I have no idea what I'm doing

This is my first time going from seed. I'm pretty sure I haven't screwed anything up yet. I'll get around to that later.

For now, we've got:

Sown circa Feb 16:

• Aji Lemon drop: 0/20 Germinated (Suspected bad seed, gave up. Not even a radicle had popped)
• Orange Hab: 4/4 Germinated (these are the guys in coco coir in beer can bottoms)

Sown circa Feb 27:

• Mariwiri: 7/8 Germinated
• Yellow Fatalii: 4/4 Germinated
• NuMex Centennial: 2/2 Germinated
• Zavory: 3/3 Germinated

Sown circa March 6:

• Bulgarian Carrot: 3/6 Germinated
• Jamaican Red: 0/10 Germinated

All but the jamaican red, orange hab, and lemon drop seeds came from Ajijoe. He's the man, and his seeds have awesome germination rates.

I have them all under two 42-watt 6500k cfl's with a heat mat set to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

I had been bottom watering with distilled water, but the air is pretty dry right now, and I need to water every day. Watering with distilled every day was costing some serious money, so I recently switched to filtered (but still pretty hard) water. I'll probably purge from the top with distilled water every couple of weeks or so until I get home and I can use rainwater.

All seedlings are in promix, except for the habs, which are lagging far behind in coco coir (no perlite, it's expensive around here).
They are planted 2-3/cup, and they will be transplanted to individual 3 oz cups when they get their third true leaves.
During this transplant, I'll probably thin out the weaker guys.
After a month or two, I plan to get them under a 150 watt HPS until plantout.

The roots on these guys are intense. I have seedlings with their first true leaves measuring only 1 cm, and they have tap roots 3 inches long!

If anyone has any constructive criticism, I'd love to hear it. I've learned a lot from lurking around here and listening to the community, and I hope to learn more yet.

 

[WalkGood]

Nice list & great start ... if you do run into issues these girls and guys here are loads of help, great success in your 2013 grow!

 

[Spicegeist]

Looking good...

 

[geeme]

Get them off of the heat mat, just keep the room at a reasonable, comfortable temp. Keeping the heat mat on is part of what's making the roots so long, and will also ultimately make the plant "leggy", which means less growth nodes. Since pods are put out at growth nodes, you want more, not less. The heat is probably also helping to evaporate the water, so reducing that will help reduce your watering needs. Continuing to water daily will ultimately result in problems. Get a fan on them if you don't already have one - not blasting them, but an oscillating fan on low is typically good. Otherwise, give some distance between the plants and the fan, or point the fan in a different direction so the breeze "reflects" off another surface, such as a wall. The fan serves two purposes - one is to simulate the wind for when you take them outside, which helps reduce hardening off time just a tad, and the other is to help prevent damping off. Damping off is a fungus that can grow on the surface of the soil. Hardening off is the process of gradually introducing your plants to the outdoor elements. Do searches on this site for both terms to get more info.

 

[PIC 1]

Seedlings look fine....

 

[drdextrose]

Geeme,

I've got a small fan running on them all day long, and I let the soil dry out pretty well (no wilting, though) before I water each time.

Forgive my ignorance, but I thought continuous cycles of drying and watering were ideal to prevent damping off. Why should I water less frequently?

The mat is on because I can't really mess with the room temp. 80 degrees shouldn't be high enough to cause etiolation, should it?

I can hook the mat up to the lamp's timer so that things get cooler at night, if that would be beneficial.

 

[birdfather]

you might want to think about transplanting them to individual cups before they get that big. the root system will be much larger and you can easily damage it. if it were me, i'd probably put them in their own cups right now. maybe let the true leaves get a little bigger, but i'd probably do it now. that's just me, some might disagree.

 

[kentishman]

If you still want to grow the Aji Lemon Drop, I can send you some.They grew well for me last year, and I've got seedlings going from the seeds I saved.

Tom

 

[Prehensile]

+1 on #4

 

[drdextrose]

Tom, thank you very much for the offer! Unfortunately, I'm going to have to pass. My space is limited and my season is short, and by the time they've arrived and germinated, I'll probably have missed my chance to get fruit without overwintering.

