Lespaulde 2019 Season

Alright everybody, here we go; another year, another round of trying a range of different peppers and methods to grow them. After having a lot of fun last year, I'm of course trying to keep everything low key, but am already struggling to keep my growlist to a bare minimum so I will be able to handle the plants while also having enough time with my soon-to-be one year old son and significant other of course. There's just so much choice and reading about all the different types in various glogs etc means that we all need a lifetime of growing to find our favourites.

The biggest step forward this year is to really start from scratch (i.e. seed), as otherwise good luck finding those exotic varieties you cannot get at your typical garden store; while the selection of seedlings in Denmark is really not bad, it still excludes you from a huge selection. So my list, for now, is:

Aji Pineapple
Aji Mango
Sugar Rush Peach
Biker Bill's Jalapeno
KS Lemon Starrburst
Foodorama Scotch Bonnet
Aji Lemon
BOC Sweetbite (own cross from last year, F1, with a bit of luck getting through F2 as well)
Sri Lanka Chili Red (Growdown)
Early Jalapeño
Chocolate Bhut Jolokia
Bulgarian Carrot

And the overwinters:
Numex Orange Spice (love the heat on these jalapenos!)
Bhut Jolokia Purple

A big thanks goes out to William Beckham from the PLC on Google+, as he was kind enough to send me the Aji Mango, Sugar Rush Peach and Lemon Starrburst seeds - what a great guy!

Most of the plants will go back into the 8L (2 gal) autopots, albeit in 100% coco this time, but I also obtained some 60L (16 gal) fabric pots that I'm curious about trying. Lastly, since I will be growing some plants in the office at work, I will also try a couple of Kratky grows as the method intrigues me.

Nutes will be Plagron Hydro A&B this year, as 5L each was only 35EUR/40USD, while only needing 1.65ml/litre, making it very cheap indeed. For the 60L fabric pots, I will probably stick with the Hesi Coco from last year as the medium will be a 30/30/30 mix of Coco/soil/leca pebbles.

Originally I was aiming for Feb 1st, but since all the equipment came in already yesterday (grow tent etc, pics to follow), I couldn't wait anymore... Thus this happened today:

Now the waiting game begins, thanks for reading!

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[CaneDog]

Great list and good luck with the season LPDE!  Looks like you're off to a fast start - I'm having trouble waiting for my start dates as well. 
 
What's the story behind the BOC Sweetbite?
 
Oh, and since I always notice it but haven't commented yet - great user name! 

 

[lespaulde]

Great list and good luck with the season LPDE!  Looks like you're off to a fast start - I'm having trouble waiting for my start dates as well. 
 
What's the story behind the BOC Sweetbite?
 
Oh, and since I always notice it but haven't commented yet - great user name! 

 
Thanks CaneDog, I'm impressed you caught the   aspect of the name; still a remnant from my youth, but I definitely still dabble regularly.
 
The BOC Sweetbite is a cross between the BOC and a small bell pepper I was growing last season, the Sweetbite Yummy. It's actually a bit funny, as I was initially simply using the pollen from the Sweetbite as this one was pushing pods first and the BOC was only dropping flowers, but the more I thought about it, the more I was hoping this would become a BOC-type pepper with all the fruity flavour, but a little less heat so that I could actually put a whole pod in a dish and not have to sleep on the couch that night...     Let's see how it grows out, and I'm planning on taking it at least 3-4 generations before deciding whether it's worth it or not.

 

[CaneDog]

Sounds cool!  Hope you get some good options to work with out of the cross.  Seems like it has the potential to be a great pepper - and still keep everybody happy!  I'm growing my first BOC indoors now and it's just starting to flower, so I'm expecting to get a taste of one soon.

 

[heefy]

Best of luck with your grow. BOC Sweetbite sounds interesting.


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[lespaulde]

Sounds cool!  Hope you get some good options to work with out of the cross.  Seems like it has the potential to be a great pepper - and still keep everybody happy!  I'm growing my first BOC indoors now and it's just starting to flower, so I'm expecting to get a taste of one soon.

