Blisters 2015 Coco Grow! Difficult start...

Blister · Jul 5, 2015

Time for an UPDATE!

I've been away from the keyboard for some time now. The plants are doing great. The leaves are flat and the color decent. I've got pods and I've even got one ripening! So without further Ahhhh-DEEEEW....

Pics of all the plants soaking up some sun...

This was supposed to be an MoA Bonnet, but it's not showing any of the Bonnet characteristics. Not sure what to make of it at this point. It is producing

Then I've got this one. Again it's supposed to be an MoA, but the pods are a little, well different than the MoA. I did notice that one pod is blushing just a tad.

Close up

This one here is my Jolokia. It's the tallest of all my plants. It's putting on some decent pods too boot.

I believe this one is supposed to be my Bubblegum 7-Pot, though I'm having a bit of trouble telling because the jiffy marker has faded somewhat.

It does have a decent pepper on the go!

Another one of the MoA's. Again not showing the typical bonnet shape. It's producing well though.

The Doughlah is showing well. Decent sized pods and a fair amount at that. I may actually get a few harvests out of her yet.

The pods...

Another Doug

Pods...

Two Bonnet's (?) in smaller pots. They're producing well.

That's it for the update. Sorry for falling so far behind. Just haven't been able to get to the keyboard much this year. I am fairly impressed with the Canna Coco A+B now that I've managed to get it figured out. I've balanced it out with the Canna A+B and their PK 13-14. The balance is close to the recommended 100-100-200-60 NPK-Mg as found in GreatfulH3AD's formulation that I had previously used.

One last note, although H3AD's formula of 6ml GH Flora Micro and 9ml GH Bloom per Gallon of RO water works extremely well, I was a little disappointed to read about GH selling the company to Scott's Miracle Grow. Even more-so when I learned that Scotts is an arm of Monsanto. I'd really rather not support Monsanto if I have a choice.

Thanks for reading.

Neil

Blister · Jul 16, 2015

Time for another small update. The summer has been unusually hot and dry for this time of the year. There's fires burning all over the province, but we've been lucky enough that there aren't any burning close to us. My peppers have been loving it. I've already been able to get a few small harvests out of my bonnet-like plants, a single douglah as well as a jolokia. On to the pics

This is the 1st ripe jolokia of the season for me. There are lots of others on the way, but this was the first to turn. Like myself, this pod is one fine physical specimen! I harvested some seed from the plants I grew out last year. Original seed stock came from JJJ. I wish I had more than one Jolokia growing.

I cut into it and scraped the placenta to get at the oils higher up in the pod. It's got some decent heat. It was a slow build, but when it got going it felt like I had a mouthful of red hot razor-blades in my mouth. Had some staying power too!

What's that under the plate you ask? Well I happened to find a hydro shop the next town over that had a bunch of root pouches in stock. She wasn't sure of the price so she let me have them for $3 per. The other places in town are asking quite a bit more, so I grabbed all 10 and ran. I bit the bullet and put my one and only Jolokia into it. I would liked to have had the plant in there from the beginning of the season, but I couldn't find any at a reasonable price. these are 3 gallon pouches. I'm guessing that the pots I had the Jolokia in was around 2.5 gallons or so. There was very little room to put extra coco into the pouch as I transplanted it.

Here's the candidate...

Rootball

Here she is settling into her new digs

Here is a small harvest I was able to get from my MoA-like pepper. These are definitely a cross. More on that in the next pic. They have bonnet flavor, thick walls too, but the heat seems to be a bit higher.

To me this confirms that the MoA seeds I picked up this year are actually a cross. I'm going to harvest seed from the pod and see if I can get this to grow out next year.

Got my first Douglah off a plant as well. It didn't seem to have as much heat as I would have expected. Much more of a hab flavor to boot.

Cut into it. The placenta in these are very large. The heat was rather mild compared to what I was expecting. That said it was very long lasting.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

Neil

Blister · Jul 26, 2015

Went away for a few days and came back to a fair amount of ripe pods. Managed to get a decent little harvest out of it all. I still have a bunch of green pods waiting to turn. Hopefully I get another harvest like this one before the frosts come along. There's a mixture of Bonnets, Jolokia, BB7, Reapers, and Douglah's in there. I

I'm also having a bit of a problem with earwigs this year. They keep eating holes in my peppers. Not sure how to deal with them at this point.

Neil

dlsolo · Aug 1, 2015

Hey Neil, stupid question, but I'm assuming your watering from above? The plants I've got growing stronger inside my grow tent are starting to show signs of yellowing (Interveinal Chlorosis i think). My pH is around 5.6-5.7 and I'm going 25% strength on the nutes. I wonder if it could be the fact that I'm going 100% on the CalMag. Your thoughts would be awesome.

BTW, you harvest is freakin' amazing. Interesting your Dougie is mild in heat. Not sure how comparable they are to the the 7 Pot Rennie Choco's. Because those Rennie's woke me up quite well.

Blister · Aug 2, 2015

Thanks for the kind words Aaron. I've been happy with the production so far. Unfortunately we had about 4 days of rain and I had to bring my plants inside. When the weather finally cleared up, my plants dropped almost all their new buds! Not sure if I'll get another harvest out of them this year. Fingers crossed through. I've got a bunch more dougs on the way and a few already dried. Don't get me wrong, it was hot, just thought it would have been hotter given the pockets of oil I found throughout. LOTs of placenta too.

