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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.
 
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Your plants are doing great, Fish! The balcony
looks like a good place for them.

The little plum tree is a beautiful specimen. I bet
it looks really nice when it blooms.
 
Well, here you go. My really, really mediocre first purple UFO (along with my most recent lemon drop; getting one every other day or so).
 
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GIT YER ACT TOGETHER, PLANT.
 
Also, brought one of my hawk's claws to the office. You can see the CGN 21500 on the left that hasn't really recovered from the neglect I gave it when I went to the US for work... it does seem to be growing new leaves, but very, very slowly. Hopefully it picks up the pace; it'd be a shame if it didn't come back.
 
office-claw.jpg
 
Not a great photo, but here are my office takanotsume, happily settling in and pumping out those pods. I was concerned it would have problems with the heat, but the windowsill got very hot yesterday and it seems to still be fine, so that's good.
 
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The SLR I put on the balcony looked great, then looked not so great. Bit of delayed transplant shock. It did perk back up, though; dropped a few leaves and pretty much all of its flowers, but it seems OK. It's another amusing setback in my quest to grow AT LEAST ONE SRI LANKA RED, but that's more funny than frustrating at this point.
 
This weekend I'm planning to replant my tent peppers in a mix with more coir and less perlite; should let them retain more water. Also going to move my caribe, second SLR, and two Jigsaw x Hab F1's into soil and onto the balcony, which should now be officially over capacity.  :cool:
 
Found a ripe pod I'd completely missed. I think it's a goronong; pretty tasty pod.
 
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And SLRs! I had some false alarms earlier, so hopefully these don't drop; considering how well the other plants outside are setting pods, I'm cautiously optimistic about these guys.
 
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But wait, OH MY GOD! THEY'RE GONE!  :shocked:
 
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I moved out most of what was on the bottom shelf in 1- and 3-gallon bags.
 
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My WHP Habsaw F1's went into smaller bags and a pot, since one is going to a friend once it's a bit more established.
 
f1s.jpg

 
The tent denizens got themselves filled up further with a more dense medium (much more coir than perlite this time). They also got a healthy pruning.
 
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Haha, didn't even notice how freaking crooked they are. Ah well.
 
Guess it's time to figure out what other unnecessary peppers I should trow next.
 
CaneDog said:
Looks like your balcony is going to be the new jungle soon. Get ready for the sequel...
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I can only hope my special effects come out that well!  :surprised:
 
Didn't even get the comp SLR in that picture. It's looking solid; plenty of pods that look like they're sticking around. Will update the growdown thread when there's a few with some good length to them.
 
The habsaw F1s are looking pretty good.
 
f1s.jpg

 
One of them clearly got bugged, but that's something I see a little bit of occasionally and it invariably stops quickly. I started noticing beetles that made me nervous, but on a bit of research, I think they're these guys, which I get the impression would be a good thing.
 
The top right corner is Japanese bell peppers, which apparently take FOR GODDAMN EVER to ripen. But they do pump out pods impressively.
 
Figured I'd pull the J bells and see if I can get the plants to start a new batch, since they seriously just sit there in Green Mode.
 
jbell-harvest.jpg

 
Looking forward to whipping up some stir fry with these, some onions, and maybe some beef. Heck, I could introduce my wife to Philly Cheese Steak... hmmm...  :idea:
 
How long were those JBells just hanging out being green?  Seems like it takes forever sometimes for that first pod to turn.  Are these guys red when ripe or are there yellows and oranges?
 
Cheese steak definitely and you could even sneak a little heat into the mix - with full disclosure to the spousal unit of course.
 
CaneDog said:
How long were those JBells just hanging out being green?  Seems like it takes forever sometimes for that first pod to turn.  Are these guys red when ripe or are there yellows and oranges?
 
Cheese steak definitely and you could even sneak a little heat into the mix - with full disclosure to the spousal unit of course.
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At least a month, maybe closer to two. They do ripen red.
 
Think I'm going to stick with a really basic Philly for the first shot and then tweak it later. I'm sure she'll flip out and demand more.
 
I actually stopped growing bells simply because they take so long to ripen, mine last year also took like 2 months and with our short season, the harvest don't really seem worth it. If I recall correctly, my Corno del Toro gave me 12 peppers in total or something, that just didn't really seem worth it.

Philly steak or stir-fry of course does seem like a good use for them though, and it does feel good to use your own produce... [emoji6]

Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Tapatalk
 
lespaulde said:
I actually stopped growing bells simply because they take so long to ripen, mine last year also took like 2 months and with our short season, the harvest don't really seem worth it. If I recall correctly, my Corno del Toro gave me 12 peppers in total or something, that just didn't really seem worth it.
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Ugh. Yeah, I was really excited about these since they grew so fast, but they really do take their time... considering I can get them at the grocery store (shishito being the only other one they carry, and that only sometimes), in retrospect it seems like a waste of space.
 
