Island_Dan 2013 Glog (First super hot grow season!)

Well everyone thanks to my Caribbean background and heritage, I have always been interested in spicy foods and ever since I heard about the Trinidad scorpion pepper, being a Trinidadian citizen, I have become fascinated with super hots and thanks to this site and to all the great people I have met here, I am starting my first big pepper grow season!!!

Thank you THP for getting me addicted!!!

So to in starting my first season, I planted 7 plants in potting mix about 2 and a half months ago. Those consist of 3 Trinidad scorpion butch T's, a moruga scorpion, a yellow seasoning pepper and 2 bonda ma jaques.

I have 2 moruga seedlings in DWC's running my happy vs stressed experiment and I have put to germinate a lot more varieties. Maybe too much for my first season but here is what I am going to run.

SB7J F1
SB7J F2
Ice Scream Scorpion F1
Ghost scorpion
Douglah
Twisted Chocolate Habanero
7 pot yellow
7 pot chocolate barrackpor
7 pot white
7 pot burgundy
7 pot orange
Naga morich
congo trinidad
fatalii yellow
brain strain
chocolate trinidad scorpion
black naga
Tobago seasoning red
St. Lucia seasoning yellow
CGN 21500
Pi 281429
Antilles Fire
Infinity
yellow bhut jalokia
HP22B
chocolate bhut jalokia
Manzano
Black Habanero
Trinidad Scorpion Yellow Cardi
Beni Highland
Devil's Tongue
Trinidad Scorpion Butch T
Trinidad Scorpion Moruga
Bonda Ma Jaques
King Chile (Unknown dried yellow pod sent from India)

That makes 34 Varieties for this first season and I may add more I am guessing.

I am also growing buttom mushrooms for the first time and will include this in the grow log. I got some wheat spawn off of eBay (yeah I know), and I seeded my substrate. So far they are blooming and the mycelium is spreading through the substrate slowly. When the substrate becomes fully myceliated, I will add the compost layer and wait for my first flush. I may use my myceliated substrate to seed some fresh substrate and that way I can keep a constant mushroom farm going since I LOVE mushrooms.

Here are some pictures of what is already growing, my morugas in the DWC's and what is germinating. So far out of germinating seeds, the yellow fatalii has popped on 1/19/2013.

Also what is in sure to grow cubes will be all grown hydroponically. In the past I grow everything hydroponically but due to the mass number of plants this year, I can only manage 10-13 full grown peppers indoor so the rest will be outside in pots when the weather warms.

Time for pictures!!!!

Damn I can't wait for everything to be grown and producing already!!!!

 

[Jeff H]

Looking good Dan. Interesting that the Jiffy pellets didn't work out well for you, do you have any thoughts as to what may be the problem?

The little DWC babies look good. What are you feeding them?

 

[Dshlogg]

Impressive looking plants you have there. So lush, green and full of leaves. Good luck with your new plants. Hope they grow to look like the others.

 

[KiNGDeNNiZ]

Wow I see tons of flowers already!! PerhaPs your pellets are too drenched. I had that issue before. Nice setup. I need to bust out my t8s

 

[Island_Dan]

Yeah not too sure. Maybe you are right about them being too drenched. They seem to stay very wet but they are in the same humidity dome as my sure to grow cubes which I find stay wetter than the jiffy pellets and those all popped without a problem. The get the same water and have a t5 strip along the top and sitting on a heat mat. I also only water the jiffy pellets when they are almost totally dried out which takes a long time. Seems like I go a week between having to moisten them. After a month in jiffy pellets, I just had a yellow 7 pot pop so I will leave them be for now whilst germinating some more seeds. But I am very pleased with how the other plants look so far. Hoping it gets warm so that I can move my soil plants outside and make more room indoors for my hydro grow.

Oh and for the hydro grow, the 2 moruga scorpions are being fed botanicare pure blend pro grow and the smaller jays ghost scorpion sprout are being fed supernatural brand grow aqua.

I love the performance I get with the botanicare products but I have to add some PH down to get the PH level to 5.5-6.5. I am just trying the supernatural brand for the first time as it was recommended and it is not organic at all like the botanicare stuff but the nice feature is that it has a PH buffer in it which gets the PH down to 7. Our water here in Nebraska is horrible and comes out of the tap with a PH of 8.9 so for a couple of table spoons of nutes to contain enough buffer to bring it back to 7.0 is pretty impressive. I am about to invest in a Reverse Osmosis system to use for my plant and aquarium water as I know my plants must suffer from the high acidity a bit but when planted outdoors, there really is nothing I can do about that as it is not practical to produce RO water for everything.

