2019 - The Farm

TrentL · Feb 5, 2019

Pepper-Guru said:
This is my main beef with mass sprouting in trays and soil real estate I worked so hard to create. In the past when doing mass germination, I've been screwed over, especially with cherished older seeds I didn't want to lose.

This year, I'm doing 90% of my germinating in to go ramekins with snap lids, placed on mats in trays. The little condiment cup things. Like the paper towel method except seed catalyst soaking first (especially on older ones), then placing a small square of moist paper towel in the bottom, placing seeds on top, snapping the lid closed and placing them into trays on top of mats, towel over top for insulation, mats controlled by thermostat set to 85 and probe placed in center of tray.

No risk of moisture loss, can see through the lids temp controlled etc.

I'll have my main trays/flats prepared with my starting medium and ready for transplanting the delicate sprouts into. No wasted real estate. Also, my seedlings will stay in the 3.5 inch sqaure, deep version pots 18/per tray until plant out in late March

Main reason I do the seedling sprouting at home, in the basement here, is I can keep a closer eye on them. I'm afraid if I take them out to the farm and do it, I'll get distracted, not get out there and lose a whole crop. I pass the grow room several times a day letting the dogs out so it's easy to take a quick peek in there, and see if anything is drying out, if it's too hot, whatever. I watered trays that needed it last night about 11 PM and this morning, 8 other ones were drying out.. watered those.. by this afternoon another 5 or 6 will need water.. damn things never, ever, EVER can be on the same frigging schedule! The trays in the center of the shelves, getting more light and heat from the lights, inevitably dry quicker than the outer pair, the ones more towards the corners of the room dry slower than those in the middle of the wall, etc.

So I've got to check the room about every 4 hours during the day, and absolutely, positively before I go to bed, lest I wake up and find four or five trays laid to waste like what happened to those MOA's and big sun last week.

Once the plants are potted up and moved to the farm they are far more resilient to neglect. I only have to go out once a day, maybe once every 2 or 3 days, depending on how humid it is outside. I let the more mature plants get nearly bone dry before I give them anything. So a table will generally go 5 days or more between waterings out there early on, and even late in the grow, when they are really growing fast, only every 3 days. But different tables end up on different schedules..

I try to align them back up again on the weekend, when I do liquid ferts, as everything gets that at the same time (lest I screw up and miss a table or worse, double one up), but by the next weekend, they're all out of whack again.

When I do shorter-term plants, watermelons, tomatoes, stuff that doesn't really require as much indoor time, I'll sow them direct in 4" pots. I did that last year with 216 watermelon plants, and 216 tomato plants, and had great results. I seed them 3 or 4 per pot, cull the least aggressive, and they do fine. With those i fill the pots 3/4 of the way with my potting soil mix, and the top 1/4 with straight coco coir that's sterile. I run worm castings in my potting soil and I've had problems with seeds molding if I sow straight in to it. But zero problems starting seeds in the coco layer. Their roots almost immediately tap in to the potting soil beneath, and the coco gives me a very good indicator of how dry they are (color change).

Hopefully the high tunnel temps will be good enough to sow straight to 4" pots outdoors for tomatoes, melons, annuum peppers, etc this march. Will have to see how it goes.

HydroPepper · Feb 5, 2019

Pepper-Guru said:
Because the center of the mat and tray is always hotter than the edges. Sweet spot is 85F so I imagine that the centers are lagging due to being too warm.

Also a good point
Perhaps a piece of folded newspaper / similar between the heating pad and seed tray but only covering the middle of the heating pad may even out the temps a bit?

Pepper-Guru · Feb 5, 2019

HydroPepper said:
Also a good point
Perhaps a piece of folded newspaper / similar between the heating pad and seed tray but only covering the middle of the heating pad may even out the temps a bit?

Best thing I've found to even the heat out is to instead of trying to even the heat out, you just stop heat lose from the edges. I lay towels folded up into long strips on the edges and sides of the trays. This insulates the outside air from pull heat out of the sides. Evens out the overall hot spots by thermally insulating loss out the sides

TrentL · Feb 6, 2019

Well, another day passed and I managed not to kill anything. Although there was a slight incident with onions. Turns out when those tall fellows finally "unfold" they get REALLY tall.. tall enough to scorch the tips on the T5 lights above. Oops, lesson learned. Those onion trays are water hungry sonsaguns, too. Next year I'm going to start them in much deeper pots, instead of 1020 flats. (This is my first time starting onions from seed so some mistakes are inevitable)

There are a LOT of new sprouts, far too many to even count. I'll be taking another inventory next Sunday, I expect that the vast majority of what we've got will be up by then. Starting to see some of the more sluggish seeds pop - moruga scorpions, etc.