You will not regret it one bit, it really is so intensely fruity when you cut it open - delicious! Sounds awesome you're growing it indoors, it should be really worth the effort as it's such a prolific plant.

I'm hoping to compare it to some Scotch bonnets this year, as I'm guessing the level of fruitiness will be similar, and that's for sure something I like in a pepper. So that's what I'd like to breed for, just at a tad lower spice intensity so you can use more of the pod in your food.

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[lespaulde]

Best of luck with your grow. BOC Sweetbite sounds interesting.


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Thanks Heefy, I'll be sure to post progress here, and as I'm planning on growing it in Kratky/DWC, I'm hoping to get through 2 generations this season but let's see.

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[lespaulde]

The first signs of life are already here!

The Early Jalapeño is honouring its name, with both seeds already having sprouted, and the Biker Bill is just behind with 1 out of 2 poking its head out to check everything is ok in the big wide world...

How soon do you guys move seedlings under the light, is it straightaway or is it ok to let the cotyledons come out properly first? And then, do you nuke them full blast right away (I have a ~10k lumen LED rig, which is dimmable though) or start slowly/dimmed, and then up the time and intensity a little bit every day? Planning to run 12hrs on/off cycles eventually.

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[DWB]

I move mine to the Level 1 nursery when they have no helmets. That tiny area has 7950 lumens of 4100k fluorescent

 

[lespaulde]

3 days later and we have real life occurring in the mini greenhouse! The jalapenos were the first to pop out, and I can see movement in the other c. annuums and baccatums too, except for the Growdown one. But let's see how much more we can get coming out this week, as its very exciting seeing how much happens in just a few days. One of the Aji Mangoes has a helmet head, but I'm hopeful the high humidity will help the seedling get rid of it, and otherwise I will have to give Master Surgeon PaulG's approach a try...

As for the tent setup, the first plants have migrated now, with the LED grow light running at ~50% to start getting them used to it. Estimated at 10k lumen, with 20k being the actual max capacity. Running them at approx 40cm distance, so let's see how they like it.

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[lespaulde]

Things are moving along steadily, with new seedlings making their way over to the tent on a nearly daily basis.

Am feeding them a weak nute solution of around 300ppm; I think they were looking happy this morning:

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[DWB]

Pardon my dumb but what does 300 ppm mean in terms of % NPK?
 
I've been feeding my sprouts something less than 1-3-2

 

[lespaulde]

Pardon my dumb but what does 300 ppm mean in terms of % NPK?
 
I've been feeding my sprouts something less than 1-3-2

 
That's not a dumb question at all!
 
So I'm using Plagron Hydro A&B, which ends up around 3.5-2.5-5.5 when mixed 1:1. Final dose (with mature plants) should be around 1.65ml/L of water, which will likely end up being around 800-1000ppm.
 
What I did now was to add 3ml each of A&B to 5L of distilled water, and upped the pH to ~6.3 with normal tap water as it ends up quite acidic in straight distilled water. Then I measured the ppm with a cheap meter from Wish.com, which told me it was around 300ppm (which also includes the extra calcium and magnesium etc. that's contained in normal tap water), so I'm hoping the nute solution is weak enough not to burn, yet provide enough nutrients for the youngsters to thrive in the rockwool. From what I've read, 400ppm is an upper limit but of course this is very much plant and media dependent.
 
It's getting nice and busy in the tent! The bulgarian carrot still needs to open its cotyledons, as it was constrained by a helmet head that was swiftly removed after a nice soak in some extra water. This trick seems to work quite well, as long as you time it right (ie. it will budge easily when pulled on if the leafs managed to already free themselves just enough prior to the operation).
 

 

[DWB]

Interesting. I'll have to check this part on my fertilizers when I mix. Our untreated, unfiltered <6.0 pH well water that I use for plants is 125 ppm.
 
The reverse osmosis water that we drink goes down to 6 ppm but the pH is 7.4 after the house water goes through the neutralizer..

