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Growing Chiles in HEL - 2019

Today I took 27 pellets off the heat mats and transplanted them into their first small pots. Then I moved them into my temporary grow room (sauna) under the lights where they will spend the next 60 days or so until it's warm enough to move outside for the summer.
 
I've still got another 75 pellets on the heat mats and will move them to the lamps as they pop.
 
On the tray in the photo, there are two separate LED lamp rigs.
 
The lamp specs: 
 
Strip Length: 61 cm
Watts: 15 watts per strip (45 watts per rig)
Kelvin: 6400K
Lumens: 1500 per strip
PPFD (at 100mm distance): 399 µmol/s/m2 per strip
 
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podz said:
 
I really don't know. This is just learning and experimentation at this point. Need to study a bit more now.
 
Might be that I will pick up some alfalfa pellets from the pet supply store and also put them into the FSST made with alfalfa seeds. That should cover the bases, I would assume.
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Way to go podz, now you are going to cause me to spend massive amounts of time researching this also. [emoji15] Until my eyes are all bugged out! lol
 
PaulG said:
That's what you guys get for being so serious
about your chili pepper growing  :rofl:
 
Good luck carrying on with your move, Skull.
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I dont know if my concoction works, but, I have about 40+ good sized Rocoto Montufar pods on my plant that germinated in January. Also every plant in the greenhouse now has good pods going.
 
I had tons of blooms and even pods on several plants but IMO I wanted the plants to get much bigger before starting production so I asked my wife to remove all pods, blooms and bloom buds. So that was our pepper related work yesterday.
 
podz said:
I had tons of blooms and even pods on several plants but IMO I wanted the plants to get much bigger before starting production so I asked my wife to remove all pods, blooms and bloom buds. So that was our pepper related work yesterday.
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It will be interesting to see if your method works out for you. I personally have never topped or trimmed a plant or have NEVER removed flowers or pods, I leave that decision up to nature/the plant. What I have seen in my meager 45 yrs of gardening is that usually the plant knows best. Many of my pepper plants start forming pods when they are less than a foot tall but by the time those pods are full size and ready to ripen the plant is 3 to 4 ft tall. Anyway, that is my opinion and I am always aware that there are many different ways to acomplish a goal, I certainly am not the one who knows everything!
 
skullbiker said:
It will be interesting to see if your method works out for you. I personally have never topped or trimmed a plant or have NEVER removed flowers or pods, I leave that decision up to nature/the plant. What I have seen in my meager 45 yrs of gardening is that usually the plant knows best. Many of my pepper plants start forming pods when they are less than a foot tall but by the time those pods are full size and ready to ripen the plant is 3 to 4 ft tall. Anyway, that is my opinion and I am always aware that there are many different ways to acomplish a goal, I certainly am not the one who knows everything!
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I will post photos when I get home and then again a few weeks from now :-)
 
Main reason they started flowering so heavily was because of the nutrient mix I was feeding them which was basically my mistake. I have cut back on the FloraMato now and increased the FloraMicro. With hydroponics, one should be able to precisely prevent or trigger flowering according to the nutrient mix.
 
I don't usually top them, either. Trimming is another story, though - I found that chinenses, due to the extremely short internodal distances, need some trimming up and down the main stems or they grow so dense that it actually blocks airflow and you can't see if there are pests etc.
 
Devv said:
Saweet! I love power tools ;)
 
One of my like 50 hobby's is building furniture; my chosen wood is Mesquite...
 
Very interested in your Alfalfa experiments!
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Yeah, me too! I probably own enough power tools to start my own general contracting business. I think my wife finally gave up complaining when I bought the electric stapler :-)
 
My current (soon to be previous) sliding mitre saw is a Metabo 10" single-bevel. Both I and my friends have used it to build a lot of stuff.
 
The new saw is a double-bevel which ought to make my wife happy as she likes to make picture frames. Also, even though it's a 10" it has the cutting capacity of a 12" which means I can cut 4x4s with a single pass.
 
For the alfalfa project, I got a new 30 litre (8 gallon) bucket with a soft rubber lid yesterday. The lid is the key because it can actually seal while still being flexible. I will get to this real soon now (tm).
 
The deck has first priority now, though.
 
Did quite a bit of potting up today - 2 annuums (12 litre pots), 3 chinenses (29 litre pots), 1 baccatum (12 litre pot) and 1 pube (10 litre pot). Also potted up 4 eggplants, chainsawed down one maple tree and chopped down another maple tree with an axe.
 
We've been having sunny, warm days and warm nights as well. And WINDSTORMS. 20mph sustained winds with gusts up to 25mph and even stronger predicted for tomorrow. This is supposed to go on around the clock UNTIL FRIDAY!
 
Now that I am starting the deck building, I had to remove everything from that area and that is the only wind-protected area in the yard so the plants are taking a beating now. I went through them all and did some extra clipping to the stakes to reduce the amount of branches flying around in the wind.
 
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PaulG said:
Glad to see you are getting better weather - good for deck building!
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Certainly can't complain about the wind when you need to be carrying a lot of wood on hot, sunny days.
 
Our carrying route from the driveway to the backyard is about 150 feet and the beginning of the route is downhill on a narrow path.
 
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21 pieces of 2x4 @ 600cm (19.6ft) - wife and I were able to carry 2 of these at a time.
 
135 pieces of 1x6 @ 400cm (13.1ft) - wife and I were able to carry 3 of these at a time. Still have 33 of these on top of the hill, 11 trips to go during this evening. Ran out of time yesterday because I became extremely hungry and had to start grilling a big mess of cheeseburgers.
 
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And our current horrible patio that is not flat anymore because of roots from a maple tree that I cut down last week. We built the wall last summer and backfilled it with hydroton and covered with gravel. I will have to pound post anchors deep into the ground behind the wall to support the outer edge of the deck.
 
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