out sometime
soon. Weather forecast for your area doesnt look very
appealing.

Hawkins · May 25, 2019

Just wanted to stop by and say thanks for telling me to put my drip lines under my weed barrier a few months ago. Also for anyone out there on the fence about drip lines, do it, saves tons of time. It costs a little more, but well worth the time and water saved.

Also the Hemp is looking great, I'm hoping to be able to grow that in the next few years here.

podz · May 26, 2019

TrentL said:
Special batch for some special plants. These grow so much faster than peppers and tomatoes that I kicked up the nitrogen a bit. And since it's a starting soil, omitted the perlite. Want to see if I can cure some oddball things from happening (taproots heading up instead of down, plants wandering around forever before emerging, etc). I think they'd been bouncing off of perlite chunks and going the wrong way. We'll see.

Although, the current crop is growing very, very well.

Tight intranode spacing

We need a WOW button instead of just a LIKE button :-)

Mr.joe · May 26, 2019

At least things are looking up. Careful with that new crop. The feds get touchy with that kinda quantity. Get that fox I'd be there to help except I'm a little far away

TrentL · May 26, 2019

Mr.joe said:
At least things are looking up. Careful with that new crop. The feds get touchy with that kinda quantity. Get that fox I'd be there to help except I'm a little far away

Falls under industrial hemp, we are growing 250,000 of them next year if I can get buildings up in time. (Already have pre-orders for a lot of acreage of transplants)

Hawkins said:
Just wanted to stop by and say thanks for telling me to put my drip lines under my weed barrier a few months ago. Also for anyone out there on the fence about drip lines, do it, saves tons of time. It costs a little more, but well worth the time and water saved.

Also the Hemp is looking great, I'm hoping to be able to grow that in the next few years here.

Yes, dripline rocks when everything goes right. It can frustrate the hell out of you when it don't.

PaulG said:
Those are beautiful starts, Trent. No stretching at all.

Man, hoping you can get those peppers out sometime
soon. Weather forecast for your area doesnt look very
appealing.

We were going to transplant yesterday after market, roll out a few hundred Habanero, but I decided against it as the winds were incredibly strong yesterday. Then, last night we got hammered by 4+ " of rain again and 70+ mph winds. Knocked power out at the farm for 14 hours.

Going to upload some pics.

We've been having to give the peppers some nitrogen finally, they're starting to show some signs of being angry at still being in 4" pots. Had my boy hand-feed all of them a 1/3 cup of 2 tblspn / gallon 5-1-1 yesterday and the day before. He's got a big college bill to pay off so got some extra help this summer.

TrentL · May 26, 2019

Well been a little while but here's some pepper pics. You can see there are some mobile nitrogen issues developing, which is why we hit them with 5-1-1 fish emulsion this week. Most have been in these pots with zero inputs for over 2.5 months, so I'd say we're good. Some of the mobile nitrogen issue has been due to plant size, watering more heavily with 7.8ph water does a plant no good... makes nitrogen unavailable. So fish emulsion solution clocking in at 5.8 should help get nitrogen moving *and* rebalance soil pH just a smidge back in to a range that's acceptable to vegetation...

Tomato row. You can see all the empty space left behind from when we fed all of the greens to the chickens... that'll be full of cannabis trays soon.

More peppers

Here's our annuums, about 2,000 plants in 3" sheet pots

You can see the ones which are most nitrogen deprived are the ones on the outer edges of the tables; those have to get watered more frequently, and even though we are careful not to "flush" the pots (pre-wetting dry ones before giving them more water) the amount of water and high pH is hurting them.

What's left of our greens; not much, and germination has been spotty since this end of the tunnel routinely reaches 110 degrees.

TrentL · May 26, 2019

Rhubarb

REALLY bad germ rate on our watermelons, cantaloupe, and cucumbers this year. Most of those were commercial seeds from Johnny's, but also had bad germ rate on our saved seed. I think the last late frost nailed some.

Some 4" potted tomatoes, and in the background you can see some of the graveyard plants I'm trying to resuscitate. They were HORRIBLE looking a few weeks ago. They're starting to get over it (minus the 2 dozen I lost)

More graveyard dirt peppers I'm trying to save, in 1 gal pots

You can see may of them are recovering here;

Seed peppers

Some 6" potted tomatoes

Some 3 gal potted tomatoes

Some chinense we forgot to take to market saturday lol

Rhubarb

REALLY bad germ rate on our watermelons, cantaloupe, and cucumbers this year. Most of those were commercial seeds from Johnny's, but also had bad germ rate on our saved seed. I think the last late frost nailed some.