 

[drdextrose]

My cfl's were beginning to brown and char near where the tube meets the ballast, so it's HPS time.
No more heat mat. Looking cozy in their new homes.

 

[scratchzilla]

Hey, would you look at that! Nice start you have so far! Keep it up, and you'll be picking peppers in no time.

 

[patrick]

You can use regular tap water. Just fill your containers and let them set, open to the air, for 24 hours prior to using it. That will allow the chlorine and fluoride time to evaporate.

 

[geeme]

Geeme,
I've got a small fan running on them all day long, and I let the soil dry out pretty well (no wilting, though) before I water each time.
Forgive my ignorance, but I thought continuous cycles of drying and watering were ideal to prevent damping off. Why should I water less frequently?
The mat is on because I can't really mess with the room temp. 80 degrees shouldn't be high enough to cause etiolation, should it?
I can hook the mat up to the lamp's timer so that things get cooler at night, if that would be beneficial.

Water less frequently because you will eventually get to a point where you will be overwatering them - they will yellow and not be happy when that happens. Trust on this! Glad to hear you already have a fan on them. Allowing them to dry between waterings does help with damping off, as does your bottom-watering. But since you stated you are watering every day, you are at greater risk for damping off. You say you let them dry out pretty well - it's easy to know if the surface is dry (which it will get quickly with the fan), but less easy to know if the soil beneath the surface is getting dry. If you're watering every day, it is unlikely that the soil beneath the surface is really drying out. Again, this can lead to nasties and/or overwatering. 80F isn't too hot for the plants overall, but it's not uniform in the room - it's only at the bottom of the plants. This is similar to how plants turn towards light - the roots are "reaching" for the heat source. What goes on beneath the surface often impacts what goes on above the surface - again, this particular result tends to be leggy plants with fewer nodes.

 

[drdextrose]

I've actually got them in clear containers for the time being, so I can see how moist the pot is further down. I'm hearing that this can cause problems with algae and such, so I've been monitoring that, but if I don't see anything going on, is there any reason to be concerned? From these cups, they're going into 32 oz yogurt containers.

Also, as for yellowing, I've noticed that the different peppers already have subtle differences in foliage coloration, the mariwiri being the yellowest. Well, this is my yellowest wiri. This shouldn't be any cause for alarm, should it?

By the way, this isn't how moist the soil usually stays. I just watered them several hours ago.

 

[geeme]

Yellowing is most commonly a sign of overwatering!!! Again - trust on this. Back off on your watering.

 

[drdextrose]

I took your advice and backed off the watering. I took 3 days off, and I actually dried up one of my fataliis. It was looking pretty crispy, but bounced right back. Still, if I had been a few hours late, that guy would have been toast. I should have gotten pics. I'm thinking I'll water once every other day or so for a while, maybe every 2.5 days.
Anyways, these guys have been growing steadily. I'm taking a pic every three days and trying not to shuffle them up too much.

March 22

Today (March 25)

 

[Sawyer]

It is easy to over water, but it's also easy to under water. You should be developing a feel for the heft of those cups to know when they need water (very light), or have had too much (very heavy), or neither (just right).

 

[drdextrose]

Started weak nutes: Liquid 9-3-6 with micros at 1 tsp/gal. Still not paying any attention to water pH. They haven't complained yet. They had to spend a weekend in a window, so they stretched a little. C'est la vie.

 

[drdextrose]

So I'm pretty sure some of these guys got cercospora or something similar. Those guys got flushed down the toilet, and some runts got shoved to the window. Whatever, I was running out of space anyways. Next year I'd like to trade this HPS for some T5's to get more surface are covered, so that I can cull more. Anyways, the big kahunas got a bath in daconil and a repotting. Here are pics.

The big guys:

I have no idea why this pic is so tiny, but here are the wiris

Numex Centennial

Bulgarian Carrots. I dunno why these guys droop so much, but they all seem to do it pretty consistently.

Fataliis. The guy on the right got a couple leaves plucked, but he's still looking pretty stronk.

The window guys. There's nothing wrong with this pic at all actually. These ones are just runts.