• Blog your pepper progress. The first image in your first post will be used to represent your Glog.

CaneDog 2020

2020 is underway, so it's time to start the new season's glog!  Odd times though, as I'm still harvesting stragglers from last season while the earliest of my 2020 starts are already up.  Grow areas are a bit disorganized as a result  :rolleyes:
 
This season's grow should be a little more balanced than last season, though I'll still have a ridiculous number of rocotos - many OW's plus a bunch of new varieties - and quite a few carry-over OW wilds, too.
 
A big "thanks" to all who shared seeds with me for this season.  I'm appreciative and excited to have lots of cool varieties in the mix, many of which I got to watch you grow last season and can now try myself.  I think I'm current with everyone, but if by any chance you were expecting seeds from me that may have slipped through the cracks just shoot me a PM.
 
As I mentioned, things aren't super organized right now, but here's a few pics anyway.
 
I planted a few seeds early, just because I couldn't hold off the extra few weeks without planting something.
 
Amarillo de Arequipa Rocoto just popped- Thanks CTB!
20200102 Amarillo de Arequipa.jpg

 
Ecuador Sweet Rocoto twins - and a big shout out to the two peeps who sent me seeds for these. Both sources germinated and I'm really happy to have them growing.  Disclaimer: they may look overly wet, but these just got sprayed (to avoid HH's) and it's a very porous medium.
20200103 ESRs.jpg

 
Put another few rocotos in to soak today.
20200104 R3S.jpg

 
This is a galapagoense that popped a few days back, exactly 100 days after sowing.
20200103 Galap100#2.jpg

 
And this pod contains Jalapeno Zapotec x Purple Jalapeno F1, one of a couple F1 JZ crosses I'll be growing out this season. The other is Tekne Dolmasi x JZ.
20200101 JZ x PJ #1.jpg

 
Finally, I got a solid recommendation on a new media mix I'll be trying out this season in a few variations. The mix is heavy in partially composted bark fines, a fir/hemlock mix as pine's hard to get locally. It's proving to be a veritable mycelium factory.  Bodes well for good symbiosis with the appropriate fungal species this year.
20200101 Fungi#1.jpg

 
20200103 Froot2.jpg

 
Heck, they're even fruiting out the drainage holes...  :)
20200101 Fungi#2.jpg

 
 
That's it for now.  Good luck to all in 2020!
CD
 
Click to expand...
Had a few more pop from the rockwool round this morning; these at 9 days:
 
Rocoto Orange Arequipa
Rocoto Puna Pica Orange
F1 Cross - Rocoto CAP 217 Hyperpube-X (Yellow) x CGN Cardenasii
F1 Cross - Rocoto CAP 1242 x Eximium CAP 1491
 
Surprisingly, all 3 of the rocoto/wild crosses are up by day 9, versus 60% (3 of 5) of the rocoto varieties. Still nothing from my F1 Eximium CAP 1491 x USDA Cardenasii cross.
 
In other news, my seeds for the Jalapeno Zapotec x Purple Jalapeno F1 cross came from 2 very late pods, which matured in cool conditions.  This has sometimes resulted in fungus on the seeds.  The seeds didn't look great, but not totally awful either, so I put a couple in Scottex where I could keep a better eye on them.  The first one that sprouted looked strong, but it quickly showed brown fungus at the root tip so it's not going to make it.
 
I figured I'd try to win this one with numbers, so I took the remainder of the seeds from the 1st pod, perhaps 15, and put them directly into a Scottex poly port.  I didn't mark the date, but I think it was on the 17th.  This morning about 1/3 of them show radicals.  Yesterday, before I knew how many of the 1st batch would pop, I took the seeds from the 2nd pod and dropped them in a full-strength 3% H2O2 bath for a half-hour or so with the hope it would knock back the mold.  Then I added 400% tap water for a 20 hour soak before putting them in a Scottex PP this morning.  Looks like I've wasted a bunch of what now appear to be good seeds, but so it's not a total loss I'll watch for any difference in fungus growth between the 1st batch (no H2O2) and the 2nd batch with H2O2 application.
 
Things were getting crowded in the temporary space, so I threw this together quickly under a 48 x 4 T5HO in an extra closet.  This shows the rack setup I plan to use to air prune the Grodan cubes.  I'll get a fan set up soon for air circulation and to increase the drying effect under the cubes. 
 
