Frosty's Glog 2012

Well I decided to do a glog half way through. At first I didn't think anyone could learn anything. I guess there is value in what not to do.

I start seeds poking holes into styrofoam cups. I stuff promix into the cups and soak the promix then one layer of vermiculite spray with hydrogen peroxide place the seed on the vermiculite add a layer of vermiculite and spray again. I cover the top with ziploc snack bags and place on heating pads. I check periodically and spray with water or peroxide.

I use this method because it is simple and requires very little maintenance. Once they sprout they go under grow lights. I do a mix of LED and CFL.
I over winter most plants. Currently the over winters are in the ground or buckets and are:
Cherry peppers
'Hole Mole' pasilla
Jalepenos
manzanos
aji crystal
Mariachi hybrid

Here are seeds I have not yet planted it out.

These are:
Loofah (non pepper)
goats weed
fatali
manzano clone (in the big pot. I just did that to be silly)
orange habanero
Bhut carbon
Butch T
cap chacoense
cap praeternissium
cayenne

And another picture.

I got back from a trip to china with three different pepper seeds I collected. I didn't think they would start but I tried anyway. Almost got 100% germination. Go figure. I am a big fan of sip buckets (AKA global buckets). I mix peat, perlite, and coco pith in about equal proportions. Then I will add some ocean forest. Finally. I add three X treme gardening feeder packs to each bucket. Pith is absolutely needed. It will consistently wick water. I get buckets from craig's list.

The sip buckets are really low maintenance. I water them very rarely. The problem is they get hot. I think that is true for all buckets though.

This plant was grown indoors with a flood and drain table. It was too crowded and once I took it out it could not support itself so I had to cut it down. It is growing back nicely though

A different Chinese plant. you will see I am already having bug problems

Here is my one and only Manzano pepper. the plant is probably ~10 months old. I had some sort of deficiency and sprayed with calmag and surrounded with compost. Everything looks better now.

Here is my other manzano plant. On the left is the manzano that I took out of a sip bucket. In the center is a loofah and on the right is a chinese pepper. My hope is the loofah will help keep it cool in the morning and the chinese pepper will provide shade in the afternoon.

This is another chinese plant that I grew under lights and have moved to a southern window. Doing alright. Have to water it daily. I might put it in the ground. It is up to the wifey.

I am trying my hand at outdoor hydro. I am trying drip, DWC, and flood and drain using one reservoir. For the drip I took window planters but a drain and filled with a scotch pad. This did not work and had to clean it up. I used a big scotch pad and dumped a bunch of hydroton on top. it seems to be working. The drain I used leaked so I used a butt-load of silicone for aquariums. The plan is to put rockwool and suretogrow cubes on .5 coco and .5 perlite and drip irrigation. This has truly been a test and tweak process. I am tempted to throw it out.

For the rest I have a flood and drain table I will just use felt pots and the over flow will go into the DWC. I made the height of the water adjustable in the dwc (I'll show that later). When the DWC gets too high it flows back into my reservoir. So it is recirculating in a sense.

I think I have all the bugs worked out. I will try to get the plants outdoors this week.

 

[PepperLover]

VERY nice

 

[stc3248]

Cool stuff! Good luck on the hyrdro unit!

Shane

 

[frosty]

so I put some plants out a few days ago. I put in some nutes, inoculant, and enzyme. had 100ppm and 6.4 ph. Good place to start for a few days. I checked it yesterday still 100 PPM so I added some nutes and got 6.6 P.H. Read it today and got 130 PPM then I noticed a little flashing X10. Yep 1300PPM. I drained half and added tap water. It is ~800. I'll get some filtered water and run at 200-300 for a few days and then move to 500 and maintain. Surprisingly nothing looks bad. The manzano actually seems to have grown quite a bit. I must be imagining it.

Still more tweaking to be done. Need to clean up everything and cover exposed coco pith. The drain table doesn't fully drain because the grommet isn't flush. I'll tilt it more and put some risers under the plants. i wrote the names of the peppers on the covers of the blocks.

