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First ever grow attempt - tips would be appreciated.

Hi guys,

This is my first ever attempt at growing chili "or anything" from seed so figured i would make a Grow Log so people can give me any tips if they notice things about the plants i wont know about. my seeds have been sowed about 3 weeks ago for the capsicum & spring onion you will see in the background, just over 2 weeks for the morugas and various times over the last week for the other varieties "the newer ones have dates on the labels". i apologize about the quality of the pictures i could not find my camera so had to use my phone. hopefully moving forward will be able to find my camera and give nicer update pictures. any feedback would be much appreciated

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Hard to see but one of the black pearls has sprouted "each jiffy has 2 seeds - except bhut jolokia"


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Some of the seedlings in my light box, all except capsicum spring onion and moruga only placed in this morning.


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The rest of my seedlings in the light box.

there is a few more waiting to seed but no point showing you jiffy pellets with nothing sticking out.




the only questions i have at this stage is about the seedlings in my light box which appear to be growing seed up as seen in the 2 moruga cups. is this normal and will fix itself?

Thanks for reading will try for weekly updates or if anything exciting happens before hand i guess.

would also like to add my grow box is usually much brighter but i had to pull the light out to take the picture.
 
...the new "clearly unoficial" jiffy pellets i bought from ebay i am not very happy with. first of all they were not the size i ordered, secondly they seem really bad quality and completely fall apart when trying to split it.

My "official" ones seem to do that too, so i wouldn't worry too much! The answer is to plant one seed in one Jiffy, as i have since learnt!

As for lights, i don't know what you had in mind, but i grabbed mine from one of those 'restoration / reclamation' places for $10, which included the 2 flourescent tubes...and they don't seem to cost anything to run either. I have mine on for 18 hours at a time and was dreading the electric bill, but there was no change whatsoever. They appear to be very cost effective to run :)
 
As for lights, i don't know what you had in mind, but i grabbed mine from one of those 'restoration / reclamation' places for $10, which included the 2 flourescent tubes.

yeah ive had a quick look around. what size are yours? bunnings has them for $30 including 2 tubes but only the 62cm ones. i am thinking that will do me really as i dont plan on growing to many... and if i ever changed my mind could always just get more of the same and make my light box wider i guess... one thing i do want an opinion on is height... how high would you normally let the plants grow before taking them outside "already have an idea to have multiple positions for the light to sit at".
 
Always worth having a read in grow tech, some good info in there.

Over the years (as a sparky) ive thrown so many fluro`s in the bin its not funny, never had the room to store them.
I was working on a big government job here in Aussie few years back & they was about to chuck pallets of brand new metal halide lights (complete with lamps) in the bin !! I rescued them & took them to the auctions, made a tidy profit on that lot.

Mezo.
 
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yeah ive had a quick look around. what size are yours?

I have 2 x T8's, which at a guess are 4ft and a bit? The plants seem to thrive from being under them :) I too was initially looking for something smaller and considered something like the 62cm ones you mentioned, but whilst looking around the local reclamation centre they had the T8 fixture complete with both 6500k tubes for $10, so i went with that!

i am thinking that will do me really as i dont plan on growing to many...

Ahhh, that kinda rings of what i initially said too!! My original plan was to grow 2 or 3 choice plants indoors, to give me a head start for the spring. Then i went to see a local guy who sells seeds, Grant (JungleRain), and due to his generous nature i ended up coming away with WAY more seeds than i had planned to sow......so i narrowed it down to 5 or so varieties.....and thought i'd plant 3 in each Jiffy Bag with the intention of going ahead with the best lloking one and pulling the other 2....but then when the time came i thought, "well, maybe i'll grow all 3 and see how it goes...if one dies then i have a back-up...." ETC ETC
So i've ended up with about 25 plants, and realistically, space for 8 at a maximum!!! hahaha But i'm hopelessly hooked now, and there appears to be no going back!
So yeah, be strong....or else it'll take over your life!!!

I love my new hobby :)

Best of luck with your grow!
 
yeah i am really enjoying it to... got home today and 1 of the jalapeno and 1 of the twilight seedlings are looking very sad... i recently placed a fan in my grow box "old one, new one not made yet" and im not sure if the air blowing on it is to strong, or its that it dried out the jiffy pellet to much... either way im giving it all a water tomorrow and am also hoping i get a chance to build the new grow box... going to use emergency blanket to reflect the light but before covering it i am going to spray the frame with a chrome silver paint... will hopefully have some pictures to post tomorrow.
 
Can u post pics kgage? Not sure what u mean by 'very sad' and pics would Deffo help.as I've said before, I'm still really new to growing from seed myself, but I've had way more than my fair share of things going wrong, so if I can assist someone from all of my newbie mistakes, then it makes all of my mistakes worthwhile!!

What is the idea behind spraying the frame with chrome paint? Again, I guess pics may reveal more, but currently i can't think what the reckoning behind this is...
 
What is the idea behind spraying the frame with chrome paint? Again, I guess pics may reveal more, but currently i can't think what the reckoning behind this is...

going to spray it so it also reflects the light.

this is what i meant when i said it was looking sad

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i apologize about the quality i am still unable to find my actual digi cam so still using my old iphone 3gs

any suggestions about what could have caused this would be great. it is definitely not over watering i am sure as ive made sure i dont do that.
 
Under watering is better than over watering, you will be surprised how quickly it bounces back, the jiffy does look pretty dry though.

Sit the jiffy in a saucer of water & let it hydrate itself again doesn't look that bad though, you should have seen two of my habs yesterday (they looked dead) an hour later i couldn't spot them (bounced right back).

Mezo.
 
i watered them this morning before posting anything hoping it was that simple. they have already started standing up again so hopefully in another couple of hours fighting fit. looking good to get my new light box started today also.
 
keep running into more and more delays with building this light box... buy all the wood, friend comes over to bring me his saw & drill... forgets drill... picked up the drill after work today, wood snaps 2 drill bits in under 5 mins... attempt to drive screw straight through wood instead... drill "cordless" doesnt have enough battery... another days delay waiting for battery to charge...
 
They look kinda leggy (tall and spindly) to me. How close have you got the light kgage? I tried all sorts of heights, but find mine are happiest with the lights around 2" away

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I guess if you're using a CFL then you might want to check how much heat it's giving off first, but i can't imagine it would be any more heat that the flouro's i have?
 
A CFL will give off more heat because it has the ballast/electronics built in to the base Nee, yours is just the lamp.
Try hanging it downwards with some ventilation holes at the top to allow the heat to rise out, or have the base outside & just the glass part poking through a hole.

Mezo.
 
thanks for the tips guys... with my current grow light its very hard to get my light to close but i am hoping to finish my new one tomorrow which will mean i can get it pretty much as close as i want...
 
Finally some progress with my new grow box, all i need to do now is attach some more slats to put the light at different heights and make & attach a reflective cover...

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Starting to grow concerned about the color of these little guys, seem like they are quite yellow.

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compared to these.

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apart from that the plants seem quite healthy, any idea what could be causing it?
 
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