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

Ghosty's humble Glog March 2012

The first two shots are before transplant. I decided to try Baker's suggestion and bought a bag of pine bark mulch and added 30 - 40% to the bottom of each transplant pot (not blended btw), except one to see if there was any difference. I also took my healthiest trinidad scorpion and put it in the biggest pot to see if I would get more growth out of it. I transplanted trinidad scorpions, chocolate bhut jolokia's and regular bhuts. You will notice some plants are well along, over three months, while some about a month and some just started. I want to see if I can get peppers from all of them and in what time frame. If we have a hot spring, and above average summer as far as heat I imagine they will produce early. I have been taking flower buds off of them regularly. After transplant, I hit them with a weak solution of miracle grow. All of the pots have bark mulch in the bottom, only the cups are potting soil.

The last four shots are after transplant you can see the size width difference of all of the large grey pots ( all trinidad scorpions, BTW ), the others in the smaller pots in the plastic container are bhut, chocolate bhut and trinidad scorpions. The tiny little cups are the same with the exception being that I have a pair of white bhuts (I hope), and I tried pairing some of them together to see how they grow, to see if slower or about the same as a single plant. Only time will tell, that's it for now, they will stay in those pots until harvest. I may up-size pots and soil on some if they appear they are still growing. No bugs, fungus, aphids or insects on any one of them thanks to malathion (which I hate btw) but it works. Lets see what happens with these in a couple of months. I fluffed the soil as much as possible before planting and plan to water from the bottom for best root penetration and to keep insects down. They like the damp top soil I guess. A couple of my scorpions in red cups went into shock, none of the others did, I have them under a light, and have not a clue as why only two did and not the others, they came out of clear cups to the larger red ones, that was the only difference I could see. Very odd to say the least. Lastly, what should I be shooting for as far as PH goes ? I plan to buy a meter soon, what is a decent brand and price ?














Ghosty...
 
Ghost man, just checked your log brother. That is a sweet tent. Are you going from outside in pots to growing them inside the tent? How far do you have the light from the tops of the plants? I wouldn't think you need a light screen. That would defeat the whole purpose.

Are you planning on stunting them at a certain height?

I need some kind of light screen, even at 500 watts and being three feet away they take a beating.
I wanted the light for heat as well, and it supplies that just fine.

Never stunted a plant, don't know how or why I would want to, maybe you could elaborate.

The main reason for the tent/light is to shorten the starting season, and for trying to get some pods in the offseason with a crop started out of synch will main production in July - Nov.

I got a small oscillating fan for the tent today. Until I get the light right I am not going to wound more plants in there, am ordering a light intensity meter as well. That should give me decent data to compare once I get screening light cloth in there. It is all about getting it right, and that means trial and error until you find what works and without sacrificing plants, no easy task. I have wounded soldiers, not dead ones.

Ghosty...
 
You will get it dialed in, my friend, I have no doubt.
Then you will be thinking "I'm glad I did this!"
 
Paul,

Thanks for your comments, like you said, I will figure this out, and hopefully not mess up my plants any more than I have already in the process.

I was going to order 40% shade cloth and grommets online but the over $20 shipping charge put me off, does Home Depot or any local store like Agway carry the stuff ?

Ghosty...
 
Got input from Dale Bakers and orderd some 40% light filtering cloth and grommets should be here in about a week.
Also bought some chroma key paper, (think blue screen) for pictures of peppers and then use in promotional layout
for my site. Much easier to deal with in graphics packages and for use when blending the images into backgrounds.

With the lightmeter to monitor and shade cloth in place I should be able to get good temps and light in a range that
won't damage the supers. I will arrange the little oscillating fan in there to toughen up the plants a bit as well.
Should I put in music that some claim to help growth as well ? lol... just kidding...

Ghosty...
 
Music actually does help... Turns on growth genes in the plants. It is only activated when certain random frequencies are played and best with stringed instruments, so classical or some rock. There have been a few studies about it. :)
 
Light meter came today, thought I would share a bhut that I tried mightily to kill, but it wouldn't DIE so
I had to take a picture and share it, two branches are dead but two survived. It was infested with aphids
and got treated but it looked pretty bad, so I put it out a month ago, and it has survived cold temps, near
freezing, lack of water, I felt bad,so I gave it some water, never expecting it to make it. I will trim the dead
branches Maybe it will produce this year, maybe not. It deserves a shot.



Here is how my plants look after pruning the burnt leaves from them, 3/5 is right I
hope, the plants look better this week, once they produce this summer they are going
back in the grow tent, and possibly produce more pods in the late fall or early winter.
Here are some pictures of plants on the mend. They will get some love this weekend.

choc bhut


bhut, choc bhut, trinidad scorpion


more trinidad scorpion, bhut, choc bhut...


