Mooglog 2013/2014

stickman · Aug 4, 2013

Looks like you're off to a great start Moo... the list of seedlings is BA, and I love the grow light setup. The other reason for fans is to simulate wind, so your seedlings grow shorter and sturdier before you set them outside. Cheers!

TheFanMan · Aug 4, 2013

Juswt had my fourth marbgarita and things are getting a little hazy

dam, now i want a margarita. is that bad? it is only 10.22 am.

Spicegeist · Aug 4, 2013

Nice selection, a few bhuts on there, right on!

megamoo said:
This is what I pulled out of the big chest freezer from last year.

I'm starting more plants this year! and hoping to have all this turned into sauce or powder before the new chillies get picked.

Hm.. are you overproducing a little bit?

Trippa · Aug 4, 2013

Yeah I was thinking about the plants getting wi d flow for sturdyness and reducing stem elongation ... The heat exchange is more a secondary reason when using flouros I find.
Nice freezer haul. My better half just gave me the hard word to cleanse our freezer before the months out ...

megamoo · Aug 7, 2013

stickman said:
Looks like you're off to a great start Moo... the list of seedlings is BA, and I love the grow light setup. The other reason for fans is to simulate wind, so your seedlings grow shorter and sturdier before you set them outside. Cheers!

Thanks. Yeah I forgot about the get the seedlings tough with the wind.

TheFanMan said:
dam, now i want a margarita. is that bad? it is only 10.22 am.

It's not bad, just means you're an alcoholic

Spicegeist said:
Nice selection, a few bhuts on there, right on!

Hm.. are you overproducing a little bit?

I had no idea there were so many ! My list is bigger this year too. Hopefully I'll be better at growing this season so even MORE chillies this year.

Trippa said:
Yeah I was thinking about the plants getting wi d flow for sturdyness and reducing stem elongation ... The heat exchange is more a secondary reason when using flouros I find.
Nice freezer haul. My better half just gave me the hard word to cleanse our freezer before the months out ...

I realize now my mistake in freezing whole pods. SO many to thaw then process its ridiculous. I will have a go this weekend at doing some of them. I have to at least destem and cut them in half to check for worms or mold before they go in the pot.

I'll make a super concentrated chilli puree and then use that to make sauces from. If I try to make finished sauces from scratch the freezer will still be half full when new pods are ready.

This season I'll destem and deseed them before freezing or drying. Dry a lot more for powder too.

Dot Com · Aug 8, 2013

nice germination set-up. Looking forward to your new grow.

megamoo · Aug 20, 2013

Dot Com said:
nice germination set-up. Looking forward to your new grow.

Thanks

One month in and things are getting bigger. Its going a bit slow because I've been slack and only changed the reservoir once. It was almost gone when I finally did

Seacowboy · Aug 20, 2013

Interested in a little more info about your flood table. Do you have a liner inside or just straight wood? What size reservoir, pump and flood schedule are you using? I'm going back and forth on building one or buying the tray and table, need to price out the materials to build the whole thing vs buying it, but I'm pretty sure I would be able to do it cheaper myself.

megamoo · Aug 20, 2013

Seacowboy said:
Interested in a little more info about your flood table. Do you have a liner inside or just straight wood? What size reservoir, pump and flood schedule are you using? I'm going back and forth on building one or buying the tray and table, need to price out the materials to build the whole thing vs buying it, but I'm pretty sure I would be able to do it cheaper myself.

If you aren't too picky about the size of the tray you can absolutely build it cheaper than buy! I sort of did it the hard way, but I wanted a specific large area so had to make it myself. The tray is made from a piece of MDF, which I routed some channels in. MDF is NOT water friendly so I poured some fibreglass resin in to seal it. This is the very expensive and time consuming way to do it but I had the materials left over from other jobs so it didn't cost me anything.

You could get the same result with a plastic storage tub with some holes drilled in it, but then you are limited to what size you can find. I used one last season and it worked great but I could only start so many seeds at one time, and my later starts didn't have a whole season to get going. Hydro stores have the perfect trays for the job but they charge through the roof to milk money from pot growers. It's so cheap to make the trays too, they are just plastic, gets me a bit upset.

The reservoir is just a 70 Litre garbage bin. I fill it to 40 L for the amount of plants I have. The food is Chilli Focus, plus some Fulvic acid. I start them with and EC of 0.8 and when they are bigger move it up to about 1.5. The water pump is a cheap little fountain pump and comes on for 5 minutes in the morning which is enough to get all the cells soaked. You need one that will allow water to flow back through it when its off, most do this but they don't all say this on the box so you have to experiment. I'm using coco coir which stays wet for a long time, if you use another medium it might need more flooding times each day.

Don't skimp on the air pump. You really need the solution to be aerated well, its very important. I think I have the lights set to On 18 hrs Off 6 hrs.

