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GeorgeJ's 2013 Tokyo-a-grow-grow - finishing off this season

Hey all.

First time growing from seed.
Thought I would start off with the grow box I built.

My apartment is so cold that I've built this box to sit in the closet and using a heat mat To keep things warm throughout. Not enough space or money to do everything separate.

So I built this box from Styrofoam and aluminium insulation sheeting. Managed to get everything from the 100 yen shop (japans version of the dollar store).

Here's it from the outside, in the closet (no gay jokes please) :
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On the inside there's a 50w fluorescent strip light I got for free with my axolotl tank. It's suspended from bamboo canes on wires, so I can adjust the height of the light as well as hopefully flexing in an earthquake.
To the left hand side, a small fan (also from an aquarium) which is pretty gentle to help toughen up the seedlings and prevent damping off.

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It was alot brighter before putting the heat mat in, so I may put some thin aluminum foil over it. Thoughts?

I'm gonna prep the seeds and pots, so that's it for now.
 
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Hey Rick!

Cheers for stopping by.
yeah, i've had a lot on the go right now and not a huge amount to report.. 
drip irrigation system dialed in nicely and plants are looking lush. 
It's started cooling down and we are due a typhoon this weekend! which means summer is gone!
have noticed an abundance of buds forming seeing as the night time temps have been mid to low 20s rather than high 20s. hope they can put some pods out soon.

The Jalapeno plants i bought as an experiment just to see if i could turn them from sickly looking yellow things, was a complete success.
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just bought myself an HD camcorder and planned to do a video blog on saturday morning and possibly a pod review. 

That puree looks gorgeous! not sure how easy getting blue agave syrup will be over here.. might have to think up a substitute!

oh, and finally.. heres what i pulled last night.

left: red habs. right Butch T x ?
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actually not browsed thp much recenty, so i have a fair few pages of yours to go look at and catch up on for plant porn ;)
 
Here we are

Forgot to get the Jalapenos on film, but never mind!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BPX9IAz-x4&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
 
Nice vid G! Glad to see you're getting flowers on the 7 Pot Brown, and hope the rest kick in soon. Things are winding down here... the days are getting noticeably shorter and the nights cooler, though still up around 12 degrees C. I'm picking off blossoms at this point to encourage the plants to ripen the ones already set, rather than setting more. The two potted Chocolate Habs are dropping leaves, but the stems are still green and the pods on the mostly bare branches are still ripening.
 
How are the in-ground plants doing at your MILs allotment?
 
wow! short season for you! i probably have another 2 months before the first frost..

i haven't been over there to see the ones in the ground yet actually! need to do something about that. i forget about those ones often
 
So it's started for you... We're probably not far behind then. There's a shot of concentrated cold due here the end of this week, and cold air over warm ocean water equals tropical storms...
 
weather has been crazy here. theres even been tornados in the rural areas, which is almost unheard of!

this typhoon needs to happen, its been a very brutal summer. i just want some of the many flowers on my plants have a chance to turn into pods.

the 7 pot browns have beautiful flowers on them!
 
typhoon didnt strike in full. but we got rains so heavy that it woke me up. and then i was woken up again by my emergency alarm saying to be careful because there had been landslides in Kawasaki!!

Might not have had the strong winds, but im sure it was good for the plants to be out of that gorilla rain last night!
 
Typhoon is on it's way, so the plants are indoors again. here's a quick video glog

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjro9jr6ucU&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
 
Typhoon passed and it's safe to outside again..
 
So i went out to the supermarket just to buy laundry detergent and out of the corner of my eye i see something that looks familiar. 
Couldn't believe my eyes, because finding hot peppers in Japan is really difficult. Also i live in Kawasaki, which is basically gods waiting room full of old folks.
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Plants are only about 6 inches tall and in 1 litre pots. about a dozen pods on each plant!
I had a nibble of one, and yeh. they are bhuts!
 
Wow, a couple of nice vids and pics of Red Bhuts... your biological empire is definitely growing G! If the Mexican chile you got is a Japones, it's the same as the Thai variety called Santaka. It looks a little on the small side, but that might just be because it was grown in a small pot. If you repot into a bigger size and fertilize it, it might reach its full size potential. Glad to hear you dodged a couple of bullets in the last typhoons to pass by you, and hope the cooler weather gives you lots of pods! Cheers!
 
cheers.

so far i have about 8 Jalapeno pods growing. the chinense are being a little more stubborn.. we've still had some warm days. but just below 30 and little humidity then nice cool nights. hoping my chinense varieties set pods soon!
 
That's what I've been waiting to see G! That pic from your MILs allotment looks outstanding! I notice it's many times the size of the ones you still have around the house in pots. My theory is that since the roots had room to expand, it put out enough leaves to support pod production bigtime. I grew 4 varieties of chiles in 5 gallon airpots this year and planted the rest in the soil. The plants in the pots started blossoming earlier, but kept dropping the flowers until the plant got to a certain size. The plants in-ground maybe didn't begin to flower as quickly, but they got to a much bigger size more quickly, and when they did begin to flower, started setting pods right away. The pods were larger and the plants more productive too. I'll probably still grow plants I intend to overwinter in pots because it's just logistically easier, but for better production, I think in-ground is the way to go. Cheers!
 
Yep. First season has taught me a lot!
In ground is tough to find in Tokyo though.

If I can't find the space, next year will be :
Bigger pots,
Get them outside earlier,
Protect the soil temp from getting as high as it has.

I feel a bit guilty, mil says that the plants are so big she's struggling to plant winter veg and that they are the biggest plants in the whole shared allotment!

See if you can spy a jays ghost scorpion in the picture
 
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