 

[jsschrstrcks]

looking great. I keep thinking I want to try hydro... But its financially improbable at this point

 

[frosty]

I haven't made up my mind on outdoor hydro. If the drip system gets me to August without any serious problems I am going to go 100% that way. I'll wait and see but I have my doubts about the drippers. They don't spray; they just kind of dribble. Sure to grow cubes don't wick so I am not sure how wet the cube is getting. I am going to start shading the containers to keep it as cool as possible. That is my biggest concern that it is just going to get too hot. I don't want to buy a chiller.

If the flood and drain table works outside it is pretty cheap and can probably be made cheaper. The nice thing about peppers is that the cheapest nutes are good enough.

The bigger plants have been re-potted and now only have a few left indoors.

 

[frosty]

Because of the mild winter all my plants from last year are still around. So here are some ripe pods:
This is a cherry pepper. The cherry pepper really reveals the difference that conditions make. They have almost no heat right now and frankly are bland all the way around. Earlier they were hotter than store-bought Jalepenos and had a rich flavor.

This ripe pepper is from a dried pepper in China. The original was about 1.5 inches. This one is under a centimeter. I am suspecting they will get bigger or the original was a hybrid. I just hope it tastes good.

Others are ripening too so expect more pictures.

 

[frosty]

Updates

 

[PaulG]

Hey, Frosty, very interesting set up and a nice grow.
The plants look great lined up in their pots; nice variety!
Good luck getting your irrigation system figured out.

 

[frosty]

Right now I am happiest with the flood and drain with the felt pots. Used a cement mixing pan from home depot. It was pooling in the middle. I put a rod underneath to stiffen it and it drains very nicely now. Should have put the drain in the middle. The white crud is from before. No special fittings just grommets and tubing. No leaks no muss no fuss.
The drip is working nicely now. One thing I noticed is that when I just put the potting mix straight into the Sure to grow cubes they have done the best. washing the roots has done nothing but slowed down growth. You will see sure to grow are doing the best and have no algae.
It is not a fair comparison but here is the DWC. I started with small plants and the last one went in a week ago.

 

[frosty]

Having some nutrient issues. Will watch the ph more closely and add calmag

Even have some flowers on my pubes

 

[stc3248]

You got some really cool and complicated looking stuff going on! The plants seem to love it!

Can't wait to see what kind of harvest you can pull off with that stuff. I bet its going to be pretty impressive.
Shane

 

[Flamecycle]

Plants looking good frosty. Pretty good weather right now, but I'm sure it will be absurdly hot before long

Do you use a shade screen during the summer?

Also, what soil do you use? Looks like lots of perlite in it.

 

[frosty]

Soil:
for buckets I do about .3 perlite .3 coco .3 peat then I add ocean forest. I then add three feeder packs. It looks like more perlite because I top water occasionally and the stuff floats.
For the flood and drain I did a bunch of perlite, Pro-mix and coco. I don't remember exact proportions.
For the drip I did 50/50 perlite and coco.

I have a very small yard so I can't put everything under shade cloth. I do a combination of things. The hydro only gets morning light. I utilize the space between my house and privacy wall to limit light. I do use shade cloth also:

Even with shade cloth I don't get pods in 105+ weather. I just try to keep them growing

When the hydro plants look more stressed than my buckets I will move them to the buckets.As thin as the Sure to gro cubes are i don't think there will be any issues. For the rockwool I will just pull it apart and hope for the best. The DWC are doing terribly. I am thinking of transferring them now.

I thought I would list some of my errors:
1. In the drip system I did not ensure good drainage. I eventually had to dig everything out and put in a big section of hydroton and scour pads.
2. Using the overflow to put in fresh water to the DWC did not work that well. The problem was that the water did not drain fast enough from the DWC into the reservior and would spill out of the DWC If I ran the pump for more than 3 minutes (which is enough). The next iteration will have .75" tubing.
3. I put the drain in a corner of the ebb and flow. The container sagged and water pooled. I stiffened the container and it fixed the problem. In the future I am going to put the drain in the middle.
4. The DWC is just not getting the growth as the other systems. I don't know why.
5. The plant I used to shade my 2nd pube is not growing tall enough.
6. I lost the names of some of my plants... Again! But fewer this year than before.

