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2023/2024, wiicek, Let's Make BalcoJungle!

Hi!
Oh, I love watching that kind of stuff...
I am not too experienced in growing peppers, I used to grow some tomatoes but since I moved out from my family house, I didn't have space to grow anything. I bought allotment garden (I think that's the word, english is not my native language) but I can't seem to find time to care about it full time from march to october, it's not as near my flat as I'd want it to be but maybe one year I will make my life a little bit less messy and take make it work.
Now I live in the apartment with a balcony, it is at western side and in the summer the heat is kinda out of control. I think it will do! Oh, I dream of the jungle here!

This year I bought some chillies from the supermarket and, as I often do, I put some seeds into the ground. Don't know the variety, but I have a picture.

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I don't have one with ripen peppers but it was red. One of them is actually orange, and one (or two - I don't know, it was not fruiting at the same time and I was constantly picking it) are sweet, also supermarket type - one is hanging on the bottom left there. It is 3 liters container and there is 6 of them in it, so harvest was small, but peppers beautiful and tasty. I ate a sauce made out of them already.

So, yea, I kinda wanted more, so, I picked some seeds, bought different types of chillies from supermarket again and gathered some seeds. I know I have a jalapeno, piri-piri and that's it from the names I know, but other than that I have 2 or 4 different types of hot ones (maybe cayenne and serrano) and one sweet one (on the picture), I don't remember if I sow a bell peppers also. I also found some ornamental ones and sow them too:

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The purple one died after I sprayed all of them with soap - aphids. Orange and yellow are still alive but aphids and soap made them look miserable... But they're coming right back!

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I don't know if I should take and shower them, they still have white stains from the soap and have sticky places from aphids. I still constantly get rid of them manually, it seems like there is always more to kill but less and less with every day. I do this daily or every other day now.

There are my seedlings!
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They were sow so long ago, from one to two months but they didn't have enought light to grow. I've had them under blue light (grow light with two flexible sticks) but it seemd like it was too weak for them, so I added one with threee sticks and it started to grow rapidly.
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After watering them and ordering them by height (and two days), the thingy looks like that:
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Yesterday I repotted guys from the first picture earler.

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It is 3 liters container and there were, ekhem, SEVEN of them in it! I dried them and made my first sauce (and from other chillies I bought for seeds then) and it was amazing! I think some of them are in my fermented sauce also. It was not a big harvest but yea, seven. I did use them good. One pepper is still hanging there, hah. It's a sweet one.
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The last one was starting to wilt one week ago, I took it out but it was too late. I had my hopes but it probably is not coming back.

So yea, I have a station with blue (and red turned off) light and above it two one-foot shells which I light up with four (two for each) 2k lumens, 4k kelvins light bulbs. It seems like too much for my eyes but plants like it.

I planted everything into special mix for special plants (Cana terra), they will love it, I'm sure. I water it without fertilizers right now but normally I have my hydroponics mix for tomatoes and for every liter of solution I add half a liter of water because I've read that peppers like less of it. I'm in the middle of making my nettle solution for nitrogen, so they will be happy. For now I let them eat what is in that rich mix.

I am making them a station but for now there is nothing to show.

I LOVE IT! Aphids can f*ck themselves (and they surely do,s all the time, but I am coming for their children with baking soda mix if it will be necessairy), I am rolling now and it's gonna be amazing!


Edit. Oh, I forgot.... I was feeling adventurous and didn't put any labels on my trays, so now it is all the mistery! I really think I was tired and stupid then but it is what it is now, lol.
I bought some Sugar Rush Stripey, Thunder Mountain Longhorn, Fatali Habanero, Aji: Lemon Drop, Pineapple and Melon; and El Oro Equador seeds! Forst three came and are in the mix now, Lemon came with 0 seeds, that was weird, I wrote to the shop but they didn't answer, I bought some more somewhere else.

Let's make BalcoJungle!
 
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Oh, and another thing! I've made some sauce, I opened one fermented jar with cayennes, piri-piri and some sweet peppers, added some garlic and plenty of dry tomatoes. It's delicios!

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Aaaand almost gone. Few days. Hmmm.


Bought some more peppers today and a pumpkin...
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HMMMHMHMHMHMMM.
 
I've added the foil to the background of my pepper table yesterday after I posted here and wow, it is two times more light here now.

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The luxometer says it's above 7k! It was around 2-3, maybe 4 for those higher peppers. I wanted to check now but battery died, so, can't say what number exactly, but I when I did the same thing with my hydro bucket it said 8k and 11k in some places.

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Is it alright tho?
One day when sun was clearly coming to the room I turned meter on and it said 11k, so, I think it is alright but am little afraid of overdoing it...
 
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They flower now like crazy... They were having buds and I saw one or two flowers opening before but I feel like few hours after I've added the foil (don't know why I didn't do that before, I was using it as a ceiling above light and in previous setups) they just EXPLODED.

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I pollinated all of them and some already closed, but wow, it was beautiful.
 
WOW! they look really great, keep it up. 😀

Thank you! Can't wait to see them thrive outside, but it's still soo muuuch tiiime.

This year I kinda experimented with all seeds I could find and enjoying the mistery but I'm already seeing way ahead of that and planning next year's winter differently, lol.
 