Well, I did just start seeds for kung pao and 7JPN, so I guess I can pull the J bells and stick these in their spots. Or maybe put my purple UFO out there in one of those spots since I still can't get anything in the tent to fruit.  :confused:
 
lespaulde said:
Philly steak or stir-fry of course does seem like a good use for them though, and it does feel good to use your own produce... [emoji6]
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Yeah, I think it'll go over well. But it'll probably end up in the same "American food is so good! Why don't you want to move back to America? I want to live in America!" shit I get from my wife about once a month... 
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Haha, I sympathise with her though, as American food really is SO good. Generally not healthy, but gooooooood.

Worth considering replacing the bells with a plant from the tent yeah, it really is all about maximizing space utilisation eh?

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lespaulde said:
Haha, I sympathise with her though, as American food really is SO good. Generally not healthy, but gooooooood.
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No argument there. Also, while Tokyo is not as expensive as people often think, pizza here is painfully pricey. You can get the equivalent of a US medium in Tokyo for $30-40.
 
We went to the east coast of the US after getting married so she could meet my extended family. Over 20 people there, I think, so we got a bunch of US large pizzas (which might be equivalent to Japan XXXL if that existed), and they were something like $9 apiece. Between that and going to northern Michigan for a friend's wedding -- "holy god, how are there so many TREES here?!" and "holy shit, all the grocery stores have EVERYTHING!" -- she was pretty floored with her experiences there.
 
When she gets in one of those moods, I usually have to resort to showing her the US news to get her to back down. Works every time, though. 
 
lespaulde said:
Worth considering replacing the bells with a plant from the tent yeah, it really is all about maximizing space utilisation eh?
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Yeah, it really is. Thinking about it more carefully, moving a couple tent plants out is a better idea, particularly since it'd take months to get a new plant large enough to safely transplant... at which point there wouldn't be all that much of the season left.
 
Still gotta figure out WTF I'm screwing up with the tent plants, but I guess for the moment keeping the outside plants producing is probably more important.
 
Well, the rainy season is still teasing us (or whatever you call it when something you don't want to happen isn't happening), so I actually had to water the balcony plants this week. Very weird for this time of year; the midwest US is drowning and we're cruising along with barely any rain.
 
In good tent news, I have a 7JPN sprout. Here's a shitty picture! Turns out my phone either does low-light well or focuses well, and not both at the same time. Believe it or not, this is the best one I got.
 
7jpn-sprout.jpg

 
And a hook for the Kung Pao cayenne I got in my recent seed trade. Not really sure what this one is going to be like.
 
kung-pao-hook.jpg

 
In kinda-bonchi news, this thing has been solely bottom watered for quite a while now. I'm letting it go without trimming to hopefully encourage a nice root ball; you can see it's enthusiastically delving even above that thin layer of soil (just took off the cling wrap I had around the dirt, so I'm assuming those will either harden up just or die, but most of the roots are covered). Doubt I'll start pulling down the soil for a while yet, but I'm happy it's doing this well. I do know it's rooted well down into the planter, since it's wilted a few times, and bottom watering perks it up way too fast to just be soil wicking. So that's encouraging.
 
bonchi-topless.jpg

 
Regarding the tent... I started paying more attention to the temperature, which I think might be the main culprit in my constant blossom drop. It hit 94F overnight... probably not ideal. That's with most of the vents open and two fans running.
 
I moved my purple UFO outside, since that's the only large plant in the tent I really care about, and everything outside has been really happy. With so few plants left in there, I think I'm going to pull out the shelving, consolidate them on the bottom, and switch to just a single light to bring the heat down.
 
[edit]
Just harvested the J bell peppers at the office; turns out two of them had started to ripen and I didn't even notice.
 
office-jbell-harvest.jpg
 
So suddenly I have a freaking EXPLOSION of aphids and half a dozen other unfriendly things on my balcony plants. Which just damn figures.  :confused:
 
They still look mostly OK, but a few (particularly my one remaining alma paprika) are just mobbed with creepy crawly little bastards. I've vinegared them and will probably break out the Castile soap soon, but I'm not really holding my breath... will probably see if I can find some sort of high-power chemical murder bath to solve this.
 
SLRs in the front right and back right, with my (coir+perlite) purple UFO in the middle and part of a lemon drop on the left.
 
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Uh... other.
 
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Next year hopefully I'll think ahead a bit and not end up with a totally unmanageable jungle. Ha. Haha. Eh.
 
Going to be moving the tent downstairs and consolidating to one light, so hopefully that will solve my heat problems. And hopefully my tent problems actually are heat problems.
 
In happier news, I massively overpaid to have a nice big box of Velveeta Shells and Cheese sent from the US. Sometimes comfort food is necessary, and there's never any accounting for taste.
 
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Guess I should clean that table, too.
 
internationalfish said:
Next year hopefully I'll think ahead a bit and not end up with a totally unmanageable jungle. Ha. Haha. Eh.
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Uh huh, sure you will 'fish.  And next year I won't try to grow so many varieties...   :rolleyes:
 
internationalfish said:
velveeeeeeta.jpg

 
Guess I should clean that table, too.
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Should probably clean that bowl first!
 
Cheers man!
:cheers:
 
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