Four-Pepper False Start Glog

While I'm (successfully) growing plenty of herbs at the moment, the important stuff is obviously the peppers... and, since I'm pretty sure I baked the first set of seeds I attempted to germinate due to underestimating the power of my seedling heat mat after moving it into the grow tent, we're calling that a swing and a miss and moving on with Batch #2.
 
Tomorrow night they'll get the coffee-filter-in-a-baggie treatment and a hopefully-more-comfortable place in a lovely fluffy towel on the mat.

 

[stc3248]

Those plants don't look too bad...I think its just a matter of time. Most of them drop a ton of blooms before they finally set. You could try a qtip pollination a couple times a day??? 

 

[internationalfish]

You're a top-notch guy!
 

Those plants don't look too bad...I think its just a matter of time. Most of them drop a ton of blooms before they finally set. You could try a qtip pollination a couple times a day??? 

 
Nah, I'm not really in a hurry for pods; they can start when they start. Besides, I'm way too lazy to go digging through the jungle in there with a q-tip.

 

[internationalfish]

The day has begun! Well... a while ago. It's already noon. But I have gotten at least a little work done.
 

 
Three more germinated SL Red seeds are in coir+perlite now. One of them is just about sprouting cotys, so that should only take another few days to come up, I think. The "Thai-ish?" are likely hawk's claw, but I wrote the tag before I knew that, so Thai-ish? they remain.
 
My long-suffering devil's tongue white has been potted up. If it starts looking at least a little better, this will become Office Pepper Number Three; fingers crossed. It hasn't set a pod yet, but it's blooming enthusiastically, and it hasn't dropped many flowers.
 

 
I started with these because I had a few too many drinks on a few too many consecutive nights and neglected the larger plants, which were all in a rather unhappy state of "goddamn, fish, give us water; cool, cool water" this morning. Waiting for them to perk up a little before I move six of them into two-pot planters to go outside and pot up or down another nine or ten plants into coir+perlite (my list seems to have neglected one of my goronong, which is a little confusing).
 
One thing I didn't think about is that the volume of fruit the larger alma is putting out (coupled with how dense those pods are) has, after it got weak from my watering failure, nearly tipped the plant over. So I'm probably going to have to get some sort of support in for that one.
 
The ghost and the UFO are getting a serious pruning, and since those are the only plants I only have one of, I'm planning to start cuttings from both of those. Because that's smart! I have eight sprouts coming up and a shipment of seeds on the way, so yeah, cuttings. That's what I need. More plants.
 
In related news, on the schedule for tomorrow is cleaning my office and trying to figure out how to fit a second tent in.

 

[internationalfish]

Well, murderous prune was accurate.
 

 

 
Next up: Scrubbing and coir-ing.

 

[CaneDog]

The day has begun! Well... a while ago. It's already noon. But I have gotten at least a little work done.
Three more germinated SL Red seeds are in coir+perlite now. One of them is just about sprouting cotys, so that should only take another few days to come up, I think. The "Thai-ish?" are likely hawk's claw, but I wrote the tag before I knew that, so Thai-ish? they remain.
My long-suffering devil's tongue white has been potted up. If it starts looking at least a little better, this will become Office Pepper Number Three; fingers crossed. It hasn't set a pod yet, but it's blooming enthusiastically, and it hasn't dropped many flowers.
I started with these because I had a few too many drinks on a few too many consecutive nights and neglected the larger plants, which were all in a rather unhappy state of "goddamn, fish, give us water; cool, cool water" this morning. Waiting for them to perk up a little before I move six of them into two-pot planters to go outside and pot up or down another nine or ten plants into coir+perlite (my list seems to have neglected one of my goronong, which is a little confusing).
One thing I didn't think about is that the volume of fruit the larger alma is putting out (coupled with how dense those pods are) has, after it got weak from my watering failure, nearly tipped the plant over. So I'm probably going to have to get some sort of support in for that one.
The ghost and the UFO are getting a serious pruning, and since those are the only plants I only have one of, I'm planning to start cuttings from both of those. Because that's smart! I have eight sprouts coming up and a shipment of seeds on the way, so yeah, cuttings. That's what I need. More plants.
In related news, on the schedule for tomorrow is cleaning my office and trying to figure out how to fit a second tent in.

 

 

 

[CaneDog]

Wow, that is a serious pruning!  Did you throw a little Blue Cheese dressing on that barrel-o-fun and chow down?  Really cool all you have going on and it sounds like some additional space should help a lot.  Especially once you get the next round started.  I think I asked you before, but when are you targeting for plant out?  Beginning of May or so?

