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

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.
 
Click to expand...
PaulG said:
Great progress, Fish. Things are rolling right along, plants look great!
Click to expand...
Thanks! The rest of the grow bags should be here soon. Looking forward to getting everything potted up; the rest of the peppers are definitely getting cramped in those little seedling pots.
 
My solitary fish pepper came up. With no less than three cotys. :)

cerberus-fishling.jpg


Also got positive germination on one of my Japanese bell pepper seeds already. So that's promising.
 
CaneDog said:
Way to go international fish pepper!
 
Anything special or unique about the Japanese bell peppers or the varieties you selected?
Click to expand...
 
I only have a single bell pepper variety, pulled from store-bought peppers. I can't seem to find taxonomy for it other than being just a bell pepper Mini-Me. This page is about the best info I've seen on it, though some of the Geography/History section is questionable.
 
As of "ugh I gotta go to work" time this morning, at least three of the Japanese bell pepper seeds have popped, along with one or possibly two of the goronong.
 
Still waiting on the next batch of grow bags to arrive -- should be this week -- and on the growdown seeds, which, I don't know, maybe should be this year?

Despite that, I did bring one of my CGN 21500's in to work, so here you go.

21500-workin-for-a-livin.jpg

 
He's the new hire, so I'm sure it'll take a little time for him to settle in. I'm expecting a little bullying since he's not full hydro; people are cruel like that, you know? But once he lets his fruit flag fly, I'm sure they'll accept him.
 
PaulG said:
Great window sill, 'Fish - looks like a great pepper shelf.
What direction does the window face?
Click to expand...
 
South-southeast. We're on the 8th floor overlooking a fairly large road, so that window gets a lot of light; I expect it to do fairly well.
 
Also, after following the Kratky discussions in a few places, it was interesting to me that the basil in that picture has been growing right there in full sun for who knows how long with no algae problems.
 
Woohoo! My wife says the new shipment of grow bags arrived! That means tonight I'll be packing up two lemon drops and a CGN 21500 that all badly need the rootspace.
 
So the bottom will be occupied by my afterthought mint and basil clones and the next pepper batches:
  1. 1 ghost and 1 UFO, both of which probably have two or three more weeks before they get bagged.
  2. 2 white devil's tongues, which I think are both just starting on their third set of true leaves.
  3. 1 fish pepper seedling, who's still just a weeee little guy.
  4. At least six (!) germinated J bell peppers, at least one germinated goronong, and another two goronong plus three shishito that have shown no interest yet in coming out of their shells.
Now I just have to wait... six freaking hours until I can go home and take care of them.  :neutral:
 
I didn't realize how big the ghost had gotten; he's second from the left in front. Since he got his own bag, I had to give one to his classmate the UFO, who's on the left in front. He's taking his time, so I hope he appreciates the ride on his buddy's coattails. Lazy bastard.
 
These fit four to a row with room to spare, so these two-gallon bags are perfect. With these ten in, I have another pack of five left; probably going to order another pack or two, since they take a while to get here from China, for some odd reason.
 
ten-bags-up-top.jpg


The bottom shelf sure thinned out. The two in the back center are my white devil's tongues; they're looking well. In front of them is the fish, and on the right in front in the tray are my Japanese bell peppers (six of them! All seven germinated, so I picked the six that were furthest along, now they can fight it out). Also in there are three goronong seeds (only one of which has germinated) and three shishito (none of which have germinated yet). I figure I'll switch it up a bit and see if I have any luck with this instead of the coffee filters.
 
On the right, of course, are the plastic bottle plugs with the datil seeds. I pulled apart the one in the back, which is the one I left with its stock sponge, because I wanted to push the sponge further down; I was surprised to find one of the seeds had germinated and was growing into the sponge already. I'm pretty sure I screwed it up while trying to rearrange it, which was stupid, so now I'm stuck giving the normal one the benefit of the doubt. Bleh. Well, hopefully that means my coir+perlite plug is doing at least that well.

emptying-out-bottom-shelf.jpg


Figured I'd get in a Full Blurple pic just to give the full effect. Pretty pleased with how everything is coming along. :)

ten-up-top-blurple-illumination.jpg

 
And if those growdown seeds ever get here I'll have plenty of room on the bottom to work with them. ;)
 
PaulG said:
Your plan is starting to come to fulfillment, 'Fish
Click to expand...
 
according-to-plan.jpg

 
CaneDog said:
Yeah it is!  Congrats on how things are going.
 