SpeakPolish · Feb 6, 2019

Have you every noticed some off strains? I imagine that with that many plants a couple might have a beneficial or cool mutation. It might be a different color or different growth habit.

TrentL · Feb 6, 2019

SpeakPolish said:
Have you every noticed some off strains? I imagine that with that many plants a couple might have a beneficial or cool mutation. It might be a different color or different growth habit.

Oh yeah, every vendor we got seeds from threw off pheno sporadically last year. Aleppo was the worst, half the plants didn't even look like the others. Biker billy were also hit and miss, about 30% of those were off pheno. We pulled seeds off the ones that grew proper pheno in both cases, but who knows where they go from there.

I don't mind genetic diversity, in fact, I embrace it - when I cull plants that show any signs of pathogens during field walks, I'm cutting out the weak and strengthening the gene pool for our local environmental conditions. It's important (not just for large scale, but also for gardeners) to have disease resistance ramped up as best as possible.

When we picked for seeds we picked the pheno types we wanted to preserve, from the strongest plants. Over time (years) that habit should keep developing stronger varieties. Crosses are inevitable in open pollination which can lead to some fun too.

This year is a bit different, we'll have a selection of open pollinated seeds, but we're also growing isolated in controlled environment. that'll let us continue refining open pollinated varieties for disease resistance while also having true types as a baseline. In subsequent years, I'll breed the strongest of the field producers back with those isolated plants. That'll give me an N-1 regression on an ongoing basis that'll hopefully reinforce disease resistance and desirable traits (more pods, bigger pods, better canopy, whatever trait I select for)

TrentL · Feb 7, 2019

In honor of true leaves, today was fert day for the first 10 trays of peppers, sown 1/19 - 1/20/2019, and 4 trays of onions, sown 1/26

half strength 5-1-1 fish emulsion and great white mycorrhizae was the fishy stink mix

Mix clocked in at 6.14 and 6.1 - this batch of fish emulsion is a LOT more acidic than last years was. Our starting point at the tap was 7.78 pH... so it knocked it down more than a tablespoon of vinegar per gallon would have..

TrentL · Feb 7, 2019

Plants are a little slow this year, I haven't been using any pH balancing because I figured the first fertilizer run would wash out the media. 7.78 pH will still germinate just fine but the peppers grow pretty slow in it. They should take off now, 1 ounce of fert mix per cell was enough to fully flush anything in the cell out through the bottom...

Also another contributing factor to sluggish growth, been keeping the trays SOPPING wet since there are still seeds germinating just below the surface of the soilless media. I don't want to nuke any just-germed seeds lingering right under the surface by letting it get dry. Once germination is 100% I'll let the trays dry nearly completely between waterings, and will be back to using acetic acid for dropping pH down.

TrentL · Feb 7, 2019

Also if you look at those onions, heat *slows* down germination and growth. Next year I'm not gonna use warming mats with them.

ETA: Kicking around transplanting those in to 36 cell per 1020, deep trays, kind of went in to the onions not really doing much in the way of homework on them. Anyone know if I can just hold them in the 1020 trays for a while? Or will they get all knotted up down in there?

Devv · Feb 7, 2019

TrentL said:
Also if you look at those onions, heat *slows* down germination and growth. Next year I'm not gonna use warming mats with them.

ETA: Kicking around transplanting those in to 36 cell per 1020, deep trays, kind of went in to the onions not really doing much in the way of homework on them. Anyone know if I can just hold them in the 1020 trays for a while? Or will they get all knotted up down in there?

I usually start my Onions in 2 24 to 30"x5"x5" trays. I dump a full package of seeds in there on September 15th. I let them grow outside unless I get a really hard freeze. I start them in cheapo potting soil, and come January 15th I dump out the contents and just shake the soil off and pull them apart. I shorten the roots to 3-4"s and plant them. Come June we have a harvest. Of course the schedule is different where you are...

I never let them dry out, nor do I keep their feet wet.