 

[internationalfish]

Wow, that is a serious pruning!  Did you throw a little Blue Cheese dressing on that barrel-o-fun and chow down?  Really cool all you have going on and it sounds like some additional space should help a lot.  Especially once you get the next round started.  I think I asked you before, but when are you targeting for plant out?  Beginning of May or so?

 
Blue cheese, no. It's painfully expensive here. I did keep the greens, though, since my wife told me Koreans cook with those. Hopefully she comes up with something good; she usually does.
 
Plant out? Tomorrow.
 

 
It's supposed to get close to freezing tonight, so the six that went into planters are staying in the entryway tonight. Guessing I'll be bringing them in most nights for a while, but the state of the tent was driving me nuts. I'm probably going to get one more of these for a second J bell pepper and one of the goronong I forgot to account for.
 
The tent is already feeling much more open. The six that are still up top are in coir and perlite.
 

 
[edit: My 500th post. That's some pretty sadistic shit.]

 

[CDNmatt]

500!!
 
Onto 1000!!!!!!!!

 

[CaneDog]

Yeah man.  Having enough space indoors makes a huge difference.  I'm looking forward to putting my over-wintered rocotos back outside tomorrow, but none of my new plants will be doing even day trips until probably April. The OW Roc's have been inside for a solid month during the recent freezing weather and have acclimated to the house so I guess I'll be shuttling 10+/- 5 gallon pails in and out daily for a week or so.   
 
Cheers on the 500

 

[internationalfish]

Yeah man.  Having enough space indoors makes a huge difference.  I'm looking forward to putting my over-wintered rocotos back outside tomorrow, but none of my new plants will be doing even day trips until probably April. The OW Roc's have been inside for a solid month during the recent freezing weather and have acclimated to the house so I guess I'll be shuttling 10+/- 5 gallon pails in and out daily for a week or so. 

 
Bleh. I'm hoping not to have to do that more than a couple times, since the only space I have for these is a third-story balcony we never use... the only way to get enough water up there for ten hungry plants (planning to pot four more the same way) is probably going to involve tying a rope around the hose and pulling it up there. Should be entertaining for the neighbors. 

 
The SLR half-breeds I stuck in half-assed Kratky jars have started shooting out serious roots. I haven't taken a picture, because the volume of algae is embarrassing, but it seems like a good sign. I think their nutes are too diluted, but at least I can say I've actually seen this work in person. Not like that means anything, but it's a little bit comforting to know I have the fundamentals fairly close to correct.
 

Cheers on the 500

 
   

 

[internationalfish]

After all that work yesterday I've got a SERIOUS case of lazy today. So instead of doing any of the things I had scheduled, I pulled the larger SLR hybrid out into a temporary bottle so I can clean and paint the one it was in.

Not the best picture, but maybe you can see the roots a bit. It had less than half of that when I moved it from soil to Kratky not too long ago.

When I get its bottle finished I'll give it a full strength charge of nutes.

 

[CaneDog]

Well, those plants aren't going to like the cold weather they're going out into, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes.  As soon as I hit "post" I'm headed out to schlep in my 5g rocoto buckets for the night.  That gets old fast though, and I figure they'll only get this treatment for a few nights unless/until it threatens to get really cold again.
 
I have a 7P Chag that's been in Kratky for a couple months now and the jar is as green as someone's old pool that never got cleaned.  Plant doesn't care at all though and is happy as heck.  Seems once you get the water even halfway how they want it they just take off.  Transplanted mine today into double-cup using GPR's intermediate-step method of keeping some roots in water while it gets used to dirt again.  Curious to see how well that works. My last attempt going directly to dirt with a mature plant resulted in terrible TP shock that shut it down for over a month.  Didn't see any shock at all though moving young seedlings from Kratky to dirt though (after Paul's cut-to-Kraty method with sprouts).   It is good to get comfortable with different methods and have them in the bag of tricks.
 
Looking forward to that Solid Gold!  And tent #2!

 

[internationalfish]

Well, those plants aren't going to like the cold weather they're going out into, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes.  As soon as I hit "post" I'm headed out to schlep in my 5g rocoto buckets for the night.  That gets old fast though, and I figure they'll only get this treatment for a few nights unless/until it threatens to get really cold again.

 
Yeah, it's a lot more severe than most people are with their peppers... if I end up with a catastrophe, it'll certainly be my own fault. But the weather here is not very friendly; if they're not tough, they're not going to survive the summer or typhoon season.
 