I would definitely recommend building it yourself. I had to put mine out in the garage where it gets really cold and so I had to make a big covering to keep it warm. So I thought I might as well build a custom sized system from scratch that would hopefully last a long time. It's on wheels too

There are tons of do it yourself videos on you tube about how to build it cheap. Most of them aimed at marijuana growing but the principles are the same.

An update on non sprouted seeds:

Aji Pancas still nothing. I think it's a bad lot, but just got some new ones in the mail so will have another go.

Wasp. Only got one sprout last season and it died young, no surprises there.

Yellow Devils Tongue. New this season.

Bahamian Goat. Thought it had started but no

Good news is everything else has at least one sprout

Seacowboy · Aug 20, 2013

I had considered the resin idea but also thought of grout or something like that. Considered going the opposite direction of building up the bottom instead of cutting into the bottom piece but the cutting/routing will probably be an easier route to take. Thanks for the info and I'll also look at a few videos to come up with plan.

megamoo · Aug 28, 2013

*&^@$&^%@$^&*(@$*!!! APHIDS :hell:

Don't know how they got into the grow box but they are there and there's lots of them. I haven't been doing any other gardening and the grow box is closed up and inside a closed up garage too. Somehow they have found their way in. I probably brought them in

The plants are ready for the first pot up so I will spray them all systematically with death soap or something and move them outside to a hardening off greenhouse. Then I'll clean out the grow box and fit some screen material over the main vent, and fan intake. Probably won't get kill all of them but I'll be able to keep their numbers down until they go outside, then ladybirds will take care of business.

Can't post a picture its too horrific :sick:

PepperDaddler · Aug 29, 2013

Ladybugs completely wiped mine out, and moved on.

Dot Com · Aug 29, 2013

Sad to hear that mega. I've been chasing gnats around w/ a BBQ lighter for 2-3 weeks.

megamoo · Sep 9, 2013

PepperDaddler said:
Ladybugs completely wiped mine out, and moved on.

They are the best thing for aphids. I'm hoping they have a big appetite this spring.

Dot Com said:
Sad to hear that mega. I've been chasing gnats around w/ a BBQ lighter for 2-3 weeks.

I got some of those fungus gnats too. The trick to getting rid of them is to put hydrogen peroxide in the nutrient tank so it prevents fungus growing on the coco. Then they have nothing to feed on. I got slack doing that.

Quite a lot has happened since my last post. Potted up what I could and moved them into the new greenhouse. It was a long drawn out process because I squished all the aphids I could find on each individual seedling. Did my best to get them all but they are too small to see when babies so they'll probably come back Plus I had little kids parties to help organize and a lot of other stuff going on so the job was spread over the weekend.

This is what they looked like when I finally got around to dealing with them.

I'd let the reservoir evaporate off too much which is why they are a bit yellow.

Well past due for a pot up.

Two years of crappy homemade greenhouse/hardening off boxes got to me and I finally went and bought a good one. Looks roomy

I was planning to pot up at least 3 plants from every 8 cell punnet, but for a bunch of reasons I only did 2 for most. The first ones already look like they are loving the new digs.

stickman · Sep 9, 2013

Nice job Moo! The plastic covered frame for hardening off looks roomy now, but if you leave your plants in there for any length of time I bet they'll grow to fill it. I planted my supers in January and had to keep them inside until late April... after almost 4 months inside they took up about that many times more space than they did as small seedlings.

Dot Com · Sep 10, 2013

nice addition to your growing toolbox, a greenhouse. Yeah, that'll afford you more room to move around w/o having to deal w/ a bunch of individual grow boxes. It'll pay for itself in the reduced amount of aggravation alone

Super David · Sep 13, 2013

Those moths wont be able to get into that green house!!

megamoo · Sep 17, 2013

Thanks for all the comments but I was too quick to praise the greenhouse. The frame is standing up fine but the cover has blown off, all the ties holding it on have ripped off and the plastic has torn with some big gashes.

All it took was a few days of moderate wind, not even high winds.

I'm seriously pissed off. :mad:

Now I have to either take it all down and return it for a refund - IF I can find the receipt, and then I won't have a greenhouse... or break out the cable ties and duct tape and strap the futher mucker in hard.

Oh and my custom made mdf hydro tray wasn't sealed properly, despite pouring fibreglass resin into it and brushing it in. I think the sides of the channels I'd cut in with the router absorbed the resin and so they weren't sealed properly and water has been able to be soak in. A second coat would have fixed the problem but its too late now, plus I don't have the time to let it set. The surface is getting all bubbly, it will probably be ok for one more lot of seeds but after that will really start to come apart.

I will have to try and find a plastic tub that fits the space if I want to use the grow box again.

I need make a sacrifice to appease the chilli gods so the season isn't a total failure. :dance:

Dot Com · Sep 18, 2013

Not much can stand up to Mother Nature, given time anyway.

Super David · Sep 18, 2013

plenty of time in our long season to sort these things out!