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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.
 
Click to expand...
Cheers!

Sadly my trip to the home centre was wasted. Intermediate japanese can only get you so far, even if you do know how to say fermented Kelp fertiliser.. Hopefully my mother in law can help find the right product.

They need some food. The woman helping me totally misunderstood and kept offering me ferts for flowers.. I don't wanna burn my plants with the wrong stuff!
 
It could be that your problem is that the Japanese eat Kelp, and probably don't understand why you'd want to waste food by rotting it and pouring it on the ground. It reminds me of how indentured servants in the northeast would stipulate in their contracts that they didn't want to have to eat Lobster more than twice a week. http://www.history.com/news/a-taste-of-lobster-history Bear in mind that at the time it was also ground for fertilizer...
 
That was basically why the old woman was confused, why are you ordering food in the home centre? ;)
I still don't like eating Kelp, the texture is revolting.

My mother in law says that seaweed nutes aren't available in Japan.. But if I wanna grow the roots stronger, I should ask for 'kari'.
What NPK balance is good for roots?
 
Eep. Got some major leaf curl on this burgundy.

Quite possibly stress, given recent events.
How can I fix it?

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I'm thinking I might add some diluted magnesium lime in the next watering..
Any ideas on amount per gallon?
 
It was all going so well, and then...

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I think the above was my own fault. I put a stronger fan on them. They were next to the window, with the window open, and we got super strong winds close to typhoon grade, so they got thrashed.

And then there's this (a few others are beginning to follow suit)

This was sadly a jewel in the crown. A 7 pot burgundy that sprouted with 3 cotyledons and grew like crazy.

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I've got magnesium lime soaking in water and hoping that it's drink tomorrow will sort it out. :(

I might be over worrying, but It's happening all at once. Kinda depressing.
 
I think you might be right about the fan G... Do the leaves rub against the sides of the grow box? The first couple of pics look like the leaf tips were beat up that way.

Bummer dude... I have my own cross to bear caused by newbie mistakes, so don't feel alone. Hopefully the learning curve is a steep one... ;)
 
Yep, they got a beating. Alot of them also wilted to the point they were resting on soil after transfer to bigger cups.

First few days with a stronger fan, they got knocked about. Now stems are stronger as a result, but I'm stopping the fan now.

I expect them to bounce back, I'm more worried about the leaf curl on other plants. Hoping I can sort it.

As first year, I'm happy I can have one healthy plant, I'd rather have more. So long as I actually learn something!
 
As I couldn't find any seaweed nutes, I thought I'd make my own.

Luckily I have dried stuff in the cupboard (yeah, weirdos eat it here!)

Boiling up some Kelp
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Gonna chuck some of this in too (I'd rather my plants had it than my wife keep feeding it to me)
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I knew that ideally, I would ferment it. But no freaking way do I want fermenting seaweed in my apartment!
 
That'll be an interesting experiment... Please post pics showing the results. Unfortunately, I think cooking the seaweed will destroy the auxins. On the other hand, I'm not sure if drying the seaweed does it too. Maybe you could get together with WalkGood http://thehotpepper.com/user/7557-walkgood/ and compare notes. He's harvesting his own seaweed and making tea with it.
 
I read in a few places that boiling it works well, if you don't have time to ferment it.

I gave a diluted foliar feed (50ml to 450ml water) and sprayed 2 plants.
I'm not a fan of foliar feed, but my plants are in a bad way right now and I need to try something. The soil is still too moist to be watering.
 
Gave the plants a feed today, held off on watering for a while - they definitely need water today.

Used 5ml per US gallon of a 5–5–5 basic fert that worked really well for my habanero last year.
Also put in a half a teaspoon of calcium powder to the water and bottom watered all the plants bar one that didn't need watering.

Gonna give them an Epsom salts spray (1tbsp per US gallon) once the sun goes down.
Hope to see some results soon.
 
Good on ya G! That should get things moving. The OW Habanero is greening up nicely and the plants in the background look like they're at least 12cm tall. What are your overnight temperatures like?
 
Cheers! Yeah the ow is a beaut!

It started warming up and the cherry blossoms popped out.. Then it was cold all last week (and that kinda mist/rain where you get wet but it's not truly raining). It's managed to stay above 50 indoors at night, but not by much. Probably slowed them a tad.

Gorgeous sunny morning today! They're on the bench by the windows, windows open with the fly screen shut so they get a bit of fresh air around them and start drawing up the food I gave them (they probably haven't noticed the food yet cause it was cold and grey yesterday).

About 12cm sounds right. The ghost scorpions are biggest.
I hope to see them develop some more leaves and get more bushy.. I probably left this first feed too long in hindsight, but was scared of burning them.
 
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