TrentL · Feb 7, 2019

Thanks for the info. I have a feeling I'm gonna run in to some problems with them in these shallow (2" deep) trays. Seems like it'd be a PITA to transplant them to something bigger, though. I dunno. I've got a whole mess of various sized pots, maybe if I get bored one night I'll pot them up in to something deeper. I really wasn't expecting them to get this big, this fast. Kind of set me back thinking "damn those roots are gonna be a tangled mess"

I suppose I could transplant them in to the 36 cell trays, those are pretty good sized and extra deep. Probably make it pretty easy to transplant to the field too.

So no wet feet = shouldn't bottom water then .. that's good to know!

TrentL · Feb 8, 2019

I raised the lights up a couple days ago, but still getting dead tips on the onions. Sure as heck isn't the lights or heat, it's pretty cool in the room. Starting to think it's nutrient. I remember having problems with magnesium deficiencies in my pepper grow last year, side effect of coco coir, wondering if I mis-identified the burnt tips that aren't really burnt, but rather, it's a nute deficiency?

I've never grown onions from seed so don't have the first clue about what nutrient deficiencies manifest like in onions.

Roots are healthy, pulled one out to check. The stems also tasty... I sort of ate the one I pulled up...

TrentL · Feb 8, 2019

Also pepper seedlings are showing yellowing on the cotys and stems are turning splotchy purple, like last year, when I had magnesium deficiency. They're also still soaked, which doesn't help - I have to keep them wet because every tray still has stuff germinating. Being overly wet really hurts micronutrient uptake, and coco is already short on that (there just *isnt'* any micronutrients in them)

So tomorrow looks like a dose of epsom salt.. might add a dash of liquid bone meal in there for calcium - not much, but some.

And as an afterthought, might try to see if I can get azomite to suspend long enough to get in to the mix.

TrentL · Feb 9, 2019

Up to tray 53 seeded now, started a bunch of Aji's, and a dozen or so Chinense I picked up from refining fire, mainly stuff that I had in the old 2012 seeds that didn't germ that I wanted to grow again.

TrentL · Feb 9, 2019

These were picked up from Justin @ WHP and all the chinense are in trays now;

Mako Akokosrade
Pimenta Black Bhut
7 Pot Douglah
Habanero El Remo
7 Pot Bubblegum (BBG7) Bhut Chocolate
7 Pot Brain Strain Chocolate AU
7 Pot Bubblegum (BBG7) x Apocalypse Scorpion (No Calyx)
7 Pot Jonah
7 Pot Nebru
7 Pot Primo Chocolate
7 Pot SR Strain
Apocalypse Scorpion Chocolate
Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Giant Chocolate
Brazilian Brain Strain Chocolate
Devil's Nagabrains Chocolate
Genghis Kahn's Brain
Jigsaw x Moruga
Nagabrains Chocolate
Skunk Chocolate
WHP 027
7JPN
Brown Reaper Cross
Elysium Oxide Scotch Bonnet
Jonah's Yellow Brain
SB7J Yellow
UBSC x SB
7 Pot Jonah Yellow X SB
Bahamian Beast Mustard Stinger F2
Bahamian Goat
Fatalii Chocolate
Machu Picchu
Sandra's Giant Orange (Long Pheno)
Scotch Brains (7 Pot Pheno)
Habanero Roatan Pumpkin
Scotch Bonnet Sweet Moruga Brown
Negro de Valle
Tepin x Lemon Drop
Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Rust
Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Solid Gold
Aji Pineapple
Black Pearl
Monkey Face Red
7 Pot Lucy
7 Pot Cinder F3
Vallero

Ethansm · Feb 9, 2019

I see black pearl is in your list, I have some seeds but never planted them. Are the peppers any good off of them?

Walchit · Feb 9, 2019

I am excited to see the variation in the cinder when you grow a bunch of them!

TrentL · Feb 9, 2019

Ethansm said:
I see black pearl is in your list, I have some seeds but never planted them. Are the peppers any good off of them?

No idea, this will be the first time I grow most of the stuff on my list this year! So many new peppers to try.

Walchit said:
I am excited to see the variation in the cinder when you grow a bunch of them!

My ass is gonna hurt this year from all the new taste testing.

Kennylay · Feb 9, 2019

Few strains on your list i picked up and dont have room for, cant wait to see what they do!!

PaulG · Feb 9, 2019

Ethansm said:
I see black pearl is in your list, I have some seeds but never planted them. Are the peppers any good off of them?

Black Pearl is a beautiful ornamental.

Even better, the dried pods make great pizza flakes.

PT set-up...