ChiliNoobs first glog [2014]

Hi all,
 
I figured I should start a glog this year to document all of the mistakes that I'm inevitably going to make.
 
This is my third year growing hot peppers, but only my second year growing from seed.  Last year I grew 30 plants but only managed to get pods on ½ of them. 
 
I did pretty much everything wrong last year:

1. Sowed seeds too late
2. Didn’t give seedlings enough light
3. Didn’t harden off the plants sufficiently
4. Overwatered
5. And so on…

My goal for 2014 is to get ripe pods from every seedling that I plant out.
 
Here is my planting list (so far...):
 

(edit: excel sheet was messed up, it has been corrected and updated)
 
All seeds were sown into peat pellets with the exception of the Anaheim (paper towel method).  My plan is to keep just one or two plants from each variety sown.  
 

 
Some of the seedlings are a bit leggy, hopefully I can cure that by planting a little deeper and busting out the new light that I have ordered.
 
I have more seeds that arrived today, I haven`t decided which ones to plant yet...
 
I am also over-wintering a few of the plants from last year that did not produce pods:
·         Trinidad Morouga Scorpian Blend
·         Naga Jolokia (not sure if this one is going to make it)
·         Chocolate Habanero
·         “mystery” Habanero
·         Scotch Bonnet
·         Piri Piri

 

[Moshun]

Man, those are some hard conditions. I thought I had it bad in Belgium.  Nice work!

 

[Big Kahuna]

Thanks Unk.

I only have a small grow area, so I think that these four tube, two foot units are ideal for my purpose, but a single 4x4' unit would've been more cost-effective.

These have also given me some problems; the second unit I received had a defective ballast form the get go; I contacted the seller and they sent a replacement. The same day that I installed the new ballast, one of the ballasts died on the first unit; another new ballast is on the way...

So while I recommend T5s for a small grow like this, I don't recommend buying cheap units off eBay...

If I was doing this again, I'd consider an all-LED option.

Here is a picture of my setup (note that the plants are not as yellow as this picture shows!):

Couple more pictures of the mouse-attacked plants.

First one is an Aji Pipi de Mono, a white habanero and an Aji Cerezo 1:

Second picture is an Aji paprika, an Aji Cerezo 2 and a very pathetic chocolate habanero:

Man, those are some hard conditions. I thought I had it bad in Belgium.  Nice work!

It's been a long cold winter, I haven't seen grass since November, and there's only been a handful of days above zero so far this year. There's a chance of more snow tonight and again later this week...

 

[Teurf]

It sure has been a long winter. I think we hit the coldest winter in 20 years for the Montreal area.
 
We received 15-20 cm of snow today :/
 
Are the pipi de mono and cerezo from the Peruvian Seeds posted from Nigel (on ebay)??
I tried Rocoto Limo and Amarillo, but all died when I transplanted (too soon, and fungus gnats did not help those poor seedlings ), except 1 amarillo. 
 
Nice pics btw
Teurf

 

[Helvete]

Mouse-eaten?  Sounds like it's time for a cat
Nice glog

 

[Big Kahuna]

It sure has been a long winter. I think we hit the coldest winter in 20 years for the Montreal area.
 
We received 15-20 cm of snow today :/
 
Are the pipi de mono and cerezo from the Peruvian Seeds posted from Nigel (on ebay)??
I tried Rocoto Limo and Amarillo, but all died when I transplanted (too soon, and fungus gnats did not help those poor seedlings ), except 1 amarillo. 
 
Nice pics btw
Teurf

Hi Teurf. Yes they are from the Peruvian seeds, so is the Aji paprika and the sick rocotos (on the previous page). I'm sorry to hear you didn't have any luck with yours, most of my others types are doing well.

I've had a few fungus gnats on my overwintered plants, thankfully they haven't been too bad. I've started using "Safer's Sticky Sticks" (I got mine from Wal-Mart) which do a pretty good job of trapping the flies.

 

[Teurf]

Hi Teurf. Yes they are from the Peruvian seeds, so is the Aji paprika and the sick rocotos (on the previous page). I'm sorry to hear you didn't have any luck with yours, most of my others types are doing well.

I've had a few fungus gnats on my overwintered plants, thankfully they haven't been too bad. I've started using "Safer's Sticky Sticks" (I got mine from Wal-Mart) which do a pretty good job of trapping the flies.

 
Yeah I did the same, I place some yellow sticky traps troughout my setup and catch hundreds of them. I also finally found some mosquito dunks locally and plunge those in my regular watering can. It reduces their numbers but I can't eradicate them, they keep coming back to haunt me. I always find 1 from time to time in the bathroom near the sink of the bath. I am hoping they don't lay their eggs in the pipes :/

 

[Big Kahuna]

Mouse-eaten?  Sounds like it's time for a cat
Nice glog

Thanks IKF. Sadly my kitty of 18 years died last year, she was a pretty good mouser. I miss the kitty, but I don't miss waking up to find half-eaten mice on my bed :-).

 

[Nulle]

Thanks IKF. Sadly my kitty of 18 years died last year, she was a pretty good mouser. I miss the kitty, but I don't miss waking up to find half-eaten mice on my bed :-).

I feel so sorry for you.   I have tried that and it hurts.

 

[unk3390]

Yes, losing pets hurts.  And phew, those temps!  Thought we had it bad in MI...
 
On the T5s - I've had good luck using aquarium bulbs to mimic LED output.  If there's a pet store nearby, check out their selection.  The ZooMed FloraSun is cheap and mostly blues and reds.

