MRZ 2012 Season

mrz1988 · Feb 29, 2012

Update 2/29/12

Okay guys it's been a little bit but I've been incredibly busy with school lately. Lab reports and exams are killing me I've been pulling some long days and late nights.

Anyway today I finally had some time to get home through some snow and check on my plants. I saw a couple problems but we'll get into that in a minute, first let's check out the new light I put in today!

She's a Quantum BadBoy T5HO 4' 8 bulb setup. Runs at around 230/460W depending on if you're running four or eight bulbs on it. Since it's still a bit early I have it running only the middle four bulbs, 2x 6500K and 2x 2700K. You can really see the difference in color looking at the bulbs and it's pretty cool. The light coming out of it is about as close to daylight as you can get and I've been really impressed by it so far. The only downfall is it doesn't have a fan for ventilation but I'll be putting one in later today.

A few more pics:

On to the problems I've been having. The majority of my plants are currently planted in 100% Fox Farm Ocean Forest and the rest in MG Organic soil. I've been fertilizing mainly the superhots (which are in the MG soil) at half strength 5-4-4 FF Grow Big and a bit of CalMag. The plants in the FF Ocean Forest have barely been fertilized at all since I figured the Ocean Forest has much higher nute concentration.

My C. chinenses in the FF soil have been having a couple of issues with what I fear might be N burn? They're so young it's tough to tell for me but one strain in particular, the Fatalii White, has had big issues with white/yellow leaves. Here's a pic:

Is this nute burn? Should I try flushing the soil even though it hasn't really been fertilized? The other strains aren't showing enough of an effect for me to be terribly concerned, just this strain.

A couple other problems:

TSMB:

Could be a root problem, I've had a couple issues with mold this year since my soil hasn't been drying out very fast at all. It hasn't been a cold or dry winter this year so the soil just doesn't dry on top like I'd like. This is the ONLY plant that is doing this, and it's sister (another TSMB) is showing no problems at all. I might just end up scrapping this one if it doesn't get better in the next week or two.

Lastly:

Wonder what this is? I thought it might be a virus for a little bit but the new growth has looked normal so I can't really say it's not going to fix itself. Could have been another problem with mold I suppose. I'm not too concerned about this since the new growth looks normal. Baaad year with mold goddamn... I might just bump up my fert strength and cut my watering in half...

On a cheery note here's another Manzano shot because I think they look so damn cool

Things are growing... maybe not as fast as I'd like to but they're growing. Still not an expert at this whole growing thing haha. Hopefully I get going good this year things are looking fairly promising.

mrz1988 · Mar 3, 2012

It's been three days since my last update and I just wanted to say how great the new light has been doing with my plants. My growth rate seems to have doubled. I'm only using half the bulbs too! Pics coming before the end of the weekend, but anyone looking for a new light should seriously consider the BadBoy. Awesome light.

mrz1988 · Mar 24, 2012

Okay so it's been a little while. I've been insanely busy and it's making this season harder than normal for me. I'm home two days a week, and the rest of the week I'm 50 miles away. As a result it's been challenging to keep the plants growing their best, especially since there aren't too many others I trust with my plants. I've already had a bit of an over fertilizing problem this season that set me back at least 3 weeks. Still things are coming along.

I'm going to repot on Monday I think, and I'll have to make a couple changes to my grow area. I might have to thin the numbers a bit or move the ones I'm not as worried about under a different light. I'm working on building a box to keep them in and help reflect light back to the edges that aren't getting as much light.

Hopefully more updates soon, but here's more pretty pics!

Grow Area:

Some Annuums:

Some Supers:

Tomato!:

The CGN21500, which I have BIG plans for later this season (more on that next update):

And of course my favorite, Mr. Fuzzy the Manzano:

mrz1988 · Mar 31, 2012

Okay so I've rearranged things in my closet a bit to allow for more growing room and put a lot of my plants in larger containers. I actually drilled some 3/8" holes in the bottom of about 3 dozen 40oz cups from Subway and I'm using those as pots for a lot of my plants now.

So I'm a little behind but the plants seem like they're ready to take off now that I've potted them back up. They're the healthiest they've been all year now that I've taken a bit more care to come see them more often. It's probably a good thing that they didn't take off before now, because I would have run out of room for a lot of them!

So here are the varieties I currently have going, mostly 1 or 2 plants of each, 72 in total:

Supers:
Bhut Jolokia
Chocolate Bhut
Yellow Bhut
Barrackpore
Primo
Brain Strain
Yellow Brain aka Cookie
Jonah
TSMB
Butch T Scorp
Douglah
Naga Morich

Other chinense strains:
Fatalii
Fatalii White
Congo Black
Papa Joe's Scotch Bonnet
Foodarama Scotch Bonnet
Trinidad Perfume
CGN 21500

Annuums:
Zapotec Jalapeno
Numex Joe E Parker
Red Mini Bell
Banana
Charleston Hot
Mulato Isleno
Alma Paprika

Other Capsicums:
Rain Forest (c. bac.)
Lemon Drop (c. bac.)
Aji Amarillo (c. bac.)
Manzano Amarillo (c. pub.)

Other plants:
Cilantro
Basil
Chives
Big Boy Hybrid Tomatoes

A few plants are going out to friends/family in the coming weeks.