It's a bit thrown together, but it should buy me a couple/few days until I have the time to set it up properly.
20200120 NewSpace.jpg
 
CaneDog said:
Had a few rockwool cubes hook last night.  These are the first of the recent Grodan cube batch, hooking at 7 days:
 
Rocoto Orange Arequipa
Rocoto San Pedro Amarillo
Rocoto Gelbe Riesen x Eximium CAP 1491 F1
 
I also had a Rocoto Puna Amarillo hook in a solo cup of soil mix.  This guy was toward the slow end, though, at 14 days.
Great progress, CD!
 
I'll be working on a method for the Grodan cubes to get strong "air pruned" root development in the cubes and proper nutrition to the plants during that time before transplant.  When I've worked with rock wool before, it's the proper extended maintenance of the cubes after sprouting while I'm trying to get the roots to "completely" fill out the cube that's proven the challenging part. I'm hoping using slightly bigger (2" x 2" x 1.5") and wrapped cubes will help.  I'm going to leave these guys in the germinator as long as possible, as I'll be creating a new, isolated environment for them and that project currently doesn't have priority. 
Click to expand...
 
I'm no expert with the rock wool, but last season, 
I kept the seedlings in the cubes for 2+ weeks,
watering with Rapid Start (Gen. Hydroponics), and
sitting the cubes on a plastic hardware cloth.The
roots air pruned nicely on the botton, and more
roots came out the sides. It worked best with the
tomatoes, but also okay with the peppers.
 
Thanks, Paul.  I hope my results are as good - and as quick!
 
I dropped another 10 varieties today.  Some in here I've really been looking forward to, but several might get tall quickly, so I've been apprehensive to start them too early.  The first 6 got the last of my Grodan cubes; the others, Scottex PP's, because I'm pretty much out of space.
 
Aji Amarillo - PaulG
Aji Guyana - Wiri Wiri
Sugar Rush Peach - LPDE
BOC - LPDE
BJh-2 - PaulG
BJh-Mystery - PaulG
 
Hyperpube-X (Yellow)
Pimente de Neyde
Yaki Blue
Peach Bhut SS
 
I'm crossing my fingers for the Yaki, as I have only 5 seeds and they're OP and a little rough.  Sometimes seeds can surprise you, though - in a good way, that is, because there's no doubt they can surprise you in a WTH?! way from time to time.
 
Mid-morning break for a little update and some pics.  
 
New hooks this morning for (day 4 for these):
Orange Spice
Lemon Spice
Galapagos Habanero
Pumpkin Habanero
Piri Piri
and...
 
H2O2 Rocoto pops at day 6, with Sprouted Seed Tea Rocoto still intact.  I could never figure out which one was "the middle one."  The closer I looked, the more the middle seemed to be exactly between the two.  ;)
20200121 ESR APS H2O2.jpg

 
And on the subject of SST, the batch I have fermenting has developed a krausen like a beer ferment and I can see the blended particles rising and falling with the flocculation of the yeast to which they're attached.  I wasn't expecting it to ferment like a yeast ferment.
20200120 FSSTKrausen.jpg
 
I have an abundance of Zapotec Jalapeno x Purple Jalapeno sprouts, so I figured I'd experiment with one.  
 
Selected a good one - they all look surprisingly healthy, given how marginal the seeds looked.
20200121 JZxPJ Many.jpg

 
Wedged it into some closed cell foam with neither root nor seed exposed above or below the foam.  I'm hoping the hypercotyledon will hook up while the seed stays wedged. 
20200121 EarlyKratkyCU.jpg

 
The root is well above the water line, so I'm keeping it humid in the germinator so it survives until it (hopefully) reaches the water.
20200121 JZxPJ Kratky.jpg
 
A few more pics...
 
The new space is starting to fill out a little.  There's a lot more on the way, though, so I'll need to get the area improved soon. It's holding about 82F in the grow zone and with reasonable humidity.  It's actually my 48" x 6 tube T5HO in the space; not the 48" x 4.  I'm running only 2 bulbs in it, though.
20200121 BR2C.jpg

 
This Tekne Dolmasi x Jalapeno Zapotec sprouted in Scottex the other day, so I dropped it into a container of the "official" new test mix.  I think it broke surface in just one day, though it might have been two.  I put another one in the same mix, but for a 1:7 inclusion of perlite.  That one hasn't broken surface yet. 
20200121 TDxJZ1K.jpg

 
Lastly, I thought this close up of a seed in the planting hole of a Grodan cube was interesting.  Talk about a good air/moisture balance.
20200121 RWCU.jpg
 
CaneDog said:
I have an abundance of Zapotec Jalapeno x Purple Jalapeno sprouts, so I figured I'd experiment with one.  
 
Selected a good one - they all look surprisingly healthy, given how marginal the seeds looked.
 
No kidding, CD. Makes me want to rethink what viable
seeds might look like, at least with the annuums!
 