Ghosty... :P
 
My seeds planted a week ago are starting to come up:

black naga, yellow 7 pot, trinidad cherry, sweet trinidad, brain strain.

Maybe these can be tent HPS light producers in the late fall, only time will tell.

Ghosty...
 
I noticed four of my plants having been outside for about two weeks leaves were starting to turn yellow.
One of the four appeared to have some furry fungus on the underside of the leaves, so I hit it with malathion.
The common denominator in all four was the soil, I am giving a thumbs down on the "Manna Mix". It was ok inside
for near mature plants, but did little if nothing for growth of seedlings, it appeared to put the little plants into suspension, they hardly grew at all, so I changed the soil to regular potting soil for all of them.

Lesson learned the hard way: DO NOT USE MANNA MIX !!!

Ghosty...
 
Put in twenty four sweet peppers yesterday, it rained today so it had a chance to work the lime pellets into the soil.
Here is what is looks like... I will probably stake them when they get bigger, has anyone ever injected raw honey into a sweet or
hot pepper ? If so, please report on the taste, that experiment is on my agenda.




Ghosty...
 
God, this is maddening, I put the green sweets in over the weekend and they are growing already, whereas the supers act like they are stuck in some kind of a time warp in suspended animation. So much attention and effort for so little growth. My 40% shade cloth and grommets will arrive in a few days. I feel like putting a few near mature plants in there and trying to speed things up, even if only for a wee bit, it will be a good test to see if the burn stops with the shade in place. Opinions ?

Ghosty... :shocked:
 
Getting pods and flowers now, first my 23 sweet peppers... see it you can tell which are bhuts and which are scorpions...












Ghosty...
 
looks good.

How do you like those air pots? I am debating between those or cloth pots.
I am sort of neutral in my opinion of them, they don't seem to produce better or more vigorous peppers, if it were me and money was an object, I would go with the cloth ones instead. They try to imitate hydro by allowing the roots to pop out (which they don't do), the holes are too damn small, lol.

Ghosty...
 
Here are two pictures of my rapidly growing sweet peppers, they grow so fast they kill my spirit to grow supers.
Frustrating to see such hardy growth, they can take more abuse than supers too, IMHO.





Ghosty...
 
Tried a small trinidad scorpion, (ripe) on my biggest plant. The sucker was very hot and left me with some gas pain in the morning. There are some on the forum who recommend using mylanta before eating there things, my thought is they would be better served as being made into jelly, sauces, etc... This is the first super hot that had an effect that followed me the next day, wasn't the same with bhuts, must be something unique about them and my system. Anyone have similar symptoms ?

Ghosty... :sick: :shocked:
 
Argg, I hit the delete key by mistake and deleted the post just before posting, someone shoot me please.

Here are a few pics of my trinidad scorpions, grown along side bhuts, chocolate bhuts.

Do you notice anything funny about the pod shape, texture, the pics are from two scorpion plants,

other than the fact that they are small ? Has anyone else grown pods like this, are they small from lack

of sun, heat, neuts ?

The last picture is of my sweets, I had to stake and tie em. They are going to produce some nice sweet peppers.

scorpion1.jpg


scorpion2s.jpg


scorpion3.jpg


scorpion4w.jpg


scorpion5.jpg


scorpion6i.jpg


sweetsq.jpg


Ghosty...
 
I have tons of sweet green peppers and more on the way, plus some plants are flowering again. Now onto the freak show, the first two pics are from the
same plant and the second two are from another. I believe the second two are chocolate scorpion, or red scorpion. I was told that the seed you planted
had to have the cross in it for it to produce the strange looking pods in it. I do have four or five types in close proximity to one another outside though.
Has anyone ever seen or grown anything like my first two pics ?









Rhody...
 
I had an interesting exchange with an old school farmer while buying sweet corn on the way home from work.
He asked if I liked peppers and had some greens to sell, I told him I had some kinds he probably never had seen
before, and showed him some I was planning to use. He said those are hot, I said yep, and described the types
and heat ranges I had. He then said well, if I had em, I would mix a bunch of em together with water and use it
to keep pests and predators away from his vegatables. I gave him an immature fatallii and he bit about 1/3rd of
it and chewed. In about a minute his eyes lit up, "that is hot". I told him to save the seeds, when to start them,
and when transplanting for the last time to put it in a ten gallon bucket. I told him he would have enough pods
to make the insect/predator repellent, and that he use gloves when handling them and not to touch his eyes.
He seemed pleased when I left, but surprised at the heat.

That is my story and I am sticking to it.

Rhody...
 
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