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

grantmichaels [2013, 2015, 2016]

I'm thinking I might do a glog this time around ...

I'm really good about photodoc'ing, but a little lax w/ posting ...

New arrivals from CCN soaking up the negative ions and perking up after their trip down the Eastern Coast ...

48F29637-B0AE-4F46-AF2B-D8F12045E8F2-3285-00000A1E253CBF22_zpsb946e96f.jpg
 
Click to expand...
took a couple of hours from work to spend in the topsy garden earlier ...



it's not in me to yank plants - even if i don't love their peppers - so i decided to just over-plant the planters ...

i decided to pull all the crisped lids off the planters, they are a pain in the ass and frankly i think i'll get more benefit from them being removed than the other way around ... i know it'll be easier to deliver my AACT tea etc ... maybe i'll mulch ...

in the planters where the plants died quickly last year, the soil was still fresh at less than < 1/4" below the surface ...



i tilled everything and then topped the existing soil w/ pro-mix bx w/ myco ... this let me keep my tepins and chiltepins and other tiny peppers growing out of the side ports, and i planted the new seedlings up top - where they can grow straight up, like normal ... i'm banking on the plants filling in with leaves and making somewhat of a natural canopy for the top ...

we'll see ...





so, things are happenin' hoppin' pogo pod hoppers ...



even the cloud 9 (eggplant) has decided to get started ...



exciting to plant out again ...
 
So ... mother nature decided to throw a curve ball as per the usual this year ... decided to not rain all day like forecasting and, in fact, not at all ...

Transplants having a harsher day than planned, and I got molested by mosquitoes soaking the soil since the rains never came ...



Fun, fun ...
 
Everything came through just fine ...



I'll work harder through the year to come up w/ a solution involving some shade screened tupperware if I'm still in a position of requiring seedlings going forward, but this was fine ...

I've got a severly stunted douglah from last year that became an inadvertent bonsai living w/ some eggplants ... on the plus, this year it's setting a ton of pods for being no more than a 9-10" diameter canopy ...



I've added a Culligan RV800 in-line filter to cut the chlorine from my tap water, which should make the plants happier this year ... I bought it last year and never bothered, but this year I'm trying to do more things right to offset the inevitable setbacks!

The mustard habaneros are popping like crazy - those plants love our region ...



But what makes me happiest is the initial yellow 7pot ... I haven't had anything (fresh) that's truly hot in a couple of months ...



First crack at some strawberries because why not ...



The little peppers are poppin' off too this week ... it won't be long ...



I'm not sure how I feel about the seedlings that just arrived setting some early pods before they have much of a root system, but I'm just letting them go because I could use the pods and I don't need to really maximize my harvest, but rather, want to maximize the ease of keeping things happy and healthy this year - which means leaving nature alone a little more, I think ...



I've got something else to share, but I'll have to wait until I can post more pics =) ...
 
So ... leveling up a little bit over here and finally getting started w/ growing some of seed I've been hoarding ...

Here's a previous impulse buy getting a new lease on life, as a sprouter for garden plants instead of for microgreens ...



The venturi system makes an ideal environment ...



and Sure To Grow matting proved out over coir for us during our sprouting/microgreens experiments, you can see I've cut three rectangles per tray if you look closely ...



set the time and let her rip ...



Add a half dropper of 35% H2O2 to the reservoir to keep things more awesomer ...



This morning ...



Trailblazing, we'll see how it goes ...

PS - Considering whether I want to put a small bit of sure to grow over the seed, but it wasn't necessary w/ the sprouting seeds so I'm giving it a shot here w/ a test run of seeds ...

GoGoGadget.
 
Lots of these guys this year!





Lots of these guys too, unfortunately ...



There's a number of factors why I'm giving these guys an aggressive topping ...





I think my pinching was always fim'ing, I guess ... that's how I'm training the habanero types ...



I think that completes this area ...





Still considering some different options for the new space I'm going to start this summer in my backyard ...

Might rock a couple of these along my fence ...

Might even considering spending the whole summer just creating their bed once I finish Teaming With Microbes (just picked up an Evirocycle) for use next year ... we'll see ... for now I'm just glad I've got the Topsy garden relatively complete (still have to pop on some mater cages and other details, but) ...
 
