Lespaulde's 2020

lespaulde · Jan 28, 2020

PaulG said:
Good news about the Dorset Naga

Orange super hot peppers are way cool!

to an avalanche of hooks!

Thanks Paul, indeed I was very happy to see him coming up finally! And your avalanche is what I was hoping for, but I guess it will have to be during the Annuum round 2 in about a month

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lespaulde · Feb 7, 2020

Oh my god, we finally have lift-off! :dance:

The rocoto Cristobal finally popped, so the new method on wet cotton, while cycling the heating mat off and on, seems to be working! For those with a very keen eye, yes, that's an additional Dorset Naga that also popped in the top row.

CaneDog's hyperpube also germinated earlier this week, and now they are both chilling in the tent:

The other youngsters are also happily building muscle, and probably mainly inside the cube; they'll be transplanted in a week after some more air pruning:

The Purple Pineapple is steadily pushing pods now, and I guess their Baccatum heritage is letting the pods grow upwards, but I think the purple tint in them is clear. Happy days!

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PaulG · Feb 7, 2020

The pace is picking up! I wonder if those
Purple Pineapple pods will become pendant
as they grow out, like Aji Amarillos do?

Starts in the rockwool cubes look great! And
the germinator thing looks like the ticket, Erv.

lespaulde · Mar 2, 2020

Apologies for the long radio silence, but I was away for about 2 weeks and rather busy in the week(s) leading up to it, but that of course didn't mean that the tent was neglected. Luckily this also means that progress has been steady, and the 2nd round of seeds dropped just earlier today, so now the waiting game begins. In the mean-time, let me start sending some photo updates to document the progress. More in-depth shots should follow over the next few days.

I transplanted all the rockwool starts just prior to my vacation to ensure they wouldn't run dry. I had a kind colleague taking care of them during my absence, and felt that asking for 3x a week was already pushing it, let alone checking on the cubes daily to ensure they didn't run too dry. Luckily she did a great job and everything was looking lush when I got back. It did however mean that the roots hadn't filled out as much of the cubes as I would have liked, but I don't think it will matter much in the long run.

For example PaulG's 7 pot burgundy, with nice roots, and once again, only sticking out on 2 sides rather than all 4. I noticed this last year already and am still puzzled why this should happen?? :confused:

The progress of the plants might seem slow when checking on them daily, but look at the difference in just 3 days (top vs. bottom):

Then when you fast forward that bottom picture to 10 days later, you get this beautiful sight:

Still can't believe what I got back to and had not believed things would have moved so fast, especially given that I turned the number of light hours down to 12. Now we're back to 18hrs per day so I can only imagine what's going to happen over the next weeks... :dance:

I topped a couple of the plants as I'd like them a bit more bushy and only 1 or 2 had started forking, so while I know this sets them back in size in the short term, I'm a big fan of topping/FIM'ing to get the plants to produce more come plant out time. The Jamaican Yellow already started budding up, so that was topped first as I don't want the plants to start flowering until they're in the greenhouse.

The Purple Pineapple is still setting lots of fruit but none have ripened yet, so hopefully only another month or so before I can collect seeds for the F2s.

PaulG · Mar 2, 2020

That last pic is awesome, Erv! Nothing like
a little time in between looking at your grow
to see how much progress they can make quickly.

CaneDog · Mar 2, 2020

The recent growth has really been something and things are definitely looking good.

Glad to hear your Purple Pineapple F2 seeds should be arriving reasonably soon.

I see you ordered your plant labels in "sticky trap" yellow

BDASPNY · Mar 3, 2020

impressive growth! they all look very healthy.

lespaulde · Mar 3, 2020

Upon closer inspection, I did find 2 pods in the purple pineapple that had matured, although not properly. They were tiny and already started shriveling up like they'd been on the plant too long, so of course I had to open them up to see if there were any seeds in there. After being met with a semi-strong chinense smell (confirming the cross once again), there were unfortunately no seeds present. I couldn't resist and popped the fruit in my mouth and boy did it start singing! :onfire:

WOAH it was spicy, so definitely no longer that Aji Pineapple heat level.

Not sure what's going on with the ripening though as I can see a few other small fruits doing the same. It's also setting a lot fruits but then immediately aborting them within a few days, so am wondering whether it's struggling a bit with its genetics. Luckily there are 2-3 pods that are a bit larger, so I'm counting on those pulling through.

