MRZ 2012 Season

sicman · Jan 20, 2012

looking good good luck with the grow

MGOLD86 · Jan 20, 2012

Looks great! My list (of supers at least) is very similar. I am definitely gonna follow this.

My Douglahs and Yellow 7s came from THSC (like yours), and it is about 12 days and the Douglah is about to open up to the light but the yellow 7s havent budged. I am interested in your germ rate with their seeds. I will definitely check back to see.

Good Luck

Matt

mrz1988 · Jan 20, 2012

sicman said:
looking good good luck with the grow

Thanks!

MGOLD86 said:
Looks great! My list (of supers at least) is very similar. I am definitely gonna follow this.

My Douglahs and Yellow 7s came from THSC (like yours), and it is about 12 days and the Douglah is about to open up to the light but the yellow 7s havent budged. I am interested in your germ rate with their seeds. I will definitely check back to see.

Good Luck

Matt

From my experience the supers germinate to seed leaves in 12-21 days generally, depending on a lot of factors. I'm on day 12 too so feel free to use me as a bit of a benchmark haha. I'll definitely keep you posted on mine, what temps/medium are you using for germination? Until yesterday I was germinating at incredibly LOW temps (around 65-70F, and probably dipping under 65 at night) and it didn't seem to hinder too much, all of the seeds seem to be swelling nicely and almost half have popped at least their first growth out. I got a heating mat and that has my temps around 75-80F and higher humidity in there so I'm hoping that helps speed things up. Seems to be working already. The yellow 7s aren't looking too far along yet but I think I might have seen one of them pop? Can't remember on the Douglahs I'd have to check again. I'll keep you posted.

SuperHot · Jan 20, 2012

Lots of nukes!!
They look really happy too!!

PIC 1 · Jan 21, 2012

Nice start!

Good luck with the rest of your grow!

Greg

S.S.Tupperware · Jan 21, 2012

nice are those rapid rooters? I don't care for the horticubes, might have to try them out...

mrz1988 · Jan 21, 2012

SuperHot said:
Lots of nukes!!
They look really happy too!!

Thanks! I haven't tried a large season yet and I just knew I had to try a ton of supers.

PIC 1 said:
Nice start!

Good luck with the rest of your grow!

Greg

Thanks Greg I'm hoping my babies stay happy.

S.S.Tupperware said:
nice are those rapid rooters? I don't care for the horticubes, might have to try them out...

They are Bio-Dome plugs from Park Seed along with their whole 60 cell setup. I heard great things but the holes are pretty deep, probably around 3/4". I thought the seeds might get hung up but have been pleased so far with them. They have real nice capillary action. This is also my first season using a prop and it's nice to be able to put a half inch of water in the bottom and not have to worry about it all the time.

Well it's snowing pretty hard outside but its a steamy 85F in my prop. My lucky little guys have it better than I do. A couple more guys are poking up so I might make a brief update later today. Thanks for all the kind wishes.

mrz1988 · Jan 23, 2012

I'm on Day 15 of germination now and things are starting to go a little crazy go nuts inside the prop. Figured I'd give a little update. Out of 13 strains 10 have shown signs of life.

The three strains that haven't even cracked their seeds yet are:

Red Bhut Jolokia
Douglah
Yellow 7 Pot

Crossing my fingers that I get them to pop in the next couple of days so I can have a full arsenal! Here are the numbers for the rest of the seeds in rough order of germination:

Primo (2/4)
Barrackpore (3/5)
Butch T (2/4)
TSMB (4/4)
Brain Strain Red (1/4)
Brain Strain Yellow (1/4)
Bhut Yellow (1/4)
Jonah (2/4)
Naga Morich (1/4)
Bhut Chocolate (1/4)

There might have been more seeds that have cracked open than that but they are hard to see. I will know better in a couple of days when I start seeing more loops and cotyledons. Right now I have a good 16 seeds that have spread their seed leaves and more to come. I won't be giving up on too many seeds until next weekend when I'm gonna start round 2 of germinating.

Pictures coming before the end of the day. Until then I'm gonna grab a cheesesteak I think and load it up with some of my hot pepper mayo sauce. MMmmm

Edit:
Now that I've eaten and had some time to fiddle with things, here's a few pictures for you guys.

Two on right are Butch T, two on left are 7 Pot Jonahs.

My last TSMB looks like its got a helmet. Nice that I had 100% germination on my own seed stock.