 

[frosty]

updates:
We are renovating and my system got unplugged. When I looked at the timer it looked like the plants might have been watered once that day. They did not look good but seem to have recovered mostly. The temperature got past 100 a couple of times this week and everything is okay so this might work after all. I do have to add water every day. I have to add tap which starts with a ppm of 400+. Now for the pictures.

Lots of leaf curling. Looks like something munched on them. If new leaves are any indication cal mag is working

Plants are ready to pot up. Some of them were looking pretty curly and yellow on top. I wish I had taken pictures because aspirn in the pot and cal mag foliar spray fixed them up

Made some sip buckets

Here is an Aji Crystal I pulled out of a bucket and cut more than a third of the rootsand replaced most of the soil. I am going to do it the other one.

enough for now.

 

[frosty]

Just a short observation. Phoenix has been in the 100s. At 8 PM I drained my system and poured the water on some of my plants. The water was WARM. I am a little surprised everything is doing as well as it is.

 

[Flamecycle]

Those sip buckets look cool, I may have to copy you. Have you used them in Phoenix before?

 

[frosty]

I'll try not to be too verbose. I used them last summer and they worked. I swear my manzano did better in the bucket than the ground. The benefits are that even in the worst of summer I only watered once a week. My other plants got watered daily. Less watering=less salt build up. Your nutrients last longer. I really believe that it allowed the ecosystem to flourish.

A couple of notes.
1.The first time I used straight promix bx and it worked. I have since switched to my own mix with lots of coco for wicking.
2. I go to great pains to shade the buckets. I put empty buckets in front of them. I line them up so they shade each other. I put them behind plants and under shade cloth. The best plant i had was when I burried the bucket. It was also almost 100% coco so i don't know what caused what.
3. Stick your finger in the "dirt" to make sure it is wicking. If there is water in the reservoir the dirt should be moist under the surface. If it isn't, top water your plants to kind of compact the dirt. Try it a couple of times
4. Every once in a while flush the soil by top watering it for a while
5. When I decide where I want the water line I put maybe 7 1/8 inch holes around the bucket. I used to worry about algae from sun getting in the holes. Don't worry about it.
6. DO NOT put plastic on top of the buckets. You will see some people do that. It might work in 90 degree weather but it is death in 100+ weather. I do think mulch is probably a good idea. I think coco chunks might be a good mulch. I am open to suggestions.
7. The further from the reservoir the less wicking. Since the chlorine buckets are taller than paint buckets I used less perlite. Cross your fingers.

 

[Flamecycle]

Thank you that is great advice, especially this: "6. DO NOT put plastic on top of the buckets. You will see some people do that. It might work in 90 degree weather but it is death in 100+ weather."... because I was planning to use plastic like all the tutorials

Forgive my cluelessness, I hope you don't mind answering a few more questions about those SIP buckets because I'm a noob to gardening generally and think I have a red thumb if that exists.

1. It seems like people use a soil mix of purely coir or peat moss + perlite for these. If you use a soil mix without any compost/manure/anything with nutrients, does that make this system more like hydro? Do I have to add ALL the nutrients my plants get with ferts? What nutrients do you add and how? (foliar, liquid ferts when you water, dry ferts in the soil mix) I'm a bit leary of just dumping a cup of fertilizer on the top of the bucket like the kids in the youtube tutorial.

2. To expand on 1, would the system not wick well enough with a mix that was say 40% peat, 40% compost, 20% perlite, + blood/bone meal?

 

[frosty]

I use 2-3 Xtreme gardening feeder packs in each bucket. One just below where I put the rootball and the other two at the sides. I do add some ocean forest soil. I also soak the coir in cal mag before I use. Then I will foliar spray with either a sea weed based compost tea or molasses based. I also have dumped coffee grinds on top

Some biological activity would be good but if it is in a bucket I would not want too much or your bucket might get too warm. This applies to any bucket. I think your mix would probably work. Give it a shot if it doesn't work you can put some bigger holes in the reservoir and just water like any pot.