Megamoo's 2011/2012 Grow Log

gasificada · Oct 27, 2011

megamoo said:
A few of the chilli plants I potted up into buckets have not grown and are now turning yellow. Their leaves are curling upward as well, which looks like overwatering but I think there is something else going on. Can't figure out what is their problem.

Some that had taken off are now slowing with the new growth yellow and wrinkly. Probably a nutrient lockout thing.

I'm getting a bit of that sort of thing happening too--although, at least everything is still growing.

In my case I'm thinking nute lockout also... most probably something to do with pH. I tested my water a little while back and it was quite alkaline. Started amending it for a bit there but got the shits with it and gave up. Should probably give it a shot again and see what happens...

Sorry to hear things aren't working out for ya, mate! Like I said, things aren't exactly going smoothly over this way either but you sound like you're copping it a fair bit harder...

Shadowchilli · Oct 28, 2011

I know its probably still raining, but some photos might be of benifit.
I use the 9L buckets for a lot of my plants as well, i have 5 holes on the underside of the buckets, and also another 4 around the sides near the bottom.
I dont use a drill however, i use a soldering iron, melts the bucket for the hole and no chance of it splitting.
I noticed a lot better water drainage doing this then just having holes on the bottom.
Whenever i pot up or repot any of my plants, i always notice some setbacks in growth while they get used to their new home, but they eventualy come back and its all good again

How often were you using ferts?

megamoo · Oct 28, 2011

It only rained yesterday. So be careful what you ask for... here are some pics.

burnt tips of leaves and brown spots

same with this one

burnt tips, yellowing, crinkly leaf edges, this one never grew once in the bucket. Probably the worst plant.

has barely grown, don't need to describe this one... just look at it!

This one was doing great but its new growth has suddenly gone bad.

Good pic of the badness some have on their leaves.

This one was also doing really well but the new growth is ugly.

ditto

Got this one at roughly the size it is. Hasn't grown much at all, but put out a huge mass of buds. I pinched some of them out because it was ridiculous. They turn black straight away from the sun. Didn't know they were supposed to be black at all.\

More pics coming.. I took a whole bunch so I'll post them all.

megamoo · Oct 28, 2011

Wrinkly leaves !! yee gods!

My poor poor fatalii. It's like the weekday daytime shift at a strip club - you know you are supposed to like looking at this stuff but its really disturbing! Since I fungacided it, it has suddenly put out the new small leaves on the top where it hadn't grown for a long time.

Not a pretty sight.

It had more leaves but my son stripped them. Still hasn't grown anyway.

Recently potted this one up. It got a bigger pot because it was my star plant but I sense there are the same things starting to happen.

Another sad no-growth

This was the first chilli seed I germinated this year and its doing really well, except for being a shortass. Love the dark green colour.

It's podding up too.

Might have already posted this photo.

megamoo · Oct 28, 2011

This one was actually doing quite well but the central growing tip died or something and now its short.

Same wrinkly pale new growth, as others.

This makes me sad cos I really wanted to get a few 7Pot pods.

This one is in its first pot up stage and hasn't had the extra sprays and rain and whotnot the others have but its still getting the tip burn and yellowing. If anything it hasn't been watered enough. This was potted up into the mix of coles potting mix and peat-coir brick and a little bit of rooster booster.

This little pot should be draining well enough so I don't know whats going on here.
Any ideas?

PetersChilli · Oct 28, 2011

Hi Megamoo,
As a Newbie to Pepper growing I aint no expert.. but IMHO as a gardener Im thinking that you should give them a feed of Blood N Bone.
Could be a lack of Calcium ???
Just my 2 cents worth.

megamoo · Oct 28, 2011

PetersChilli said:
Hi Megamoo,
As a Newbie to Pepper growing I aint no expert.. but IMHO as a gardener Im thinking that you should give them a feed of Blood N Bone.
Could be a lack of Calcium ???
Just my 2 cents worth.

You can see in the last pic that the rooster booster has tons of calcium in it and unless it has run out they have plenty. However it may be that another nutrient in excess, or an unbalanced pH is causing nute lockout and the calcium deficiency symptoms. I also gave them a foliar feed with CalMagNit not long ago, too soon in my opinion for deficiency symptoms to show up so soon. The lockout can be caused by overwatering as well. I'm going to pH test the soil today, and drill a bunch more holes in the buckets.
I'm wary of adding any more nutrients to the soil just in case its already loaded but something has to be done. We've got 5 days of sunny weather so they'll have a chance to dry out.