But then again, that just means you're going to need a bigger plan...
Click to expand...
 
Thanks! Though it's not like the datil, goronong, shishito, J bell peppers, or hybridization were part of the plan... so I do think we're already well into Plan Expansion Territory. :P
 
My lemon drops are still curling up, and I'm still getting quite a bit of yellowing/leaf drop. Going to give the plants today to rest and drink and then come back for feedback, I think; got a Japanese lesson in an hour and a half, then a day of people stopping in to watch movies and eat brats (testing out my first successful batch of homemade kraut; thank goodness grocery stores here for some reason carry several varieties of Johnsonville).
 
Planning on pictures tonight; hopefully the lemon drops are looking less... awful... by then.
 
After asking around, I tried giving everyone a cal-mag treatment (including a milder foliar spray) without fertilizer. Also took a shot at bottom watering to see if that'll work well with these grow bags, which it seems to have, so that's something, I guess. Not sure if that's how I should apply fertilizer as well, though, so any input there would be great.
 
All six of the Japanese bell pepper seeds I planted have sprouted, as well as one goronong out of three. Still nothing on the shishito seeds. This'll be the second time those don't come up, if they keep going this way, which I should probably take as a sign to give up on them for this season. Not like I don't have enough plants going, even if the lemon drops don't make it.
 
Two of the datil seeds on each of my water bottle grows have sprouted! So that's fun. Because of the added height of those bottles, I'm probably going to replace the legs in my little tent tables with the new ones I got to make the top and bottom levels more even soon. Was going to need to do that anyway once I ended up with too many plants on top (which I'm now one two-gallon bag away from).
 
The Sri Lanka Red seeds have only been in the coffee filter for a couple days now, so I still have a bit of a wait before those go anywhere.
 
I was going to strip half these plants after reading about it earlier... and I lost my nerve. I did give some of them a pretty healthy trim, except for the ones that seem to be doing really well. Particularly the choco habs.

In this one you can see the lemon peppers, which got the bulk of the knife abuse. One of them has been looking a little better, so it kept some foliage; the other one lost most of it, and hopefully it'll be a good fresh start. You may also notice some basil, if you look very closely, acting like he belongs and pulling it off like a hero.

post-trim-back-row.jpg


Shot of the front row, with some decent habs, ghost in the middle and a CGN 21500 in front of him, UFO on the right behind one of those habs, and the big alma on the left in front.

post-trim-front-row.jpg


Beyond the bottle you've got some reasonably happy white devil's tongue in front of a weeeee fish, next to a box of about half and half seedlings and what I assume are little dead husks in nice cozy graves.

post-trim-bottom-shelf.jpg


My coir and perlite mix spat out a well-coifed sprout; I took a very sharp box cutter to it and came out with my most successful helmet surgery yet.

post-trim-helmet-surgery.jpg


I'm not at all pleased to note that the sponge they provide with these little bottle plugs seems to have worked a hell of a lot better than my half-assed hydro hack, but I suppose it could be worse. Two very happy little non-helmeted datil seedlings. Remember, though, kids: There can be only one!

post-trim-spongey-datils.jpg

 
So that's where it's at. Could be better, but it could be worse, too. :)
 
[edit: On re-reading this, it's pretty clear I'm less sober than I thought I was. But IT COULD BE WORSE! :drunk: ]
 
PaulG said:
Those little Kratky plugs are interesting.
Looking forward to seeing how they work...
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, hopefully they work as well for peppers as they do for basil. I'm thinking things will kind of break down when the root mass gets too big to make it through the bottle openings comfortably... before that point I'm going to have to figure something else out for them. But that's a problem for a couple months down the road, I expect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top