So far, the only one not doing well is the CGN 21500, which I think might just be transplantation shock (that particular plant has always been a bit of a prima donna). Everyone else is taking the abuse in stride. It's not particularly warm out, but they're in a place that gets decent sun all day, so hopefully they acclimate well over the next week. If they do, as soon as it warms up a few degrees, it's out to the balcony for the season.
 

I have a 7P Chag that's been in Kratky for a couple months now and the jar is as green as someone's old pool that never got cleaned.  Plant doesn't care at all though and is happy as heck.  Seems once you get the water even halfway how they want it they just take off.  Transplanted mine today into double-cup using GPR's intermediate-step method of keeping some roots in water while it gets used to dirt again.  Curious to see how well that works. My last attempt going directly to dirt with a mature plant resulted in terrible TP shock that shut it down for over a month.  Didn't see any shock at all though moving young seedlings from Kratky to dirt though (after Paul's cut-to-Kraty method with sprouts).   It is good to get comfortable with different methods and have them in the bag of tricks.

 
Nice, sounds like you're building a really useful repertoire there.  But what's a 7P Chag?
 
One thing I'm looking forward to is seeing whether all this comically intricate painting work I'm doing actually does any good with temperatures or algae. Not that the algae really matters, like you say (well done with the "old pool" comparison), but I get twitchy about little things like that.
 

Looking forward to that Solid Gold!  And tent #2!

 
Haha, yeah! Getting to the point where USPS international should probably be getting those seeds here within the next week or so. Hopefully they made it through customs; I've had good luck with that so far, but who knows.

 

[CaneDog]

"Chag" is just being too lazy to type out Chaguanas.  Just a 7 Pot from Trinidad. Nothing particularly special, but it's from the last of old seed stock so it'd be cool to recover the strain.

 

[internationalfish]

"Chag" is just being too lazy to type out Chaguanas.  Just a 7 Pot from Trinidad. Nothing particularly special, but it's from the last of old seed stock so it'd be cool to recover the strain.

 
Ah, cool. Looks like that's a pretty spicy pepper; hoping to train myself on the ones I've got so maybe some day I can appreciate the really, really hot ones.

 

[internationalfish]

Of course I got excited and jumped the gun, so the paint isn't... totally dry... but hey. First time I've made a larger bottle for something other than things-that-might-happen-in-the-future. And I finally got decent at this (except, obviously, for the waiting part). These are really well blacked out inside; it takes a well-aimed intense light to see the plug once it's in there, so even if it doesn't actually do anything, I... uh... did something I intended to do. Hooray!
 
From right to left: SLR in temp bottle, nutage, almost-dry painted thing, and... unrelated.
 

 
And the final product. Minus a little bit of paint that is now on my hands. Fortunately, the stuff that got on the coffee table I caught quickly and cleaned up before it was permanent and my death at my wife's hands was assured.
 

 
 

 

[CaneDog]

Looking good iFish!  And far left should definitely be considered related.

 

[internationalfish]

Looking good iFish!  And far left should definitely be considered related.

 
Yeah, I suppose so. But it's kinda related to pretty much everything I do, so... 

 

[internationalfish]

Cleared out the bottom of the tent to let the big kids stay inside for the night and probably tomorrow. The only one that's doing notably worse than it was inside is the CGN 21500 on the right; he's... maybe in trouble. We'll see. I'd be more worried if I didn't have plants to take its place if it does flatline, and if I didn't have another 21500 at work that's producing.
 

 
Temporarily sharing the top shelf. Most of the right side will get transferred to the Great Outdoors at some point; the lefties are soaking up hydration in the hope that they'll not die as well. There's a lot of hopes, dreams, thoughts, and prayers going on with my grow.
 

 
The wrinkly devil's tongue is still wrinkly. Wrinkly wrinkly wrinkly.
 

 
Aaaand my algae farm! From left to right, datil, Zapotec jalapeno, and Not Quite Sri Lanka Red. The larger SLR is in the Kratky supertanker on the top shelf. Honestly not sure why I'm bothering keeping these guys; I don't expect them to last. Might see about putting the datil somewhere, but with the others I might as well just start over from seeds rather than screwing with this.
 

 

[internationalfish]

Since I mentioned it but haven't put up a picture for a while:
 

 
Office CGN 21500. Lower right and upper left are the pods that are furthest along, and there's another that's similar that I couldn't get into the same picture; top center there's a newer one, and there are several others that have just set. It still drops a lot of buds and flowers every day, but there are so many it doesn't seem to matter.
 
The office J bell pepper is doing well but hasn't really started working on fruit yet. One that I have at home has a couple fruits that are getting big; will get a picture of those soonish.