 

[PjPEPPERS]

How's the shrooms coming along Dan? Any pickers yet?

 

[Gotrox]

Really happy so far with using the aerogarden starter kit.
Except----I was hoping to get a couple months out of it before transplanting.
Germination is better than 50% of 66 tries, hoping for 80% once the tough ones get going.

But I'm not even going to get a month out of some of them.
A 3rd of them need to go now, so the rest get enough light to sprout and start.

Used jiffies last year and had a terrible start.
100 planted, 4 sprouts.

 

[Island_Dan]

Well had a bad batch of jiffy pellets but I managed to save my season a bit and got about half my list to germinate. Not sure if I will try for the rest. Anyway here are some pictures of what I have growing right now.

Jays ghost scorpion in dwc

My seedlings

My moruga experiment and prik kee noo plant

And the seasoning pepper, bonda ma Jacque, butch t's and moruga's I started last October

 

[Island_Dan]

Okay I went through to see what I actually have growing and here is the updated list.

3 Trinidad scorpion Butch T's
3 Trinidad scorpion Moruga's
2 Bonda ma Jaques
1 St. Lucia seasoning pepper
3 jays ghost scorpions
1 Tobago seasoning
1 fatalii yellow
1 7 pot burgundy
1 7 pot yellow
1 SB7J F2
1 prik kee noo Suan
1 black Hungarian
1 white bullet
1 ice scream scorpion
1 7 pot white
1 beni highland
1 infinity
1 Trinidad scorpion yellow cardi

Not too bad compared to my original list I guess.

 

[Jeff H]

Nice list Dan, it is full of really hot stuff.

 

[CALE4NIA]

Well some bad news. I have had horrible germination using the jiffy pellets. Almost everything in the sure to grow cubes have germinated leaving me to believe the jiffy pellets have been the issue. Out of 30 pellets, I have only had 3 seeds pop. +++

Best germination for me has been in paper towel and ziploc on heat mat.... Good luck

 

[Barley-pop57]

Looks good Dan !! Still a nice list of peppers growing !! Cont'd success with plants and mushrooms.

 

[Island_Dan]

Well we have been having great weather this week and looked like spring was upon us. I made some space in the grow room by putting 2 butch T's and a bonda ma jacque outside on the back porch yesterday. Well bad idea. One severe thunderstorm warning later and the heaviest downpour of quarter size hail I have ever seen and the plants seem a little rattled. I brought them in as soon as I could get outside to them after fighting the hail to get my car indoors and lots of leaves have holes in them and branches are damaged. Couldn't examine it properly but I will get some pictures tomorrow morning to show what damage was caused. This sucks...

 

[Island_Dan]

THE ENEMY!!!

Anyway some damage pictures on the bonda. The butch T's are just as shredded.

So now begins operating clone the branch!!

 

[Island_Dan]

I had to prune the damaged plants today.

Before the hail storm the butch t looked like this.

After the hail storm and pruning, a butch T and bonda ma Jacque.

 

[Island_Dan]

Omg news update!!! Both good and bad.

Bad first. It looks like I might lose both of those hail damaged plants. The bonda ma jaque was cut back and might put out some new growth but the butch t I had to cut to the stump and I imported, soaked roots in hormone and nutrients and then I replanted but I doubt it will live.

Good news is the other plants are doing great and one of my butch T's is making a pod!!
It's my first pod of the year and I am super excited!!

 

[Island_Dan]

Me and the family spending the first hour in the sun hardening off.

Hydroponic plants will remain indoor and isolated. This is my soil only grow.

 

[KiNGDeNNiZ]

THE ENEMY!!!

Anyway some damage pictures on the bonda. The butch T's are just as shredded.

So now begins operating clone the branch!!

wake uppppppppppp... hows the rooting experiment going

 

[Island_Dan]

I am awake! The rooting experiment. I don't know what's going on with that. It seems healthy but hasn't shown signs of roots yet. There is one tiny little hair and I think it may be a first root but it is absorbing water somehow.

I have 6 plants in the ground and rest are in pots outside. They seem to be doing well.

My moruga in the ground is covered in pods so I am looking forward to harvesting soon.

 

[KingLeerUK]

What sort of tomato do you have going there?

 

[Island_Dan]

It's an early girl. Just an experiment since I never grew a tomato in hydroponics before. Bought two identical looking seedlings, one in ground and one in hydro. The hydro one is twice the size already.