Some 4" potted tomatoes, and in the background you can see some of the graveyard plants I'm trying to resuscitate. They were HORRIBLE looking a few weeks ago. They're starting to get over it (minus the 2 dozen I lost)

TrentL · May 26, 2019

These peppers are constantly drying out, has been a real challenge to keep them alive. We spend about 4-5 man hours a day watering.

Long view

The only Fresno we had, and it's got a big pod on it!

Seed peppers

(The little pot is Gabby's experiment. I think she's growing an imaginary plant?)

(The one with yellow leaves was a graveyard pepper, it's recovering.)

Damn things are monsters

TrentL · May 26, 2019

Kung Pao, General Tso, and their merry band of miscreants. Unfortunately, I screwed up. I thought I had 10 roosters and 3 hens. Turns out we got 10 hens and 3 roosters. The little black buggers started coockadoodling and the big fatties just lounge around all day nesting.

Wet, wet, and more wet, glad I didn't transplant out yesterday. We had storms that knocked power out to the farm overnight and 70+ mph winds. Took out power to half the town. At least the ground plastic held.

Some more seed peppers (images got out of order when I uploaded)

Hot end of the tunnel, last 24 hours

Random pods

These should look better in a couple of days since dropping pH and giving some nitrogen. These particular plants were hit with 5-1-1 two days ago and are greening back up along the veins again.

Various annuums for seed peppers will get potted up later;

More chinense

Mixed bag of aji and chinense

TrentL · May 26, 2019

Yet more peppers

Random basil that got put in with peppers lol

Yet more peppers

These need to go outdoors so they can get light on those nodes and branch out

Now for the ugly ones. These are all graveyard dirt peppers experiencing severe phosphorous shortages.

Random trays waiting to get punted out

TrentL · May 26, 2019

Garlic is doing good. Wet feet, causing some nitrogen uptake problems, but still growing strong. It's mid-thigh tall now.

Yeaaaaaah really need to get the flamethrower out. Been too damn windy, now too wet (gotta wait for weeds to dry off)

There's strawberries hiding in those weeds somewhere. We had a TON of volunteer wheat pop up from the straw that blew off the farm. Figures, straw blows away, leaves the damn seeds behind.

Putting on some berries though.

Raspberry plants about to flower, shocking, since they are so tiny.

They've taken ok, although I need to flamethrow here too

I thought this bare stick was a dud, but turns out it's a raspberry after all. Was worried I'd planted a pepper stem from last year, for a while.

Brassicas still sitting there doing diddly squat, too wet.

Very wet.

BDASPNY · May 26, 2019

TrentL said:
Just don't want my chickens to get eaten.

I feel like youre on the right path.

podz · May 26, 2019

TrentL said:
These peppers are constantly drying out, has been a real challenge to keep them alive. We spend about 4-5 man hours a day watering.

For the cost of 4-5 man hours a day, running plumbing and putting flood tables on timers would pay for themselves in relatively short order?

TrentL · May 26, 2019

podz said:
For the cost of 4-5 man hours a day, running plumbing and putting flood tables on timers would pay for themselves in relatively short order?

Nah, I'm trying to keep the peppers evened out. With all of them being such widely different sizes we still pick up the pots to feel how much water they need.

The drip irrigation works about once a week, after that we have to spot water everything until it's evenly dry again, then repeat....

TrentL · May 28, 2019

Goddamn I'm exhausted.

We now have 13,464 cannabis plants in trays and ~90% sprouted from May 8 - May 26.

By comparison I started 13,906 vegetables from Jan-April.

Been quite the stretch.

Hired a lady with a horticultural degree, putting her in charge of tomato production this year, pruning, training, and harvesting. We'll see how she does.

Got 400' of watermelons in the ground today. A handful of viable transplants (not many sprouted) for some early market melons, remainder was seeded 2x per hole through the plastic mulch. Soil temp under that plastic was WARM, should do some fast germination. Hopefully the transplants take, soil was a bit on the dry side, surprisingly. Guess it doesn't rain under the mulch.

Tomorrow, if rains continue to hold off... dirt day for some peppers. Lots of peppers, if we can get the process down right. C. Chinense are going to be hand transplanted as the root balls need broken up, c. annuum should go faster.

Long hours ahead.

TrentL · May 28, 2019

** rains can actually come, if they want, the mulch keeps the rain off the dirt in the raised beds, so it's still just moist. Once the roots take, at 4", it's sopping wet below that mark still, so plenty of water to be had; but we could (theoretically) transplant in a torrential downpour without an issue, on to the 3800 feet of mulch I laid last week. When it dries out again, rolling out another 3800 feet

bpiela · May 28, 2019

Thanks Trent! Received my order today. Plants look great!

Mr.joe · May 28, 2019

bpiela said:
Thanks Trent! Received my order today. Plants look great!

Mine are on the big brown truck still won't see them until after work