hydroponic My pepper hydroponic grow experiment

Hi, i'm kinda new here.
late July i ate some of those mini sweet peppers and loved them. they are very small, about the size of a jalapeno, and expensive. about 7-8 dollars for a 1.5lbs bag.

decided to take a chance and saved some of the seeds to grow them.
 
anyhow, this is more of an experiment for me as it's my first time growing peppers in hydroponic. i have grown a lot of of other leafy greens in hydroponic so i'm using that knowledge i've learned over the years and applying it to peppers.
 
i took some of the seeds and they sprouted beginning of August. read bottom of post for things i've learned and more info..
 
i will try to post weekly updates on the progress. if anyone has any questions feel free to ask.
First week after sprouting
 
2l72Mma.jpg

 
Second Week
 
US0IH6F.jpg

 
Forth Week (forgot to take pics on week 3) they already out growing the 4 gal container. moving them for a 8 gallon next week.
 
UzxiF9Z.jpg

 

Couple things about these pepper plants.
 
They are a hybrid so there is no telling what i'll get, but so far things i've notice:
 
i planted 3 mini peppers colors: red, yellow and orange. two of the plants that are taller are both the yellow pepper plants, and the other two are the orange pepper seeds and those plants are more compact and are splitting off at the tip into different nodes, while the yellow pepper plants (which are taller) have not.. so all three types of seeds i've planted are growing distinctively to the pepper color. this seems promising so far. the moment of truth will be soon as they are already starting to send out bud flowers.

next time around i will not be using rockwool and will pre-sprout seeds and plant them into the moist clay peppers. since the water is recirculating/bubbling the rockwool is getting too wet despite water level being over an inch below the pots. it's not a bad thing to have the rockwool wet, plants like lettuce don't seem to mind, but from what i've learned so far peppers don't like too much water around the main root/stem area. so in the future i'll just stick with pebbles.
 
i am growing them in ph water of 5.8-6.2
each week as they grow, i increase PPM nutrients roughly 200ppm. they were started as seedling at 200, then moved to 400 and now they are at around 550ppm. i will continue go up around 2 more times to a max of around 750-800ppm
 
they are growing under a 250W 21,000 lumen MH, around 16 inches from the light. they were originally started using CFLs (6x 100W 1600L 6000k) and were transitioned to HID light on week 3-4.
 
im trying to get these plants to grow as compact/bushy as possible. they're only about 4-5 inches tall yet have nice thick strong stems.. a combination of low intense light and artificial wind.
 
it sure can get out of hand haha..

i'm growing greens in my bedroom! nothing like getting up in the morning to the smell of leafy greens lol..
however the cost of setup is minimal compared to buying produce.
 
LeqHHFA.jpg
 
Doing almost the same thing myself but im using a 5 gallon bucket and im actually overwintering some hab plants that have been outside since june. Im reluctant dig them up quite yet as for some reason this week has been 90 degrees all week and perfect for my pods to ripen.
 
update
 
plants are doing great, they are still rather short, around 8 inches tall and they are flowierng like crazy already.. it seems they are just growing way bushy with no upward growth.
 
i'll have some pictures later this evening.
 
put them in a larger reservoir last week, but appears that i may have to relocate the middle plant as the other 4 plants might over crowd it. the middle plant is the smallest as that one almost died when it sprouted due to the lack of water. it recovered fine, but it's a couple weeks behind other plants.

this is at 5 weeks since sprouting.
 
ucTacch.jpg


QX5WbwY.jpg


eUx6Z4y.jpg
 
so... i pollinated the first flower that had been wide open for about a day.. the next day the white pedal fell off and looked to be a pepper starting to develop, but the following day the entire blossom turned slighly yellow an fell off the plant. :(
 
goddamn peppers and their stupid sensitive blossom drop. maybe i should stick to growing tomatoes lol...
 
i have no idea why it dropped the first blossom as nutrients are fine, low nitrogen and only at 1/2 strength (i'm still under 600 PPM) and the plants look extremely healthy. i don't know..
 