My Brain Strain worked its way out of its helmet to show 3 cotyledons! Her friend is a Yellow Bhut.

Two Barrackpore at the back, 7 Pot Primo on the Right, Yellow Brain Strain to the left of the Primo.

Okay, so after two weeks of steady 24-0 using this guy (45W 5500K CFL):

I decided that the light focused at the top center of the dome was bending my seedlings too much. I found myself rotating the plugs and I'm far too lazy to keep doing that until Saturday when they move to their pots. To counteract it, I decided to bring out some big guns. I grabbed my 90W LED and hung it a little above the dome. It should give it a sea of light and my babies won't be trying to stretch to the CFL anymore. I grabbed my timer too and decided to switch to a 20-4 light cycle for now, and will probably drop that to 18-6 soon.

Don't mind my messy closet I started cleaning it out a bit. Found an empty bottle of Glenfiddich 15 in there... signs that I had a good time one night I guess. Updates to come, thanks for following.

mrz1988 · Jan 23, 2012

Just put another strain in the prop. Four seeds of my Manzano Amarillo have been sown. Now that they're starting to pop, I have to start thinking about my new lighting!

Can anyone recommend a T5 fixture? I'm probably going to place an order for one today.

PIC 1 · Jan 23, 2012

You might want to take the dome off the seed flat, you can cook the young sprouts.

How close can you bring the light to the plants? Does it get hot?

Greg

mrz1988 · Jan 23, 2012

PIC 1 said:
You might want to take the dome off the seed flat, you can cook the young sprouts.

How close can you bring the light to the plants? Does it get hot?

Greg

Nah the light itself doesn't put out much heat at all since it's an LED. Temps inside the dome don't get over 85F and temps on the lights surface are around the same, perhaps a bit cooler. They're really nice for starting plants since they're pretty much burn proof.

mrz1988 · Jan 27, 2012

Update 1/27 (Day 19)

So I've been at school the past three days and left my babies at home chillin in their prop. Lots of true leaves starting to show, but it seems that several strains have curled up leaves. Not entirely sure what the issue is yet, but I'm hoping to transplant these babies soon and hopefully it'll help. It could be mold that I can't see or perhaps I was cooking the roots a bit with the heating mat. I have the mat on a thermostat now to keep the bottom of the plugs at only 80F and hopefully that'll help. I also took the dome off because I think the humidity in there was getting a little crazy. It'll go back on when I can get the seedlings in their own pots, and hopefully that'll happen tomorrow. I'm also waiting on my new toy to come in the mail but that might have to wait until next weekend. I'll leave that a secret until I can show it.

So far I'm still waiting to see my Yellow 7s and Red Bhuts to pop. They are my straggler strains. I seem to have had poor germination rates this year with several strains. Many of my varieties had a germ rate of 1/4 this far with no new activity seen in the last 5 days. More to come on that later I suppose

So! I'm a scientific type person so let's get into experiment #1 for the year! I'll be doing this in a loose lab format that won't quite be science journal material but will be conducted like a regular experiment.

Preliminary Abstract: This experiment will be carried out this season to determine any phenotypical differences between the Trinidad Scorpion Morouga Blend and the 7 Pot Brain Strain Red varieties. At least one plant of each variety will be grown side-by-side and carefully monitored under similar conditions. Myself as well as members of the forum will give their input as to what differences they observe (In my plants as well as from past experiences) in a double-blind test. Only I will know which plants are of which varieties from here on out in the pictures, and we will see if any differences are noticeable enough to call them different strains.

Hypothesis: I'm not sure what to expect with this experiment right now. Part of me thinks that there will be absolutely no difference between the two strains. The rest thinks that there will be differences, but they will be so slight that it will be hard to draw that line between 'similar strains but different' or 'slight genetic variation of the same strain'. I think it's safe to say that just as the Bhut Jolokia and the Naga Morich, these two strains have a recent common ancestor.

Potential Error: I expect this experiment to be given some peer review as there will be some definite problems with erroneous data. Problems I expect to have include lack of a diverse data set (I will be growing at most two of each of these plants as I currently only have one brain strain sprout) and difficulty determining the difference between properties of a new strain and differences in phenotype in the same strain.

So before we can begin to answer the question posed in the experiment I have a question for all of you: What exactly constitutes a new strain? How can we say that a new strain has definitely been created/isolated?