Brain Strain vs. Moruga Blend:

So I figure I'll update you guys on my experiment. Like I said, only I'm going to know which ones are which from here on out in the grow until the plants finish. I'll try to get specific pics of the plants next weekend, but for now it's really too early to make any claims. Right now my hypothesis is that they are different. One of the strains is growing faster than the other but for now I can attribute that to a dozen different things (fertilizing, watering, problems with early growth, etc). When they're bigger we can start talking about leaf shape, and eventually pod shape, etc. I'm predicting that the Moruga Blend will have much more symmetrical pods, but other than that they won't have many significant differences.

Hybrids:

I'm going to try my hand at...erm... 'mating' some plants this year (wink, wink). My purple CGN 21500 has some really interesting characteristics that I'd like to see hybridized with other strains, so I want to try a CGN 21500 x Yellow Brain and CGN 21500 x some color Bhut, just to see what comes out. I'm thinking about other cool strains to cross and haven't settled on anything yet, so I'm open to suggestions! F1s have always fascinated me and I'd like to have a ton in my garden for 2013.

And a couple more pics:

Thanks for reading.

hornilla · Apr 1, 2012

Your plants look great and your plans for hybridization sound great too. I'm also thinking about doing some CGN 21500 hybrids and also some with Bode Roxa and Pimenta da Neyde. I hope it will work and am Petty curious what i will get.

mrz1988 · Apr 9, 2012

BIG UPDATE

Wow it's been a ridiculous couple of weeks in the grow room. A lot has changed and I'm getting some edema problems. More on that later on. I have a lot of pics to share so I might have to post some tomorrow. For now I give you the update on the Brain Strain vs Moruga experiment!!

Here's a few shots of both plants side-by-side. I have two TSMBs but I only used one for these pictures to make the Brain Strain a bit harder to identify. The two TSMBs are showing traits that I think are VERY similar so I didn't want to give too much away by putting them both next to the Brain Strain! I think that's a big step forward in this experiment. Remember that this is a blind test so no one but me knows which is which until the grow is over.

BRAIN STRAIN VS TS MORUGA BLEND UPDATE

"Plant 1" is on the left, "Plant 2" is on the right.

Plant 1:
Plant 1 has shown slightly droopier and more wrinkled growth than plant 2. Its new leaves curl out more. It is showing early signs of edema as many of my plants are so... try to ignore that. Solutions are coming (fingers crossed)

Now I'm no good at checking out leaf shape and stem growth. Maybe you guys can help me more with that.

Update on Plant 2 coming next

Plant 2:

This one has less curly leaf growth. Ignore the soil splash on the stem. Let me know what you see!

So which is which? Any ideas?

Spicegeist · Apr 9, 2012

What were the seed sources for the BS and TSM?

mrz1988 · Apr 10, 2012

The Brain strain is from Judy (pepperlover) and the TSMB is from stock I have after growing jukkas seed last year. It's a wait and see for purity I guess but I'm more worried about the brain than the TSMB.

Dulac · Apr 19, 2012

That's tough to tell, lol. I think the first one shows a subtle TSMB characteristic I think I've noticed (heart-like leaf shape) that differentiates it from the brain strain. The last pic of the second one shows a similar characteristic (it's more rounded at the leaf's tip though). The second to the last pic of plant 2 has a heart shape but it's not as defined at the top part of the leaf. The rest of the leaves look non-morouga-ish. I haven't had a brain strain grow yet, so I don't know about that one. I could be wrong because I haven't grown my morouga long enough to capture more of the plant's behavior. I could be way off though! If I'm wrong, then I cannot tell the two apart.

mrz1988 · Apr 19, 2012

Dulac said:
That's tough to tell, lol. I think the first one shows a subtle TSMB characteristic I think I've noticed (heart-like leaf shape) that differentiates it from the brain strain. The last pic of the second one shows a similar characteristic (it's more rounded at the leaf's tip though). The second to the last pic of plant 2 has a heart shape but it's not as defined at the top part of the leaf. The rest of the leaves look non-morouga-ish. I haven't had a brain strain grow yet, so I don't know about that one. I could be wrong because I haven't grown my morouga long enough to capture more of the plant's behavior. I could be way off though! If I'm wrong, then I cannot tell the two apart.

I've noted some things on the plants as well. I agree that it's hard to tell the difference between the two but I've been noticing subtle differences. What I've been looking at is a bit different than just leaf shape. I obviously won't share that much because I don't want to give away if your assumptions are right or not until we can look at the pods from both plants

I have two of the TSMB plants. Perhaps the coolest thing I've noticed, and the reason why I don't have a plant 3 showing the second TSMB, is because it looks so damn similar to its brother that I think it would make the experiment obvious! Plants will change leaf shape leaf to leaf and throughout their growing season. It's not one leaf that will give you a definitive answer, it's the trend amongst all of the leaves, and perhaps more importantly, how the new leaves start to form!

My babies are itching to go outside. It's been so warm here I'm tempted to start hardening off right now but finals are coming up and I don't have the garden prepared. I'll start hardening off in a week or two and then they go in the ground when night temps are in the 50s.

The Howster · Apr 19, 2012

Based on which looks most like my TSMB I'd say plant 2, although theres not alot in it especially since they may be the same thing

seaman · Jun 19, 2012

so... what happened? I'm really interested in noticing the growth and the differences between the two plants

gnslngr · Jun 19, 2012

...and then.....