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Mildfruit · Mar 4, 2020

Great roots in the rockwool cubes! I see its from another brand that I myself use, where are they from? Perhaps I could save some money in the future

Seems like you're killing it again this year, lots of green already!

lespaulde · Mar 4, 2020

PaulG said:
That last pic is awesome, Erv! Nothing like
a little time in between looking at your grow
to see how much progress they can make quickly.

Thanks Paul, and agree, it is best enjoyed when being away for a week or so, then you can really appreciate the hard work going on!

CaneDog said:
The recent growth has really been something and things are definitely looking good.

Glad to hear your Purple Pineapple F2 seeds should be arriving reasonably soon.

I see you ordered your plant labels in "sticky trap" yellow

Thanks CD! Yes, let's hope there will be some seeds soon as I definitely need to focus on the F2 grow to get phenos of interest. And haha yes, the labels were from wish.com and had no choice, but am quite happy with them. Perhaps I should put some glue on them to catch the odd fungus gnat that's flying around.

BDASPNY said:
impressive growth! they all look very healthy.

Thanks Scott!

Mildfruit said:
Great roots in the rockwool cubes! I see its from another brand that I myself use, where are they from? Perhaps I could save some money in the future
Seems like you're killing it again this year, lots of green already!

Good to see you again MF, I am way overdue a visit in your glog as well as I believe you have had lots of off-season progress. That being said, I guess there is no off-season for you which is quite a luxury situation to be in and from what I gathered, you're rockin' it as usual!

The cubes came from eugrowshop.eu where I ordered my tent, not sure if their shipping rates will kill any potential savings you might have though... I'd be curious though, as I only ordered enough to last me another year or 2.

lespaulde · Mar 4, 2020

Figured to also upload individual pics of the ladies before the tent explodes with another 10-20 plants from the seeds I just dropped...

CaneDog's hyperpube (loving the hairiness!):

Jamaican Yellow hot (just after topping):

PaulG's 7-pot Burgundy (topped)

Dorset Naga Orange (untouched as of yet):

The Rocoto Cristobal (high hopes for these pods)

And an overview shot; you can see the JPGS plant all the way on the right in front, which is suffering a bit. I'm attributing this to overwatering, and quite confident it will just bounce back now that I'm back on my normal watering schedule according to need...

PtMD989 · Mar 4, 2020

Good looking plants there[emoji106][emoji16].

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internationalfish · Mar 4, 2020

All you guys end up with freaking massive leaves. How the heck?!

Great looking grow so far, should be a productive season.

Mildfruit · Mar 8, 2020

Lots of rocotos! How are you keeping the temperature down? I have to move my rocotos, due to the heat being too much for them, but yours are looking like perfect condition!

lespaulde · Mar 10, 2020

Mildfruit said:
Lots of rocotos! How are you keeping the temperature down? I have to move my rocotos, due to the heat being too much for them, but yours are looking like perfect condition!

Hey MF,

Not sure to be honest, as I'm just leaving the flap open with a crack and only have an oscillating fan inside as I'm yet to install an extraction fan (which is ready but I'm just figuring out how to mount). They are located closest to the front opening, and perhaps therefore have a slightly lower temperature? I'll throw in a thermometer to see what temps they are in...

I do agree they look happy, as CD's Hyperpube is already budding:

I removed the buds as I want it to focus on size first, but it's nice to see how eager it is.

More and more plants are being added daily, with now NuMex LS, Aji Amarillo, Sugar Rush Peach, NuMex Vaquero and Early Jalapeño having popped. Fantastic feeling to check on new life first thing in the morning...

And finally got a seed containing pod from the Purple Pineapple! :dance:

Will wait until after plant out, but then I'm going to try and grow 5-6 different plants and see what phenos I'll get.

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CaneDog · Mar 10, 2020

Man, LP. Those leaves look so cool. The coloration and pubescence is just awesome! I'm going to have to look more closely at mine because I don't remember them being quite as hairy or with quite the same the medium green/light green coloration in the leaves. I believe these to be F2's, so perhaps you simply drew a really cool gene combination. Or maybe it's environmental. You can see it's feeling the conditions are a bit "chinense" for it, but not so much as to be unhappy. That space in front is probably ideal. Awesome work with that and the Cristobal. And all the others, of course!

Can't wait to see what happens with the Purple Pineapple.

lespaulde · Mar 25, 2020

Since an update is WAAAAAY overdue, I will try to make up for it by making it a proper one. Lots has been going on (as I’m sure is the case with everyone here), and while we’re trying to stay isolated due to Corona, it’s also making it hard not to overbaby the plants and getting too excited about the imminent spring time.

