CaneDog said:
Hey iFish. You back yet? How are things looking? Was a lot going on when you skipped town.
'sup dog! I am indeed back. Had a lot of work to do and a bunch of pictures to put up, so here we go.
Most of the big guys did not do terribly well with no watering for a week, and I left no instructions on that for my wife. They're all coming back, but they had a lot of leaf drop, unsurprisingly... it might not turn out to be all that bad, since it really cleared out the bottom and left some clean canopies. No pictures because that's frankly just embarrassing.
I don't have pictures of this, but the alma paprika somehow
love abuse. I have a ripening pepper and a lot of nice, big, firm fruits on both of them; neither has the problem I'll point out below or
even any drooping despite a week of neglect. I'm going to start singing the praises of this plant for newbies and black-thumbs, because damn.
Regarding things I
do have pictures of, let's start with the good news: Cuttings.
Since my wife managed to give away a whole bunch of plants I didn't have, I started more of these than I needed before I left. All of them are very happy and very healthy. Pretty sure keeping up with her giveaways is going to be a continuous pursuit; it's a good thing I enjoy this part.
The mint really sucked up water, despite the roots being much thinner than the basil. It's not visible here because the first thing I did was top them off. This is 'mojito mint'; I also have peppermint that's doing well outside, which I grew from seed. Definitely going to start cuttings from that at some point; Tokyo winter has kept it slow, but it had a bit of a growth spurt while I was gone, which is exciting.
The basil cuttings, on the other hand, look like some sort of B-movie plant monster. /r/basilrootsaremetal
Most of the seedlings did well with just the pre-trip watering I gave them. The unfortunate exception was the largest of the Japanese bell peppers. Oh well. On the left are the goronong; I seem to have two different phenos, with the one in back being the only one showing dark leaves. Kinda stoked to see if they end up particularly different.
I was interested to see some of the J bell peppers rooting above the soil; I'm assuming this is just another common thing my utter lack of experience makes new to me, but it seems pretty cool.
I kept three of the bells and one each of the Goronong phenos.
My "hey, I can improve on that" experiment didn't really work. The datil I had in the one on the left pretty much just stopped after it sprouted cotyledons, so I gave it a merciful death and replaced my coir/perlite with the original sponge from the plug. It now has Zapotec jalapeno seeds. The remaining datil got a water change with a bit of the fertilizer provided with the plug.
Three out of four of the Sri Lanka red chile seeds I started sprouted, so I got those into some soil.
Here they are on the right, with the white devil's tongue and fish pepper (far left) that were going before I left. Those are still well-hydrated despite their week of loneliness. You can also see the newly almost-clean tent floor here. I pulled everything out to replace the rack legs with taller ones that actually divide the tent almost exactly in half vertically, so everything got at least a cursory cleaning.
Aaaaand now for something less fun.
I don't know what this is. It was happening before I noticed the aphids, which I only really saw a few of, and it's still looking fresh despite the neem apocalypse my wife rained down while I was gone...
On the tops it generally just follows the veins.
The bottoms of the leaves, though, can get some pretty impressive coverage.
The stems aren't immune either.
So I don't know what the deal there is. Hopefully solving this will be next.
Pretty sure I need to get deeper trays to really effectively bottom-water with the grow bags, but that's a relatively minor thing.
The CGN 21500 I left at the office did
not do so well for a week without water. It doesn't look dead, and it hasn't had the leaf drop I got in the tent, so hopefully the dousing I gave it this morning will cheer it up... if there's any truth to stress increasing the heat of the fruit a plant produces, I swear I'm going to set some f**king records.
[...has there always been a profanity filter that I just didn't notice?]