Environment is an important factor. There's a 10 or 11 point list around this site that details the causes of flower drop if you poke around for it.
 
Other wise, nice set up :)
 
sevenstrings said:
Give 'em time, they will set when they are ready. Is that a DWC setup?
yeah, it's DWC with oxygen pump.
 
peppers just started to develop in the past week or so and already have several 1 inch size pods and blossom drop has stopped.
the strange part is i have another type of pepper growing (cherry hots) and that plant didn't suffer from blossom drop at all despite being in the same enviourment and being A LOT smaller. i wonder if different type of peppers are just more picky when i comes to blossom dropping. the blossome drop peppers are sweet peppers. i really beleive hot peppers are less prone to blossome drop than the sweeter varities..
 
i did however make some changes 2 weeks ago so i have no idea now if that was the "fix" or if it was because the plants were still small (they're now about 20 inches talll). before, the day and night temps were almost the same (about 80ish day and 80 ish night) so recently i started to cool the room at night so the temp dips 5-10 degrees at night compared to the day. i remember reading somewhere that says if night temps are not cooler than day temps it can cause blossom drop due to the plant neededing some cooler nights compared to day to create sugars (or something like that)..
 
anyhow i had to pull out 2 of the plants (and trash them, no room for them) because two of them were outgrowing the other two and smothering them. the two yellow color peppers were twice the size of the two orange pepper plants, sadly i was looking forward more to the orange as they are bit sweeter... i'll get some pics up when the lights turn on, they're sleeping ;)

 
here is a mild cherry hot (which didn't suffer from blossom drop) it's tiny, about 10-12 inches tall and has tons of peppers/flowers.. growing in a 32oz yogurt container DWC lol... these peppers came from a mild cherry hot i bought at stop and shop, just wanted to see if the seeds would sprout and peppers grow true (which appears they are - pods look like the shape of half an egg). next grow will be these as i liked them (excellent pickled - similar to a jalapeno, but sweeter) and the bonus is they appear to be extremely prolific. one of the terminal ends has like 6-8 peppers blossom coming out and about 20 more blossoms on such a small plant! gotta love buying a pepper for 18 cents and getting 2 packet of seeds out of em. :D

3hamBbR.jpg

 
0YPCxwK.jpg
 
I have one plant in DWC, a trinidad perfume. I've found if you reduce the water level they set pods better (as long as you got a good root system going). Man once those roots hit the water dwc is like a nitro boost!! :-)
Btw, cherry hot/cherry bombs are one of my favorite peppers all around and sauce making.

Yep, keep your night temps between 68-73 and you will be golden :-), better have room, dwc get big FAST!
 
pics of the plants that i started on first week of August.. they are 2 months old today, tons and tons of flowers, but some peppers too :D
pics came out kinda of shitty due to the HPS spectrum.. but you get the idea. check out the growth since Sept 8th on my last update! ended up with just 2 of the 5 plants i started with due to how big they got and my limited 250W HPS (with 30% added blue spectrum). the plants are extremely dense, this bulb rocks!
 
 
 
hrqxZe3.jpg

 
QktnpAU.jpg

hQ0MyL0.jpg

 
HNVty41.jpg
 
apologies for the late reply.

im using two "el cheapos" i bought from amazon. one came with my zero water filter and i picked up another one at amazon for around $10 to compare accuracy http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EQGX2WC?keywords=PPM%20meter&qid=1444967934&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

i compared the two and both are accurate within 10 ppms~
i'm lucky enough to have ultra clean city water, about 35-45 PPM..
for ph meter im using a more pricey one, Oakton, that i "borrowed" from my job, but honestly i wouldn't bother spending more than 15 bucks for a ph tester. you can test accuracy with soda, such as mountain dew which has a PH of about 3.2-3.3 i certainly won't drink it after knowing this, it's like battery acid lol...
 
Back
Top