More pictures are coming later today probably so stay tuned

MGOLD86 · Jan 27, 2012

Matt, such a cool name, but I think in order to PROPERLY label a NEW strain or pepper, one of two things need to happen. 1, a new pepper that has previously never been named/identified/found needs to be found and test against similar strains in order to determine that it is in fact a new pepper. 2, a cross needs to be created, isolated, and stabilized over many many seasons. Once it is stable, it should still be grown a number of times with the same results to be a new pepper (cross).

I think this is going to be a great experiment. I really look forward to this, and I am also growing the two strains and am curious myself to the differences.

My only question is on the double blind. Are you going to also be in the dark? Who will be the control?

mrz1988 · Jan 28, 2012

MGOLD86 said:
Matt, such a cool name, but I think in order to PROPERLY label a NEW strain or pepper, one of two things need to happen. 1, a new pepper that has previously never been named/identified/found needs to be found and test against similar strains in order to determine that it is in fact a new pepper. 2, a cross needs to be created, isolated, and stabilized over many many seasons. Once it is stable, it should still be grown a number of times with the same results to be a new pepper (cross).

I think this is going to be a great experiment. I really look forward to this, and I am also growing the two strains and am curious myself to the differences.

My only question is on the double blind. Are you going to also be in the dark? Who will be the control?

I'm probably not going to be in the dark on this because it will just be too hard to hide the identity of the plants from myself. Because of this I'm just going to keep all talk about the 'experiment' down to descriptions and not opinions. I'll of course have my own two cents on what I think, but since I'll most likely be biased I will keep my thoughts to myself until the end. I'm hoping some members of the forum will have some good opinions on the matter. I'm probably going to grow 2 TSMBs and 1 Brain Strain so it will be a kind of "which one is the brain strain?" contest. I think in order for them to be considered separate strains, almost everyone will have to agree on which is the different plant.

Your second point on hybridization has been a clear method of creating new strains for a very long time. The problem lies in the first point, when exactly can we say that we've 'discovered' a new strain? Geographic isolation over many generations might make a new strain in the wild, but I think it would take ten or twenty seasons at the very least to start seeing any differences at all. Then, of course, there's artificial speciation which is done by selecting from certain plants/pods in a crop and growing from those seeds for many generations. This probably will cause speciation to happen a bit faster. The problem is, it's a gradient. If you really wanted to call your seeds from the third generation of selection as a new strain you probably could, and I'm not sure how many would call you out on it. But how many seasons are required to create enough difference to call it a new species, and how much difference needs to be seen?

The Naga Morich is a prime example of a strain that was grown out long enough to be considered a new species. The fruits are a bit shorter and fatter than the Bhut, and the Nagas produce much better. However, their common ancestor goes back only a dozen or two seasons. I think the Brain Strain and the TSMB are of the exact same effect. They may not have been ACTIVELY selected for, but they have been separated for a few seasons which is enough for them to get at least a small amount of genetic drift.

I am 100% convinced that all scorpions and 7 pots have a common ancestor within the last 100 years, and I believe the Bhut Jolokia and Indian supers are part of that same Trinidadi line. The Bhuts got separated somewhere around 150-200 years ago when seeds were brought to India from Trinidad and that many generations can significantly change a strain. I'll have to find the article that talks about it but it's really fascinating to think about.

So BASICALLY I'm positive that the TSMB and Brain Strain were the same strain ten years ago. The question is whether they changed enough to be called different strains today.

mrz1988 · Feb 5, 2012

Update 2/5!

So! It's been a few days. I just planted another full 60-cell block of seedlings to start rounding out the end of my grow list. Having a good time growing so far even though it hasn't been all great things with the plants. I feel like this is the first season that I've had the materials I wanted to do everything I want, the problem is learning how to use them all correctly.

Here are the new strains I started:

Scotch Bonnet Papa Joe
Scotch Bonnet Foodarama
Trinidad Perfume
Congo Black
Fatalii
Fatalii White
CGN 21500
Aji Amarillo
Lemon Drop
Rain Forest
Zapotec Jalapeno
Alma Paprika
NM Joe E. Parker
Mulato Isleno
Wild Tepin

I expect them to start germinating in a week or so. Nothing happening in the prop yet, just a nice steamy 85F of glory.