gnslngr · Oct 28, 2011

Hey Moo-
How did the ph test go? Overly acidic isn't good either.I nearly "fretted" my newbies to death this spring-lots of similar symptoms-add this ,add that,counter with this and that....how are you adding the nutrients? Christ I think my short term memory is short circuited- I did see what you added, but not how.its gotta be dispersed evenly(I may be preaching to the choir?)...blood/bone meal out away from the stem a bit if added or top dressing.If not thoroughly mixed, you will end up with "hotspots" which can burn the plants and damage the roots.Too many amendments can some time work against/react with each other, or amplify the effects of soil ph ie...more acidic/alkaline ph spikes.The soil looks damp enough in the picts...Are there a lot of wood chips in the mix- lots of wood chips tends to be detrimental.Mine got remarkably better after I left for 10 days and all they got was a little h2o when wilting.Changing soil composition when transplanting can shock em also, as can light changes....I would stop chasing with nutrients until the ph is stable and slightly on the acidic side, and wait....
as long as your ph settles down you will be ok.I'm pulling for your 7 pots man-those are my faves.My 3 cents....
Good luck-
Dave

Dot Com · Oct 28, 2011

megamoo said:
An update. Lots of problems but everything is still alive.

It rained a lot yesterday. However my chillies are in pots that are set up for retaining water in hot dry weather. I am going to have to drill some more holes in the buckets at the bottom to help drying them out.

A few of the chilli plants I potted up into buckets have not grown and are now turning yellow. Their leaves are curling upward as well, which looks like overwatering but I think there is something else going on. Can't figure out what is their problem.

Some that had taken off are now slowing with the new growth yellow and wrinkly. Probably a nutrient lockout thing.

And some of the bigger plants have burnt tips of the lower larger leaves.

A few plants have yellowing/with dirty looking spots on their lower leaves, then they fall off. This is the original problem I had with the indoor grow and I think it is an infection, made worse by overwatering.

I sprayed them all over with a fungacide and eco-oil a few days ago and its probably been too soon to see any result from that.

Everything seems to be related to overwatering, and seeing as though its still raining there's not much I can do about it. I had the idea to use H2O2 because apparently it takes oxygen to the roots which is what is missing in drowned plants. I wouldn't work for very long because H2O2 reverts back to H2O quickly and then they are soaked again. I will give it a go once they have had a few days of sun and wind.

I recently experienced over-watering done by my roommate when I was away on holiday for @ 5-6 dys. Almost killed my Fresno w/ all of the over watering

All the new growth turned brown and died plus @ half of my leaves turned brown. I re-potted it with soil that isn't water-logged and am waiting to see if that'll do the trick. I had two other plants get over-watered but not as badly as my Fresno. I only have one Fresno sprouted and I was nursing it along and it was doing so well when I left but... Thats what makes it so depressing. It looked this healthy BEFORE I went away, doesn't look like that now though

:

As far as nutes go, I've only used generic plant feed and diluted it to the point where it couldn't do much damage if I didn't measure it properly. I also think I read somewhere here that you don't want to apply nutes too early in the growth cycle but don't quote me.

Trippa · Oct 28, 2011

Best bet mega ... back off everything for a few weeks simply keep watering when they need it (make sure you have plenty of holes in the bottoms of the buckets and sides as noted above) and thats it. You are probably simply loving them to death. Just remember most plants are not perfect and they will all at some stage look some degree of ugly on a couple of leaves, but they survive without human intervention in the wild so let things come back to balance before you fret to much and see how they will start to reflect your lack of stress . The more you stress the more they stress in my opinion.

gasificada · Oct 29, 2011

Looks like what my plants did last season when it got too hot for them....

Well, I figure it was the heat/sun as they started bouncing back when the great rains came and cooled things down:

Pablo_h · Oct 29, 2011

Got pretty much the same as you mega. Been a bad start to growing chillies for me.
First lot got trashed due to bad potting mix and me over watering.
2nd lot half trashed due to same reasons and lighting (cfl and MH) IMO
3rd lot I did a better job at, nice and green, but got over watered by the random rain. After that I upped the perlite, and stopped putting in any vermiculite. Water had been my enemy, so stuff vermiculite!!!!
4th lot all going great, took some tips from that melbourne guy (can't remember his name) that worked away and only watered every 2 weeks. Of course that only works when the seedlings don't have lots of heat/light, as he used LEDs. I kept mine in the shade, and watered sparingly. The latest plants are greener, bigger leaves.

But, lost a few of the smaller ones if they got a but too much sunlight. Also now got disease, fungus and aphids doing some serious damage.
Some of my older ones are very very yellow but still alive (too much rain, and vermiculite holds the water)
Some of my older ones are curled in the leaves or malformed like yours and are stunted
Some of my newer better greener ones have curled or malformed leaves, it's a mystery for some of them, but others it's plain aphid damage.