Wedged it into some closed cell foam with neither the root or the seed exposed above or below the foam.  I'm hoping the hypercotyledon will hook up while the seed stays wedged. 
 
The root is well above the water line, so I'm keeping it humid in the germinator so it survives until it (hopefully) reaches the water.
Click to expand...
 
Interesting experiment. Would be cool if the
foam helped pry the seed husk off!
 
I see you're off to a running start!
 
I love the germination experiments. I guess I'm a lazy boy, I just drop them on top of potting soil and cover with coir. I do hope you post what works best ;)  ......so I can copy...
 
100 days? I wonder how many that I set aside, popped, and died, whilst I ignored?
 
Good luck this season buddy! Although I know you make your own luck :shh:
 
PtMD989 said:
Your closeup pics are awesome [emoji106][emoji16].


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
 
 
wiriwiri said:
I'd 2nd that there opinion...CD's just the best ...I'm always learning from him & his photography skills well,I'm not going to compete. ;)
Click to expand...
 
Thank you both for positive feedback.  It doesn't take much of any skill, but the results are a lot of fun.  I can see small details better by taking a close up than I can with the naked eye and a magnifying glass, so it comes in handy too!
 
Devv said:
I see you're off to a running start!
 
I love the germination experiments. I guess I'm a lazy boy, I just drop them on top of potting soil and cover with coir. I do hope you post what works best ;)  ......so I can copy...
 
100 days? I wonder how many that I set aside, popped, and died, whilst I ignored?
 
Good luck this season buddy! Although I know you make your own luck :shh:
Click to expand...
 
Thanks Devv!  I've always been mostly a "drop 'em in soil" germinator too, though I do like experimenting with other methods, especially when space gets limited. 
 
Hope 2020 will be a blowout year for you with none of "that work thing" to get in the way of you enjoying the time.  That's really awesome!
 
and I hope that's the last seed I ever have to wait 100 days for...
 
A few more seeds in Scottex PP's popped this morning and have been transplanted to containers.  This time I used a 40/60 mix of Blue Ribbon potting soil and the bark-based mix, with just a little Perlite added in.  Each planting hole is getting an inoculation of myco powder.  When the root systems are more developed and it's time to transplant again I plan to use 100% of the bar-based mix.
 
So far I have Scottex transplants in 100% bark-based mix, 25%/75% BB/Blue Ribbon, and these in 60/40 BB/BR.  I'm not sure that the bark medium will hold water optimally for the very young plants, so I'm experimenting with different mix concentrations.
 
New Additions
Ecuador Sweet Rocoto (SST seed) - Atlantic Pepper Seeds
Reaper
Murupi Large Red
Aji Panca
JZ x PJ
 
There's been more activity with the Grodan cubes too, but I'm letting them chill a bit longer before moving them out into the light.
 
New space is already getting full   :rolleyes:
 
There's a bit of a lull in the germination activity today, with the only new variety spout being a PC-1 in Scottex.  I quickly transferred it into a solo9 with a 60/40 BB/BR mix with a healthy shot of myco.  There's multiple varieties touted as the PC-1 - more on that here http://www.pepperfriends.com/forum/topic/15333-indian-pc-1/ - and this is the annuum version.  I've been looking forward to this variety for a while now.  I hope it's a good one. 
 
Thanks to CTB for going out of his way to get me seeds for this.
Much appreciated!
 
CaneDog said:
Yeah, HM, that game got away quickly!  SF's a good team this year.
 
And that video you post is exactly what I'm going for.   I bought a cooling rack that fits in an old baking sheet I have and figured that might work well to go under the cubes.  By having bigger cubes and more of them, I'm thinking the mass will hold water/humidity a lot better than the few isolated and smaller (also unwrapped) cubes I was using before. Plus the wrappers should prevent any tendency of the roots to grow into neighboring cubes in the even I leave them in place for long.  I think the process should be really straightforward.  I've seen impressive root systems on some other THP growers' cubes and I'd like to achieve similar with mine.
 
Now I just need to figure out my feeding program!
Click to expand...

I bought a grodan gro smart tray. At about $15 it's probably more expensive than a cooling rack. The Gro Smart tray fits in 1020 trays and holds rockwool cubes or 1.5 inch plugs.
 
CaneDog said:
That's pretty cool, Joe.  It could work very well, staying in the tray early on for good moisture to the cubes then removing the insert to air prune the roots once they got established.   Maybe the 1.5's are plenty big in a system like that.
 
Thanks!
Click to expand...
I think the 1.5 are good for seed starting. The tray is also designed for cubes if you flip it over. I think it's a pretty cool design.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top