 

[lespaulde]

Oh that's some nice water quality you have then! At home, my tap water is a crazy 412ppm, which causes most nutes to precipitate when mixed at full strength. Also needs a good amount of acetic acid (why use the expensive pH down...) to lower the pH, so last year I stopped bothering with that. Probably with 100% coco, I will need to bother this season.

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[lespaulde]

Life's good in the tent, and plants are really developing which is great to see. First sets of true leafs are showing up on most >1 week old seedlings, which I guess is in line with a normal development timeline?

The "old timers":

And the "youngins":

There's some nice root development going on in these cubes, and I'm trying to keep them contained for at least 2 more weeks before potting up into Coco.

My chocolate ghosts seem to have different phenos, as one has purple leafs (yey!) and the other green. Or is this to be expected from natural variation?

My scotch bonnets haven't sprouted yet, which now seems like quite a long time (>2 weeks). Neither has the BOC Sweetbite, so in both cases I added a few more holes to the rockwool cubes and planted a few more seeds. Hopefully will have hooks before the end of the month as the clock is ticking...

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[CaneDog]

Looking good LP!   And nice root development on those cubes.  Hopefully the bonnets and Sweetbite will still pop shortly from the original seeds versus having to wait for the back-ups you just planted to come around.  How are the OW Numex and bhut doing?

 

[lespaulde]

Thanks CD, and I hope you're right about the OG seeds still popping but I'm not counting on it - nice advantage of these cubes though that you can just punch a few extra holes and dump some more in. I'm wondering whether my heat mat greenhouse is a little too warm, as it tends to go up to 32C/90F in the centre. Now I'm keeping all remaining blocks to the side where it stays around 29C/85F.

And thanks for asking about the OWs; the Bhut Purple is doing great, and I actually harvested 5 peppers from it last week that it had been working on ripening since October, but I can tell it's on power-saving mode as that took forever. Still, when spring comes, I have a feeling it will quickly kick into high gear...

Top view:

The numex orange is doing less than stellar since its spider mite infection:

I've trimmed it quite a bit this week to see if it will spawn new growth, and am keeping it out of the grow tent to make sure the new youngsters don't get contaminated with anything lingering. I treated it with neem oil & soap a few weeks ago, which seems to have halted the spider mites nice and efficiently. But the leafs just seem to be hanging a bit sadly and nothing springing into life with the additional sun we're now getting. Any tips are very welcome!

What's interesting is the BOC sitting right next to it - this plant has not had any spider mites, and has actually started flowering again. The only reason I kept it was that the Easy2Grow autopot system has space for 2 pots and I wanted the last ones to ripen last fall, but seeing how well it's doing, I might just find another home for it to last another season. I just have so many pods in the freezer already to last me a couple of years, so if I do keep it, I will be handing those pods out left, right and centre. Choices, choices, choices! xD

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[Devv]

Hi!
 
I never caught on to your name until it was mentioned earlier on. I built a '59 replica with the Seth Lover's a few years ago. I just wish I could make it talk...LOL
 
I really like what you're doing here
 
Good luck this season!

 

[lespaulde]

Hi!
 
I never caught on to your name until it was mentioned earlier on. I built a '59 replica with the Seth Lover's a few years ago. I just wish I could make it talk...LOL
 
I really like what you're doing here
 
Good luck this season!

Wow, that was definitely one of my dream guitars, a Les Paul with Seth Lover's - that, and a Gibson SG in cherry red. I can't believe you actually managed to build it, very impressive! Just wish I still had time to play, as it's simply been too many years now. Hopefully in some years again, when the little one grows up a bit...

And thanks for the compliments, I really hope to enjoy a wide variety of peppers and grow methods this year, as I was a little disappointed in some of my plant choices last year (e.g. Jamaican bell (hardly any heat at all) and the Aji Benito could also have used a little more kick). I think I'm more safe in that area this year, and am really enjoying seeing them grow from seed...

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