 

[Big Kahuna]

Thanks for the kind words guys.

Yes, losing pets hurts.  And phew, those temps!  Thought we had it bad in MI...
 
On the T5s - I've had good luck using aquarium bulbs to mimic LED output.  If there's a pet store nearby, check out their selection.  The ZooMed FloraSun is cheap and mostly blues and reds.

Thanks for this info Unk, I hadn't heard of these bulbs. Here is the color spectrum chart, it looks pretty good:

 

[unk3390]

Thanks for the kind words guys.

Thanks for this info Unk, I hadn't heard of these bulbs. Here is the color spectrum chart, it looks pretty good:

 
 
That's the one.  There's tons of options bulb wise depending on your needs.  Good luck!

 

[Moshun]

Any idea yet on when you're repotting to bigger size?
I'm going at it tomorrow. Perfect weather (21C), and the plants are just begging for it.
I got just normal all purpose potting mix. Anything you can suggest I add to the mix?

 

[Big Kahuna]

Any idea yet on when you're repotting to bigger size?
I'm going at it tomorrow. Perfect weather (21C), and the plants are just begging for it.
I got just normal all purpose potting mix. Anything you can suggest I add to the mix?

It's going to be a while before repot, I plan on keeping them in the cups as long as I can. I'll top and/or prune the larger plants soon as they're getting close to the lights.

I haven't figured out yet what I'm going to do this year for soil. I made my own mix last year; it was ok but held onto water more than it should have. I'll check out the local gardening stores in a couple of weeks and figure out what options are available.

There's lots of information on soils here:
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/10245-all-about-soil-a-great-resource-i-thought-i-would-share/

21C sounds nice - I can vaguely remember what that feels like ;-)

 

[Big Kahuna]

Just a quick update.

The plants with the yellow leaves still look pretty much the same though a little taller. It's weird, the pale lower leaves look like lack of N, but the wrinkled upper leaves took look like too much N... Still not sure what to do with these. Here is a picture of the worst one:

The two rocotos are showing no further signs of problems, but I'll keep them isolated for a while longer just in case. They are growing slower now that they are in the basement with only a 10W LED, but are looking good otherwise. I forgot to take a picture of these...

I have a new problem to share; A couple of days ago I noticed the leaves on my orange tree habanero had started to wilt so I watered it. Now the leaves are curled under and will not uncurl; one of the leaves also has a dried up patch on it. Any ideas what's going on with it?

Now to prove that only one of my thumbs is brown...

First up is a group shot of some of the various chinenses- in no particular order: orange, lemon, mustard and white habs, red and yellow fatalii, aji dulce, douglah, brown scorpion.

Now for my basement over-winters. First up the two Trinidad morouga scorpions. These were from seeds given to me by a co-worker. One of them I cut down fairly hard when I brought it indoors last year, the other I didn't cut back so much. The one I cut back harder has put out more new growth, but the other one has put out more buds (so far):

[edit: fixed link]

Scotch bonnet, the seed for this one came from a store bought pepper. I forget if it was red or yellow. The pepper had been grown in the Dominion Republic:

Chocolate habanero, again seed saved from a store bought pepper:

Last photo for today. Not sure what plant it is, I got this one mixed up when I was potting up. I think it's a small cherry. Any way, I decided to experiment by stripping it to see what would happen, leaving only the bottom three leaves. After three days it's putting out some decent side shoots from the lower nodes, but none from the upper nodes yet.

 

[Rymerpt]

Sure like your set up. Good luck with your grow.

 

[jonnyb]

Looking good. not sure what the problems might be, sometimes when I have issues like that, I try removing most of the soil and potting up with some fresh commercial potting compost. I'm not an expert at plant diagnosis, but if it's a nutrient/ph/salt problem this often clears it up after a week or so. If after that it's still not looking any better it may be a disease problem.

 

[Big Kahuna]

Thanks Rymerpt.

Jonynyb, I think you may be right. This evening I removed 5/7 of the yellowing plants from their pots, shook off as much of the soil as I could and replanted with a different type of potting soil. I left two of the plants alone as a control.

The worst of the plants were looking a little root bound, could this be the cause of the yellowing? The plants I grew last year grew to double this size in the same size cup and didn't have this problem.

 

[Rymerpt]

Like a science project. Looking forward to results. This is my first grow so watching people fix the problems they have really helps me. Did you hear that I "easy bake ovened" my very first little hooks to show? I made a foil lined grow box, but used a light bulb grow light that was way to hot. I was crushed. Waited and waited for them to come up only to bake the little guys. Oh well. I have replanted and all is well now.

 

[jonnyb]

Yeah you hve to be really careful when they're tiny like that.
 
Hope the resoiling helps. I did this with my seedlings that were growing in coir, but the high salt level was killing them, they looked terrible. A week after resoiling the new leaves were deep healthy green, although the existing yellow leaves didn't recover so I just removed them.

 

[Big Kahuna]

Quick update on the yellowing plants. Some of the worst leaves have started to drop off, otherwise the plants look to be about the same. Hopefully they are directing their energy into putting out roots into the new soil.

Rymerpt, I was sorry to read about your seedlings. I fried a bunch of mine last year by giving them too much sun when hardening them off. We learn from our mistakes.

First flowers have appeared on my 2014 plants. First one is an unknown small cherry type; the seeds for these came from a co-worker that has been growing them for years.

Second one is a large hot cherry; these seeds came from a store bought pepper.