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

Drizzt's first season log.

Well this will be my first post here. I found the site about a month ago because I got the sudden urge to grow my own tomatoes and peppers and decided that the only way to do it is to grow them from seed. So I went to the store and when in front of the seed display I saw some Cayenne seeds and I got this image in my head of me making my own Hot Sauce.

When I found this forum I got even more excited looking at all the past season's pictures from everybody here and I started to look at the sites selling seeds and I stop myself right there and took the decision to concentrate only on the Cayenne for this year.

I hope this log will help others like me starting this new venture. I will try and document what I will do right and also what I did wrong.


I planted my first seeds on March 11 and reading all the good info on the site since there are already some steps I would've done differently like putting my seeds in an hydrogen peroxide and water solution before planting and I would've used some seed starter soil.


So here is my setup:

5530835806_f7c433c72a.jpg


I live in an apartment so come time to get them outside I will be confined to two small balconies so I won't be able to have a lot of plants. Already with those 72 cells with two seeds each, I could be overwhelm if I'm lucky and they all germinate.

The soil I use was some leftover soil mix for African Violet.

I alternate spraying the soil to, only keep it moist, with only water, hydrogen peroxide solution (about 1 tsp in 1 cup of water) and I sprayed twice with some 20-20-20 fertilizer. Any advice on that would be great, I know there is some seed starting fertilizer I could use, but I wanted to keep the cost down and not buy anything before I have to repot. On my "to buy" list so far I have: Epsom salt, a calcium additive and some fertilizer. Oh and yes some soil.


Now its only been 5 days since I planted and today the first sprouts are making there first appearances.
 
Click to expand...
I bottom watered my trays every 3-4 days. In retrospect it should have been every 2-3 days. (during germination I would say 2 days) I was paranoid about damping off so I wanted to let them dry out a bit between watering. More than once however they dried out too much because I was at work or could not water them when right when they needed it. I would get home and you could see the soil had pulled away from the side of the plug. As long as you get some good air movement on them you will be fine with a little extra water. A lot of people also go by the weight. Pick up the tray after you water and feel how heavy it is. Then, pick it up when it is dry and feel how light it is. With a little practice you can feel when it needs water.
 
Siliman said:
Hope the oven works for you--be sure to air it and the dome out regularly.
Click to expand...

I already just put the domes on at night and I have a fan blowing wind on my tray so it helps drying the top of my soil to avoid damping off


The first Cayenne sprout appeared a couple of hours ago!!!!!!
 
Congrats on the first baby emerging from the dirt. You will be hooked into the hobby now.



ps. I love the RA Salvatore books.
 
Here are my first pepper sprouts EVER!!

I am very excited, especially because I count a total of 17 sprouts so far.

 
First Cayenne peppers leaves of the first season!!! And I have 29 sprouts so far.




The tomatoes are still going strong.

 
OK this is a tip for noobs like me. When planting your seeds, make sure your soil fills the trays' cells completely. This will make it easier for the surface of the soil to dry faster after waterings, therefore less chance of damping off.

You can see in my pictures, the soil is not all the way to the top, so when I turn the fan on, the wind doesn't get to every cell's soil, so right now its a game of tilting and turning the trays.
 
Good tip, Noob! Yea, cells and pots are small at the beginning, so try to max them with mix. But I wouldn't beat yourself up over it, I bet the wind eddy from the fan is doing more good than you think. Things lookin pretty darn good overall.... :cool:

Noob-squared
 
Day 11 update. So far 37 out of 50 Cayennes have sprouted.


On the left and top right you have my Brandywine Red tomatoes.
Cayennes are on the right.






 
ah another fellow Montrealer! just when we think spring is around the corner, we get another snow storm... hope it's the last one!

Good luck!
 
Great germ rate, dude, well done!

Might be the camera angle or even the Brandywine species, but the maters look too 'leggy' to me. Stretching for available light. This might begin to affect the cayennes (which look great at the moment). So pour the light to them!

That LED light you're using is different than most, so you gotta work with it. I go 1 to 3-inches distance no ill effects with T8 flourescents.

Decrease watering, increase light by moving plants closer. More fan prolly wouldn't hurt, as long as you don't tip over those long maters. all IMHO.... :cool:
 
Siliman said:
Great germ rate, dude, well done!

Might be the camera angle or even the Brandywine species, but the maters look too 'leggy' to me. Stretching for available light. This might begin to affect the cayennes (which look great at the moment). So pour the light to them!

That LED light you're using is different than most, so you gotta work with it. I go 1 to 3-inches distance no ill effects with T8 flourescents.

Decrease watering, increase light by moving plants closer. More fan prolly wouldn't hurt, as long as you don't tip over those long maters. all IMHO.... :cool:
Click to expand...


The tallest of the tomato seedlings is just over 2" witch I will probably pot up this week end or next week.

I'm not too concerned about the amount of light the peppers get. They already have priority placement under the the LED and about three days ago I started to give them some Sun exposure by moving them from my back to front windows.

My trays start the day at sunrise, around 7:00AM, by the back window and get some direct sun between 9:00AM and 11:00AM. If I'm home, at around 2:00PM I move them to the front windows until 4:00PM. At that time I put them back under the LED until 1:00AM.

If somebody thinks its not a good regiment for my seedlings please comment on it. The reason I'm doing this is simply because I think that giving some real lighting exposure could be a good thing for my seedlings. I'm I wrong.

My LED is only a 5500K light. It is not a growing light. So was thinking that they will at least get some of the rest of the light spectrum the time they spend in real light.
 
Actually, that sounds like a pretty good plan. The 5500K light is a good growing light spectrum, as I've read. The mix of sun sounds good. And the peppers do look quite happy with it. Thats a lot of TLC you're giving. Grow on.... :cool:
 
Its been some time since my last update, so here is my progress so far.

Here is a pic from this morning before I transplanted the tomatoes.




Here you can see the Brandywine Red tomato plants and some of my Cayennes on the bottom left.






Now all the tomato plants have been transplanted. I will do the Cayennes tomorrow. Now its time for wine and hockey.




Here's most of my Cayennes. They all have their first set of true leaves. Do you guys think its time for me to transplant them or should I wait a bit more?



 
It is up to you. Many folks wait until there are two sets of leaves to transplant. But if they are sitting in only seeds starter, they aren't getting any nutes, so you may want to give them a shot of balanced fert at a 25% rate. Me, I pluck those bad boys from seed starter and pot up as soon as I see cotyldons, but that is just me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top