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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...
 
Woah, Rhody, the bushing at at the bottom of the half dead
bhut is awesome. That plant is going to be a monster!
You have some great pods coming along, bro!

Have you started playing Mozart string quartets to your plants, yet? :whistle:
 
Thanks Paul,

Are you serious ? If I thought classical music would make em grow faster I would try it. It is killing me because
every three days I get almost another dozen large sweet greens off my 23 plants on the side of the house.
They are so easy to grow, it is not funny. I am going to experiment with small pieces of a super in raw honey
and then strained after it has been heated to 150F for at least 8 hours. Want to see once the pepper bits are
strained and removed how much heat made it into the honey.

Rhody...
 
Funny, my plant Id's have long since blown away in the wind and I have been giving people what I thought were fatallii's (young pods)
when in fact there are the relatively rare white bhut's. I got the seeds from smokinasschillhead and thought by mistake that I had started
the fatallii's instead of the white bhuts, my bad... They don't appear that hot in immature form either compared to red bhuts.

Rhody...
 
Here is a pretty large chocolate ripe bhut, 4 inches long and 1.5 inches max width. There should be enough heat in here for some serious
intestinal issues, I had a piece of white bhut, (placenta only) tonight, the lowest hanging heat stressed pod, and I have cramps now an hour
later. I will try the highest hanging fruit, (placenta only) tomorrow to compare and get back to you if I can tell any difference. Looks like it has
been cooked in oil on a grill doesn't it ?



Rhody...
 
Since I will be planting lots of seeds in the near future for commercial drip hydro growing, I ran into these little buggers, "Seedmaster", comes with four baffles, for four different sizes of seeds (peppers are #3), you can read it from the instructions in the background. You load the seeds behind the V, then click the little wheel on the handle and it creates a vibration and a seed supposedly pops through the V with the little hole in it. I will let you know how it works or doesn't soon.



Rhody...
 
Here is my most successful plant this year, chocolate bhut, I picked a dozen chocolate bhuts. I added neuts and cal mag today, to all my plants and put them together by species, bhut, chocolate bhut, purple bhut, white bhut, trinidad scorpion, brain strain. When all was said and done here is my take. This will give the remaining pods more energy to grow. I have a couple evil looking brain strains, and a stunted trinidad scorpion or two. All of these plants were heat and water stessed, so I won't be suprised if some are particularly hot.





Rhody...
 
Ok, I borrowed a decent digital camera but some of my pics at dusk were too blurry not enough light and I must have moved and the wind was blowing.
I salvaged two pics. Take a look, this is two days after being fed neuts, 24-8-16, and Cal Mag, they are purple bhuts and don't like what I am doing to them. Check out the leaf curl and lack of flowers. Any suggestions ? I will take some more pics in bright sunlight up close so you can see the damage. The plant on the left looks like leaf insect damage, and I have a single purple pod.

Edit: I posted two better pictures, any idea what is causing this ? Check out the rust like spots on the underside of the leaf in the second picture.





Rhody...
 
I have second verification that my heat stressed chocolate bhuts are indeed hot. ridavid sent me a text saying so. He also said he is going to try to work up to eating a whole pod. Good luck, the ones I am picking now are even hotter than the ones I sent him.

Rhody...
 
I am pretty sure I have nailed the cause of the leaf curl, no flower problems for my purple bhut, "herbicides". The reason I have my plants in pots is because I use True Green for my lawn. Guess what is right near my peppers ? Crab grass. The tech from true green uses a sprayer and I am sure some of the spray hit my plants with different effects based on the type. I have never had this problem before either. I will tell them to stay away from the plants, or I will make the tech eat one of my heat stressed chocolate bhuts. That ought to teach him. Ha...

Rhody....

P.S. Thanks for my fellow members in chat for showing me a picture of their problem and cause, which allowed me to connect the dots, so to speak.
 
I was bringing my plants in to protect them from 50+ mph winds and heavy rain tonight and picking ripe pods as I did so.
My two choc bhuts have produced a ton of pods, and low and behold on the lowest hanging branch were these two freakizoids.
To me they look like trinidad scorpions. I plan to send them to The_Biz because he just reviewed a normal looking pod like
the one on the left that I put there for comparison. Biz, if you are following this thread, please post the choc bhut review you
did here, I didn't save the link, thanks... Thanks, I will be sending the freak pods to you soon for comparison.

chocfreaks.jpg


Rhody...
 
Haha, my friend who owns the honey business cut up about twenty super peppers, chopped em fine, and choose not to wear nitrile gloves. He washed his hands, I laughed. I said don't touch your private parts and get passionate with your girlfriend for a few days. It will get ugly very quickly. I predict by the end of next week he will be using gloves, lets wait and see. Lol.

Nice haul Rhody, I too have that Seed Master, I'd be curious to hear you take once you use it.

Joyners,

My brief attempt to use it was a failure, the seeds sleves were either too small or a little too big, I was trying to plant moruga's
First impressions are not good. Maybe with perfectly symetrical seeds it works fine.

Rhody...
 
Alright I have an issue, third seed planting of "purple bhuts" and to my dismay, the seedlings have withered and died. Bad seed stock ?
Lasy summer my purples did survive, but never produced decent flowers or pods. I blamed it on herbicide overspray, but now I am not so sure.
I will order some seeds from a good supplier and see if I get better results. First time that has happened BTW. Anyone else have issues wit purple bhuts ? Is their anything they don't like, can't tolerate versus other bhut varieties ?

Rhody... :?:
 
It has been awhile since I posted any pics, camera went missing, long story, anyway, I want to show you what a puny little heat mat and light, 2 ft, 15 watt would do to seedlings with 15 hour light, heat versus natural light and no heat, take a look. This is after I setup a new 4 ft pair of T5's with grow lights, 45 watts each.

Have a new camera, nice Nikon D5100 with tons of features, will get better I am sure as I get the feel for what the camera can do.
It will be interesting to see the slacker seedlings on the right and how they do under the heat mat and 45 watt T5's. Time will tell.
Have a bit of a problem with mold on the slackers, will run a fan over them gently to keep the mold at bay, the other bunch were fine,
the heat mat must have made the difference. The roots do prefer gentle warmth for sure.







Slackers...



Grown under heat and 15 watt grow light, close proximity...

Rhody...
 
Ok, I need advice, I am at best keeping bugs, larvae, at bay from the underside of my leaves, I spray them with insecticidal soap, bonide, every couple of weeks,
bottom, top of the leaves, then carefully with my fingers, clean the bug eggs off the bottom and tops of the leaves, and even where leaves sprout from the center of
each plant, it takes about one half hour, but I don't know any other strategy to keep off the bugs indoors, I clean the area around the area where I keep them as well.\
At best, I am keeping them at bay.

Any other ideas ? I am fresh out...

Rhody... bah... I hate bugs...
 
Your plants look healthy for the early 2013 start.......although I read you have some pest issues. What kind of bugs?
If they,re soil born then you need to treat that area. Way back when, I had some mealy bug problems, early stages so it wasn't an epedemic.
I wanted to stop it at the larve stage, so I bought some Benificial Nematodes....that did the trick.
As far as white flies or aphids if you want to stay organic then you have to keep checking and spraying.
I know its time consuming even more so if you had to grow rooms with many, many plants to check.
I've been fortunate not to have any serious set backs through the recent years......outside of the usual fungal gnats...and those aren that bad to rid.

You'll get ahead of the battle, nip it while the plants are small. Good luck !
 
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