WG&rsquo;s late to the party but I always say better late than never, caught up this morning &hellip; great stuff! Some of my random thoughts as usual, hehe &hellip;
  • Dat topsy garden looks bitching!!!
  • Where did you acquire all those topsy&rsquo;s and how expensive are they?
  • Mustard habaneros look delicious, great pics ^_^
  • So do the yellow 7 pot&rsquo;s pods, beautiful!
  • Dat plexi starter box looks very cool & scientific &hellip; dat must beat my egg starters for sure, hehehe
  • Wow black lady bugs, awesome, I only see reds here on da east coast &hellip;
  • Very nice glog, thanks for sharing ^_^
I&rsquo;d wish you luck but it seems to me that you have everything already dialed in for a killa harvest &hellip;
 
WalkGood said:
WG&rsquo;s late to the party but I always say better late than never, caught up this morning &hellip; great stuff! Some of my random thoughts as usual, hehe &hellip;
  • Dat topsy garden looks bitching!!!
  • Where did you acquire all those topsy&rsquo;s and how expensive are they?
  • Mustard habaneros look delicious, great pics ^_^
  • So do the yellow 7 pot&rsquo;s pods, beautiful!
  • Dat plexi starter box looks very cool & scientific &hellip; dat must beat my egg starters for sure, hehehe
  • Wow black lady bugs, awesome, I only see reds here on da east coast &hellip;
  • Very nice glog, thanks for sharing ^_^
I&rsquo;d wish you luck but it seems to me that you have everything already dialed in for a killa harvest &hellip;
Click to expand...

The "Topsy Tomato Tree" planters I've been purchasing for ~$17-20/ea from Amazon, but it was mentioned here a few days ago that they might be available from Big Lots for as little as $6 ... the metal stands are STURDY and would allow a 5 gal paint bucket to be suspended in place of the bags (easily) ... That was always my plan, but I thought I'd be growing out new starts each year when I formulated it. Clearly we had a distinct lack of winter this year over here, so nothing died and all the plants I cut way back are now loaded with flowers/pods ...

As for the EasyGreen Sprouter, I bought that used on eBay for like $150 when D and I were considering growing microgreens as a side business. That never happened, and it just sat in a closet, but it does work nicely for sprouting seed so we'll see! I never really had a problem sprouting seeds between moist paper towels, but since I have it - why not?! ...

I can't recommend the mustard hab's enough ... they grew substantially more vigorous than most all of the other varieties and were naturally resistant of the BLS I battled ... best performer by a mile, just kept producing and producing ... set flowers in the full-on summer even, when the others would not ... oh, and they are pretty hot for a habanero, actually ... AjiJoe's friend bred them, they rock ...

Anyways, the Topsy garden was always about trying a zillion different kinds to see what we liked to eat, and what we liked to grow - there's lots of one-off plants ... Now I'm starting to plot my 2nd space (in the backyard) ... going to do something different there, where the focus with be primarily on the soil and trying to get a decent yield from a larger number of plants from my favorites collection =)

Getting my AACT together!

Cheers!
 
Wow Grant, great start to a great grow. When you first posted the pics of the plants you got from CCN I was wondering what those things in the background were. Really great way to set up one of our typically small Florida back yards.

Neverwinters, love it and you are going to have to Christmas Tree up one of those this year.

Cheers,
 
Small update on the seeds in the sprouter ...



I assume this is what ya'll refer to as 'hooks' ...

I started them Friday late afternoon, so I guess that's ~125 hrs from initial wetting to first hooks - how does that compare to the other methods people use in these parts? (wet paper towels, rockwool, jiffy, soil etc)
 
grantmichaels said:
&hellip; I assume this is what ya'll refer to as 'hooks' ...
Click to expand...
I think that yours qualifies as a &ldquo;hook&rdquo; or &ldquo;hooking.&rdquo; Since I spout mine in eggs with soil, I call it a hook after the seedling breaks ground and looks like it&rsquo;s hooking like the picture below:
23l72u.jpg


grantmichaels said:
I started them Friday late afternoon, so I guess that's ~125 hrs from initial wetting to first hooks - how does that compare to the other methods people use in these parts? (wet paper towels, rockwool, jiffy, soil etc)
Click to expand...
Whoa that&rsquo;s fast \o/ Mine take anywhere from 3 days to a week but I&rsquo;ve had some stubborn ones that pop up weeks later.
 
two weeks, today ...





the plants I pruned last week are filling in ...











won't be long for some mustard habanero harvesting ...



found this bastard ...



was surprised to see what washed out of the soil ...



all planted out and spread apart ... chillin' ...
 
I'll have to update this space w/ some status pics this weekend for sure ...
 
Separately, after noticing a definite stall in new growth, I decided to re-check the pH of tap water since I popped the Culligan filter on the spigot ... 8.0 w/ a tinge of blue turquoise heading towards 8.5, so probably around 8.1 or so ...
 
Looks like I'll have to treat water this year ... ugh ... last year it was 7.2-7.4 throughout the season ...
 
Maybe this will force my hand and I'll have to finally consider learning the in's and out's of building irrigation ...
 
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