Season has gone for me, I doubt I'll get anything from it, but I learnt a lot. (ie, I can't grow chillies for shit)

So I'm ignoring them now, next time I'll go LED (as other light sources caused problems for me judging when to water as they dry out the plants so much), and with the cooler running light, stick with them indoors until october, only watering every 2 weeks or so). And probably only used Debco seed raising mix with a bit of coir and perlite.

megamoo · Oct 29, 2011

I didn't get to the pH test, maybe tomorrow.. but I did manage to drill lots of holes around the bases. Some of the buckets were extremely wet so they will definitely benefit from the added airing.

How the nutes were applied - The rooster booster is mixed into the soil, and the one dose of CalMagNit was a foliar feed. I've also done a few seaweed solution foliar feeds but that was a while ago now. I recently sprinkled some sulphate of potash on the top of the soil so it would be watered in, it was a little close to the stems I suppose but they were showing all the problems before that. I might have given them something else in a foliar spray but I can't honestly remember. I started to keep a garden journal recording everything I did at the beginning of the season but I've sort of forgotten about it.

The heat could be a factor because the shadecloth is a pretty thin gauge, but we haven't really gotten many hot days to account for the problems. The rain has been more constant and based on the pooled water released by drilling holes today I'm pretty sure that the soil mix I used is a bit too water retaining and the buckets aren't draining well enough.

I'll do the pH test and let them dry out, and get either better or worse before I consider using any more nutes.

megamoo · Oct 29, 2011

Sorry to hear about all that Pablo. I learnt a lot of what NOT to do my first season. So I guess we can blame the Perth weather for all the problems

I'm not giving up just yet though. Quite a few of my plants have done well so far and are growing fine. Also a lot of my plants have flowers and tiny pods , its just that they are short. Even if all my bucket plants are trashed I've still got about 30-40 seedlings that have a lot of `potential`. So a good season is still available for me, I just have to do the right things from here on.

gnslngr · Oct 30, 2011

megamoo said:
Sorry to hear about all that Pablo. I learnt a lot of what NOT to do my first season. So I guess we can blame the Perth weather for all the problems

I'm not giving up just yet though. Quite a few of my plants have done well so far and are growing fine. Also a lot of my plants have flowers and tiny pods , its just that they are short. Even if all my bucket plants are trashed I've still got about 30-40 seedlings that have a lot of `potential`. So a good season is still available for me, I just have to do the right things from here on.

Good to hear Megamoo, Good luck Pablo-hope the season turns around for you.

megamoo · Nov 2, 2011

Pollinators!
My shade house is swarming with little bug things. I think they are bush bees, they are definitely getting into the chilli flowers. Tried to get a good photo with my phone camera.

There is one sitting on the leaf stem.

Tucking into the flower.

Just checking this one out - no flowers - moved on.

My daughter contributed by making a sign.

gasificada · Nov 2, 2011

megamoo said:
My daughter contributed by making a sign.

No fair... I want a "Chillitastic Fun World" sign! :snooty:

Ahaha, that is awesome. :cool:

Dot Com · Nov 2, 2011

gasificada said:
No fair... I want a "Chillitastic Fun World" sign!

Ahaha, that is awesome.

I like it too. :woohoo:

That would give me some more confidence.

RaelThomas · Nov 2, 2011

Not to worry, you're going to get some nice pods anyway!
I'm going to vouch, once again, for nitrogen burn being your prob as it really does look similar to what happened to my first lot.
I'm pretty sure that was it as mine are very slowly recovering now that I have backed off.

megamoo · Nov 7, 2011

It's raining and stormy outside but the shadehouse protects them somewhat from the wind. You can't see but off to the left in the picture with the sign are a few pots that have really taken off. I will take a photo when I can.
Last night I sowed a few final seeds.
Fatalii
Peruvian White Habanero
Pimenta De Neyde
Trinidad Perfume
Wild Tepin
Numex Twilight
Hot Cherry
Scotch Bonnet TFM
Habanero Big Sun
Antillais Caribbean
Siling Labuyo
Baccia De Satana
Vietato
Joker's Hat

After all my previous Fatalii's starts died except for one which looks awful I had to do a bunch of these. I had two separate jiffys with Peruvian White Habanero's sprout and then get some sort of disease and shrivel and die. They hadn't been soaked in hydrogen peroxide which could have killed a seedbourne disease, and so this time they all were soaked in H2O2. The other seeds are ones I've had limited to zero sucess with, and the last four are newly arrived.

I have taken apart my lights for the season so when these sprout they will go outside in a humidity dome