Before I get to the plants, I wanted to expand a bit more on a more fundamental aspect of growing, namely the soil I’m growing in.

Regarding this year’s potting mix, I have to give a massive shout-out to Solid7, with whom I had a lengthy discussion during the (for me) off-season on possible ways of optimising my potting mixes, especially given the autopot setup. He was kind enough to share his killer recipe, which consists of the following:

7 parts coco coir
3 parts perlite (or equivalent)
1 part worm castings.

As I already had a lot of coco coir from last year’s grow, I wanted to be able to reuse that, so I simply mixed my old coco coir + leca pebbles with fresh coco coir (probably around a 2:1 ratio of old:new) before mixing with the rest. The worm castings I managed to find are from Plagron, and will help revitalize the old coir with new microbiotic life. In short, I ended up with the following.

All the ingredients before mixing:

And a nice, pretty homogenous, mixture afterwards:

It feels really nice and light and airy, so I am extremely excited to see how it does. What you are looking at is approximately 90litres (24 gal) of total mixture, which should be just about enough for my autopots + buckets. The 16gal fabric pots will get a different mixture as I’m too cheap to buy that much coco coir. Instead, I will mix the remaining used coco coir from last year 50:50 with fresh soil, mix in ~30% of perlite and 10% worm castings and see how that ends up. It will no doubt be better than the cheap potting mix (100% soil) I used in the fabric bags last year, which didn’t really allow the roots to fill out the entire grow bag and for sure resulted in sub-par growth. Fingers crossed for better results this year, but we are at least 4-6 weeks away still from planting in those.

lespaulde · Mar 25, 2020

Now to the plants, as many new seeds were dropped on March 3rd. Been struggling with getting some of them to sprout, and so far the ones marked by * did pop and are now in a pot of some kind, :

SRP *
Numex LS *
Numex PS *
Numex vaquero *
Jalapeño Zapotec (*)
Aji Amarillo *
Early Jalapeño *
Bahamian goat
Rocoto Oculto (*)

Many did not like the standard heating setup I’m using (mini greenhouse with ~29C / 84F), even with power cycling (i.e. off overnight), and only once I put them inside the tent, where it is more like 25C / 77F, did things start going faster. This is something I’ll take note of for next time, as Rocotos don’t seem to pop at all at too high a heat whereas Chinense loves it, and Annuums also seem to prefer the slightly cooler conditions. Power cycling seems to help all of them, so will stick with that from now on too.

The Jay-Zs (CaneDog’s Jalapeño Zapotec) with an unfortunate helmet head. I am keeping it moist as I was not able to remove it at all, so hopefully within a day or 2 it will budge.

Numex Lemon Spice with an interestingly colored root sticking out. I hope it’s fine…

As for the slightly more mature plants (seeds dropped just before New Year’s, things are going ok.

PaulG’s 7-pot burgundy, in its final home:

Rocoto and Yellow Jamaican Hot

Rocotos

And finally, an overview of the current status in the tent. The JPGS on the right side (the one looking like a palm tree) seems to finally be recovering from the overwatering, and will hopefully explode with new growth now that the pot dried out a bit and it has a prime spot under the LED lights. I pruned the Dorset Naga Orange (all the way in the back to the left) to help it bush out a bit more, and the Paper Lantern in the back to the right was topped a few weeks ago. Both of these are in their final homes in the 8.5L autopots.

Let’s see how they like the new mixture, and will keep potting them up as I go along. The Rocoto Oculto is destined for DWC, as is one of the Early Jalapeños, which is now sitting in a temporary Kratky on the left. Those are probably the only ones in the future I’ll be using rockwool cubes for from now on, as there doesn’t seem to be a need to do so when growing in soil anyways…

lespaulde · Mar 25, 2020

Last but not least, we’ve been doing a lot of work on the garden the past few weekends, and chopped down half our trees (7 in total) to get some more light into the garden. Many of them were more than 20 metres tall and had been here as long as the house itself (i.e. around 50 years). They were shielding a lot of light and our lawn was more moss than grass, and in general we wanted a bit better view of the surroundings which we have now gotten. Not to mention the ton of firewood we now managed to collect which should keep us warm for a few winters yet…

The small tree in front is the apple tree I planted last year, which we have high hopes for already producing something this year.

lespaulde · Mar 25, 2020

Hope everybody is safe out there and look out for yourselves and family!