Ok...

Do you also take your plants outside in the middle of winter (we don't have The Winters in Polant now, usually it's warmer) when its really beautiful, warm and sunny?

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Pardon my halfl cleaned balcony, there is no animal in that box, I just put it there and forgot, it is an elevation and some placeholder now. Had to put this information here.

I know I can't let them there for more than 3 hours. I couldn't resist even if the next time it will be probably like... in March.

~~~~~~~~~~


And that sauce I was talking about:

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Two jars. TWO!

I didn't put it through strainer this time. It's not fermented, has roasted pumpkin and a lot of dry cranberries in it.
DE LI CIOUS!
 
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Look at this tiny beauty!

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I have 3 of those small anuums sowed the same time the rest of my half-mystery pepeprs was and they were going through almost-flowering phase like two times already but aphids and my poor skills didn't let them go to actually flower. And here it is! So beautiful!

I think I was not giving them enough light also.


Ok, so, I couldn't wait and repotted all Stripeys to bigger pots - one 35l and two 18 l's. I used pine bark as a mulch. I wanna give them as much head start as I can! And they serve as a stand for smaller pods.

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I still have one 30l pod to use for the pepper of my choice and I think it will be Black Molten. This season I don't have any information about what I like the most, so, I am going with cool looks. I am looking forward to making the list of the greatest and the worst peppers of 2024 tho! Huhuhu!

WHAT ELSE....

My hydro project goes well, FV is making it hard for others to thrive, so, I will have to make some adjustments. Dark Thai Italia is having her time also, only PJ Ice looks like sisters are too big for him to show his full potential but I'm sure he will show 'em later!
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Maybe I'll put something in between them all to prevent shade but I am monitoring the situation all the time and PJ is having his leaves exposed anyway, he's just smaller in nature. Same with other seedlings.

It was second weekend I could put them all in sun, it was not as spectacular as week ago but what can we do... I still had fun chasing the sun around the apartment today. I've moved the table to the other side of the room and now there is sun around 3-4 pm when I am at work or on my way home, this way peppers are getting some of it daily! :dance:

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And everything is beautiful~~!!~!

Kinda broke one of them but maybe it'll be alright....... I grafted it back into place. But it had few fruits already, don't know how it will go in this situation.
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Ok, so, I can't wait. And this is a serious condition here. I am having fun moving them around at weekends and creating some hangers (still one to go, but I need more wood, I misscalculated the need twice already because things went a little different than I expected), and making orders for more pots and some ropes and bamboo sticks etc.etc BUT

BUTBUT BUT it's still two months to last frost. And till this day we will have -2C at the lowest. -2! It's nothing. Crocuses are out there, willows are gettig green, hedges are too, this part of the planet doesn't think about the winter for the last few weeks anymore!
I ordered some agrotextile. I'm gonna start this balcony season right after it comes. And I really really hope Mother Nature will spare me!
I really wanna move most of half mystery ones outside and give the smaller ones a chance to grow a little more.
 
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Good work moving all those plants around.
Can't wait to see your balcony grow come
together!
 
Good work moving all those plants around.
Can't wait to see your balcony grow come
together!

Thank you! <3

I gave them all such a head start and now it looks like it all goes to waste because they wait for the last frost till I'll repot them (2 months still).
Agrotextile came today, it's around 12-16 C daily and a lot of sun when I'm at work. Balcony is on the west side so it won't have the strongest sun but I measured lumens when it's not there and it was around 3-4k anyway, so, if it's not rainy like today, it's for the best to move some of peppers into bigger pots already and secure them from frost. Balcony is shaded from wind anyway and water froze there when forecasts said -10C but agrotextile weren't expensive and those 2 months will let them grow enough roots to make me a jungle at June!
And seedlings will have a space indoors to get some of these growths.

I was refilling hydro bucket today and look at those roots!
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Bad news, grafted pepepr died, I think it's because the lower part didn't have any leaves, so it sucked life out of the upper part. It looked literally like that. It got dry in few hours. Dark stuff. But the lower part has tiny leaf growing there, so, it worked. I thought peppers are all about giving, new pods, new life, children, more children, sow us everywhere! etc. etc. But it seems like survival makes a psycho even out of them. :halo: :twisted:

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SUN!

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Still have to clean some of the old buckets and trays from under the stands. I have some big 60l trash cans and 10l buckets full or almost full of dirt and kitchen scraps, I'm doing my own vermicompost this year.

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It's like 200l summed up. From my calculations for this year I needed 300l plain dirt and that was plenty of orders because I just couldn't wait. In the Chilichump's mix there is only 10% of vermicompost but I don't think making all of it vermi would be a bad idea, that is probably only for his convenience.

Long story short - I'm giving it (peppers, balcony and everything) way too much attention (and way to soon in the year) and I love it!

Edit. Had to edit that last sentence, post was written in parts and thoughts were fragmented, the message didn't go as planned. Image of me sitting there all day looking at compost was weird but funny tho.

I must say, there were days I could look at worms for hours, I was that kid running around with jars and catching creatures so I could see how they live! I breed moths and butterflies! It was so much fun watching them go through all the stages. Still want to do this one day with some Atlas moths. So beautiful!

GOOGLE IMAGE
 
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