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Growing Chiles in HEL - 2020

So this is it folks, I've recovered my password and bought 10 seedlings today from Jukka "Fatalii" Kilpinen. Didn't start any of my own seeds due to laziness, though I still might start some to sell.


Pubescens
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3 x Rocoto Marlene
2 x Big Brown
1 x Mini Rocoto
1 x Costa Rica

Annuum
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1 x Jalapeno Early

Baccatum
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1 x Lemon Drop

Chinense
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1 x Fatalii


Photos coming tomorrow when I clean the junk out of my sauna and establish the grow room again.
 
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Quarantine BORED, time to up the game a bit more. There are a few upgrades coming to the grow room (sauna).
 
 
A new LED lamp: HLG 260w Quantum board v2 rspec 3500k. You can get stuff a bit cheaper directly from Alibaba, but I like keeping brick and mortar shops in business - föck globalisation.
 
A recirculating drip system, sort of like ebb and flow - intention is to use rockwool cubes at some point.
 
A 10-pot DWC bubbler system, using hydroton as a medium. This should be an interesting project.
 
 
I assembled the lamp yesterday and plugged it in for a test - nearly blinded me, should be equivalent to a 400w HPS with about half the heat.
 
A few test pics:
 
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Didn't get too far with the recirculating hydoponic setup today. My 15 year old RIO 2100 (has been used for drip most years) pump freaking energized my water tank! Good thing I didn't just plunge my hand into the tank. I had touched the water with the tip of my finger and felt electrical current going through the water. Went to fetch my multimeter, put the black lead on a water pipe and touched the water with the red lead. 160 volts. Holy shit, momentarily jumped to 233 volts. The RIO can't be disassembled, so I have no idea what is wrong with it but to the garbage it went. This was a particularly dangerous fault because it didn't even flip the GFCI breaker. The net is full of bad reviews regarding RIO pumps, but this one lasted for quite a long time.
 
Spent all afternoon googling for a replacement pump that can handle salt-water (the pumps at the grow shops are complete crap). Salt-water pump is needed if you are pumping nutes from the reservior. Hopefully I will get my new pump tomorrow. Tunze Silence 1073.050. Made in Germany. DC motor so even if it energizes my reservoir water, it will only be a max of 24 volts. And bonus since it's 10-24v DC, the pump volume can be controlled with a built-in potentiometer. Probably gonna also drop a ground wire into the tank and connect the other end to the water pipe on the wall.
 
Just went to have a look at the plants and two of the taller ones have leaf damage now, not from heat but probably from too much light. Like you can see completely through some of the leaves. Turned the lamp off for the night, gave them some water and will review the situation in the morning. I don't think they will die but they will lose some leaves, for sure. I had actually thought about pruning those two anyway as they are pretty tall and lanky.
 
Need to get that lamp on a timer also.
 
 
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I was going to say, "wow that's a killer light" . And it's trying! How far above the plants do you have it? Mine is similar and they say 24"s.
 
Glad you caught that pump failure. It looks exactly like the one my ceramic tile cutter came with. I'm with you, DC is the way to go safety wise.
 
Devv said:
I was going to say, "wow that's a killer light" . And it's trying! How far above the plants do you have it? Mine is similar and they say 24"s.
 
Glad you caught that pump failure. It looks exactly like the one my ceramic tile cutter came with. I'm with you, DC is the way to go safety wise.
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Yeah it wasn't that far because the light is already up as high as it can go. Need to figure something out. Just went to check on the plants after an overnight of no light and they are doing fine. Those with sunburned leaves will recover, too, just minus a few leaves.
 
I can't even imagine what that lamp would do if I ran it with the 320 watt driver. It is clearly powerful enough even to grow fruits to harvest.
 
So it seems that while the normal LED white light is not enough to give light burn to the leaves, this lamp did it via the 16 x "660nm Deep Red LEDs" that it features.
 
If I'm right, what that means is that plants started under this lamp might not even need to be hardened off for sunlight when moving them outside.
 
podz said:
So it seems that while the normal LED white light is not enough to give light burn to the leaves, this lamp did it via the 16 x "660nm Deep Red LEDs" that it features.
 
If I'm right, what that means is that plants started under this lamp might not even need to be hardened off for sunlight when moving them outside.
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That would be the clouds silver lining!
 
PaulG said:
That would be the clouds silver lining!
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I don't know that much about lights, but I was just now reading that it isn't the red light that burns leaves - it's the blue light. Whatever it is, this lamp is powerful as hell - in a whole different league than my other seedling growing lamps. It's a 3500k full spectrum lamp that is designed to take plants from seed to harvest. If I remember correctly, the sun hardening off is actually due to UV light so this one doesn't have any of that.
 