As far as my super hots, not all of them had great germ rates and I had to widdle down the number of plants to only 20 since I can't really eat THAT many supers. Here's what I have left after widdling down their numbers:

1x TS Butch T
2x TS Morouga Blend
2x 7 Pot Jonah
1x 7 Pot Brain Strain
1x 7 Pot Brain Strain Yellow
2x 7 Pot Primo
2x 7 Pot Barrackpore
2x Douglah
2x Bhut Jolokia Red
2x Bhut Jolokia Chocolate
2x Bhut Jolokia Yellow
1x Naga Morich

Plus I germinated and saved 2 Manzano Amarillo (my first pubs!) to grow as well. They are just barely cracking the surface though so I'm waiting to see more out of them. All 22 plants have been transplanted to small plastic cups with nice cut drainage holes. I used MG Organic soil for now as I'm waiting for my good soil to come in the mail. I figure it'll be okay for now even though I hate MG, it was the only thing I could pick up on short notice. It looked nice and fresh so I didn't mind using it. I put all the cups in aluminum catering pans and threw them back in my closet under my 90W LED light. They seem to be eating it up and very happy now. A week ago I had a lot of cotyledon issues after a light ferting, but since I caught it early the damage is minimal. What really killed me was forgetting to water for two days last weekend while the seedlings were still in plugs, and I nearly lost three seedlings. The most damaged one is my Yellow Brain which is currently barely hanging on. Both cotyledons died, and with no other foliage on the plant it has been slowly starting new growth. I think it'll pull through, but I'm germinating more just in case. At this point it's pretty much just an experiment to see how resiliant seedlings can be.

Well here's some pics for you guys

On top of all this, I got a brand new toy this week! It's a 4' 8 bulb Quantum Badboy T5HO setup. Pot growers have been RAVING about this setup so I had to get the light. I got it for around $180, plus bulbs: half 2900K, half 6500K for a nice, full spectrum. Of course I wouldn't dare use it already since I simply don't need that much light right now. Not a fan of my babies having a suntan! I'll break it out once I have more plants and my supers are a bit bigger.

Here's a nice little preview shot. Hopefully you'll get to see it in action soon!

PaulG · Feb 10, 2012

Hey, Matt - Your seedlings are coming along nicely. Your experiment on crossing will be very interesting. I'm really not into supers yet, but will follow your grow log with interest. And, dude! That's one honkin' light fixture! Nice score :clap:

mrz1988 · Feb 13, 2012

Hey everybody!

A little update. It's been a little over a week since I planted my second seed flat of the year. The seeds were poppin faster than I could believe and I had great germ rates really quickly. I even through in a few Charleston Cayenne seeds that I had left over from the 2010 season. I wasn't sure they were going to germinate since they were from somewhat immature dried pods, so I planted 3 seeds in one cell... but check this out:

3 seeds, 3 loops, 8 days... I'm pretty stoked. Sorry for the bad picture I'm still working on my photography and my camera has a low-res LCD screen.

I think the Zapotec Jalapenos want some more light what do you guys think?

My first pube ever! A Manzano Amarillo. Mmm hairy...

A TSMB looking nice and strong under her LEDs

And of course, my success story for the year so far... A Yellow Brain that defied death! I had a bit of a watering problem a couple weeks back and the thing keeled over from being bone dry. The cotyledons dried and shriveled and its one true baby leaf died as well. I think she's looking a bit better now and might even make it through the season!

Here she is:

As for my grow it seems to be going pretty well. I found what I think are springtails in some of my soil. Never buying MG again. Doesn't seem to be a crazy bad infestation but I can't seem to catch a picture of one. Haven't seen one jump or seen the tail yet though so I'm wondering if they might be something else. They are very tiny, long-bodied insects living in the soil, white to silverish in color. Probably less than 1mm in length and I haven't seen any plants pissed off yet so that's good. I guess it's a wait and see, let me know if anyone knows what they might be.

Here's a nice little shot of my supers to finish with (and 2 Manzanos in the back left)

Good luck with your seasons everyone else!

MGOLD86 · Feb 15, 2012

Looking good Matt! That Manzo is pretty sick. Cant wait to see it grow out!

mrz1988 · Feb 16, 2012

MGOLD86 said:
Looking good Matt! That Manzo is pretty sick. Cant wait to see it grow out!

Thanks Matt! I gotta find out why they're growing slow I'm using so much new equipment this year there's a lot of new variables to figure out. I guess its a learning curve but I'm pretty sure they're just hungry