With the exception of trips away from home and yesterday, I water from the top. Yesterday it was hot and I let my Reaper sit in a pie plate of nutrient. It drank it up before 3, then again before 6pm. What nutrient are you using?

Interveinal chlorosis can be caused by a few things. A quick search on the web turned up something interesting. Apparently elements such as calcium, zinc, manganese, phosphorus, or copper in high amounts in the soil (I'd imagine this applies to hydro too) can tie up iron so that it is unavailable to the plant. You said you're giving your plants full strength CalMag and 25% strength nutrient solution so I'm wondering if this might be the problem. Your nutes would be out of balance with CalMag on the high end. If these were my plants I'd first try cutting the CalMag all together and upping the nutrient solution to see if things change.

When I first started growing in coco I had been using tap water. I didn't have any testing equipment at the time so I had no idea how hard my water actually was. My plants were doing 'ok' for the first bit, then they started yellowing and dropping leaves. I tried adding some extra calcium to solve the yellowing problem and everything went south fast. I had to simplify everything. I switched to RO water, started using H3AD's fromula and things turned around quick.

I'm not saying that this (hardwater) is your problem, but I find it easier to diagnose problems by reducing everything down to the basics and going from there.

Neil

chocolatescotchbonnet · Aug 2, 2015

Blister said:
Went away for a few days and came back to a fair amount of ripe pods. Managed to get a decent little harvest out of it all. I still have a bunch of green pods waiting to turn. Hopefully I get another harvest like this one before the frosts come along. There's a mixture of Bonnets, Jolokia, BB7, Reapers, and Douglah's in there. I

I'm also having a bit of a problem with earwigs this year. They keep eating holes in my peppers. Not sure how to deal with them at this point.

Neil

nice haul! i've grown with coco and hydro nutes with great success in the past. for me, they seem to need watered and fed more often, wilting more often, which makes them a lot hotter than normal!

Blister · Aug 2, 2015

chocolatescotchbonnet said:
nice haul! i've grown with coco and hydro nutes with great success in the past. for me, they seem to need watered and fed more often, wilting more often, which makes them a lot hotter than normal!

That's been my findings too! I think that's why it works so well for me in my short cool season. I MAY try overwintering one and see how it does with a good jump on next season. Not sure about it though. If I have another summer like this one they should spit out a ton of pods.

Neil

John1234 · Aug 2, 2015

I haven't had a problem with earwigs but they're ravaging a few plants nearby. The peppers have a strip of Tanglefoot around the base and I've been assuming it helps.

There is a method to reduce their population by using soaked rolled up newspaper, not entirely sure how effective it is.

Score on the fabric pot. Lots of dunces working behind those counters.

Had a similar occurance with a box of blumat gear. They didn't even know what they were let alone the price and I walked away with 120 bucks worth of carrots and parts for 30 clams. I always said Scrambled Liver was full of fools. Or was it "one horse town with the dirtiest strip club on the Island"

dlsolo · Aug 2, 2015

Blister said:
Thanks for the kind words Aaron. I've been happy with the production so far. Unfortunately we had about 4 days of rain and I had to bring my plants inside. When the weather finally cleared up, my plants dropped almost all their new buds! Not sure if I'll get another harvest out of them this year. Fingers crossed through. I've got a bunch more dougs on the way and a few already dried. Don't get me wrong, it was hot, just thought it would have been hotter given the pockets of oil I found throughout. LOTs of placenta too.

With the exception of trips away from home and yesterday, I water from the top. Yesterday it was hot and I let my Reaper sit in a pie plate of nutrient. It drank it up before 3, then again before 6pm. What nutrient are you using?

Interveinal chlorosis can be caused by a few things. A quick search on the web turned up something interesting. Apparently elements such as calcium, zinc, manganese, phosphorus, or copper in high amounts in the soil (I'd imagine this applies to hydro too) can tie up iron so that it is unavailable to the plant. You said you're giving your plants full strength CalMag and 25% strength nutrient solution so I'm wondering if this might be the problem. Your nutes would be out of balance with CalMag on the high end. If these were my plants I'd first try cutting the CalMag all together and upping the nutrient solution to see if things change.

When I first started growing in coco I had been using tap water. I didn't have any testing equipment at the time so I had no idea how hard my water actually was. My plants were doing 'ok' for the first bit, then they started yellowing and dropping leaves. I tried adding some extra calcium to solve the yellowing problem and everything went south fast. I had to simplify everything. I switched to RO water, started using H3AD's fromula and things turned around quick.

I'm not saying that this (hardwater) is your problem, but I find it easier to diagnose problems by reducing everything down to the basics and going from there.

Neil

Neil, I think you just may have solved my problem... CalMag. So, this will be my second season using the Kelp4Less Grow/Bloom packs. I had an awesome success last year and this year, so I wanted to try it with my hydro grow. My DWC is rockin' like a rockstar, but my coco coir started showing the signs I stated above.

I'm gonna take your advice and cut the CalMag and see what happens. As for water, I'm using RO/DI water with zero...and I mean ZERO PPMs. So, I can quickly rule out any contaminants.

I've gotta make up a new batch of grow juice, so I'll get a pH of the finish juice and the ppm count.

Thanks for taking a look into my problem. I'm hoping in a season or two, I'll have your experience with growing with coco coir.

socalpepperfarm · Sep 20, 2016

great grow man! I am a coco grower too.

How are you plants doing now? It would be cool to see some more photos.

You are growing in straight coir no?

Blister · Sep 21, 2016

Be sure to check out my most recent coco grow to see the progress I've made growing in coco. This year was considerably better.

Neil