Anyway, I moved the plants out to the perimeter of the lamp instead of straight under it. They will toughen up after a few days.
 
Damn the Finnish Post got me again. I ordered a new pump from a nearby city and it was supposed to be next day delivery, but now that people are sheltering at home the postal service is flooded with packages that people have ordered from China. And since the Post just went through a round of firing half of their delivery staff before Christmas, their warehouse is not full of shit and they don't have enough people to deliver it.
 
Which means that instead of putting my chilis in hydroton with a drip, now I probably need to put them in coco and hand water them.
 
Meanwhile, the project for the windowsill herb garden in our bedroom is progressing. Still haven't decided whether to do kratky or dwc or rdwc. It's got 10 x 5 litre buckets each with it's own netpot and a flexible air wand.
 
Decisions, decisions. Any advice or thoughts?
 
 
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I've been thinking about doing a widow Kratky for greens and maybe some herbs for quite some time, but just never got around to it.  I have 10 2" net cups, hydroton, and some old Dynagrow I could use.  I'd just need to figure out the containers.  Kratky is appealing to me for greens because for that use it's simply a set-it-and-forget-it method, without any need to add water/solution after the initial setup - as originally intended.  It might require more maintenance for some herbs though as it definitely does for peppers.
 
If you haven't already seen it, here's a link to Kratky's original paper.  it might help you determine how suitable the method is to what you'll be growing and the amount of maintenance you want/don't want to invest in the grow.
  
https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/hawaii/downloads/Three_Non-circulating_Hydroponic_Methods_for_Growing_lettuce.pdf  
 
Hope those rocotos and other 3 peppers are bouncing back.  I can't imagine a minor sunburn is going to slow them down much!
 
CaneDog said:
I've been thinking about doing a widow Kratky for greens and maybe some herbs for quite some time, but just never got around to it.  I have 10 2" net cups, hydroton, and some old Dynagrow I could use.  I'd just need to figure out the containers.  Kratky is appealing to me for greens because for that use it's simply a set-it-and-forget-it method, without any need to add water/solution after the initial setup - as originally intended.  It might require more maintenance for some herbs though as it definitely does for peppers.
 
If you haven't already seen it, here's a link to Kratky's original paper.  it might help you determine how suitable the method is to what you'll be growing and the amount of maintenance you want/don't want to invest in the grow.
  
https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/hawaii/downloads/Three_Non-circulating_Hydroponic_Methods_for_Growing_lettuce.pdf  
 
Hope those rocotos and other 3 peppers are bouncing back.  I can't imagine a minor sunburn is going to slow them down much!
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Other considerations



[SIZE=12pt]Mosquitoes can breed and multiply in nutrient solution which is not circulated or aerated and become both a health menace as well as a nuisance to workers.[/SIZE]
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Yeah, no desire to have 10 pots breeding mosquitoes inside my bedroom! We have a window right next to the pots that stays open so there is a vector route.
 
DWC it is - 10 independent bubblers. That means I should basically build water-level indicator tubes to each of them next. I guess I don't want to hook them all together now for recirculation as I want to be able to remove them independently when I install some new window blinds or something. I've already got a big air pump with a 12-port air distribution manifold where each port has it's own shutoff valve.
 
The peppers aren't bouncing back too fast yet because they have a ridiculously small amount of soil in their small pots and I haven't fed them at all yet. Too damned busy, even while working remotely. Today, I went to buy 10 x 2.5 litre pots for those and will transplant them into coco most likely tomorrow evening or Friday. After they are in coir, larger pots and start getting food then I expect them to skyrocket under that lamp I have now. Oh, and still need to lower the boards the growing tray is resting on because I can't raise the lamp any higher.  
 
podz said:
 
 
Yeah, no desire to have 10 pots breeding mosquitoes inside my bedroom! We have a window right next to the pots that stays open so there is a vector route.
 
DWC it is - 10 independent bubblers. That means I should basically build water-level indicator tubes to each of them next. I guess I don't want to hook them all together now for recirculation as I want to be able to remove them independently when I install some new window blinds or something. I've already got a big air pump with a 12-port air distribution manifold where each port has it's own shutoff valve.
 
The peppers aren't bouncing back too fast yet because they have a ridiculously small amount of soil in their small pots and I haven't fed them at all yet. Too damned busy, even while working remotely. Today, I went to buy 10 x 2.5 litre pots for those and will transplant them into coco most likely tomorrow evening or Friday. After they are in coir, larger pots and start getting food then I expect them to skyrocket under that lamp I have now. Oh, and still need to lower the boards the growing tray is resting on because I can't raise the lamp any higher.  
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I use mosquito dunks for watering in house plants , which helps with the f-gnats. You could add small chunks to a solution.
 
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