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Next to My Chair

Been thinking about it.. pretty sure I'm growing peppers because I'm bored.  Like, deeply, existentially bored.  Plus, a little harmless pain never hurt anybody, right?  Hell, it's probably even good for you.  We'll see if those are good enough reasons, I guess.  I bought me some "Scotch Bonnet Orange" seeds from Amazon before I found you fine folk, lurked around here for a while, then planted them anyway along with other, infinitely less suspect seeds I ordered from far flung places around the globe(!) as recommended by the very venerable Vendor Vault.  I've got them growing here by my chair.  I sit here and read. (The wall to my right as I took this picture is lined with bookshelves I'm slowing filling as I try to forget the world each afternoon.  Mostly scifi the last few years.)  It would be distracting to have a big boxy tent looming over me, so I've just got them sitting there on a cardboard box.  I hope to replace the box with a little table here soon.
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My rig consists of something like a quarter of the full Amazon Indoor Garden of Tomorrow-orrow-orrow-orrow ®.  This LED light I got is something else, man.  It's REALLY bright!  Paper towel germination, used a few Jiffy pellets, stuck some seeds straight in some old Miracle Grow I had, kept them in the Jiffy box there until they sprouted.  I'm glad to be rid of that Jiffy dome now; it was a pain in the ass.  Ahh.. let's see.. I'm mixing CNS17 Grow into RO/DI water, testing and adjusting up with GH pH kit, pouring it over my little darlings there in about 3:1 coco:perlite.  Just culled and potted up today to 3.5 inches.  All seems to be going well except for some slight canoeing of leaves, which I'm ready to blame on the 24% humidity (We wake up half mummified in the winter.  I know - grow tent.) and a few early spills on my rug.  Trying to keep it simple and not drive myself crazier futzing with dozens of parameters here, so I'm not going to sweat it unless things turn worse.  I'm not!  Worry verges on religion with me, so this will either be therapeutic or turn out to have been a bad idea.. 
Any and all comments or criticisms are very welcome and I thank you all most warmly for having me and schooling me and reading my noodlings! 
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Well as someone from a family who has raised rabbits for a very very long time I can safely say that if they want in that bad boy they will easily chew through that. Rabbits chew through regular chicken wire with ease, but it should help deter them at least esp if there is otehr green around to eat.
 
At worst early spring would liekly have the highest risk when there is not a ton of other food around for a few weeks. Same would go with mice and squirrels, if they really wanted something in that tent they would get in, or use the nylon for nesting which happends to me all the time through the winter. I had to make sure everythign was in hard totes and lids were down tight and have even had mice chew through those before sadly.
 
Yeah, good point Matt.  I didn't think that through all the way.  Birds and cats sure, but if rats or rabbits want in they can chew their way through most things.  I see them chew through the flexible green vinyl garden fencing all the time.  Perhaps a deterrent, but perhaps not enough of one for rodents.  I have the most trouble with rabbits early spring with very small peppers or seedlings of other plants and then at the end of summer the rats (and maybe rabbits too) will come after the adult plants and he rats will strip the "bark" and eat the peppers.  Absolutely hate those rats.  Hope those peppers burn 'em good at both ends!
 
UE, that twilight's looking alright.  Seems to be setting well and is open enough the light's getting down to those low laterals which look ready to bush it out nicely. I like pods as much as the next guy, but I really like the plants themselves when they're grown well.
 
Friday.  Just spent an embarrassingly long time waiting for water to heat to temperature, missing, waiting again for it to cool, then calibrating the $15 pH meter I received from Amazon today, supposedly to within .01.  (Okay..)
 
Good news: The three gallon jugs on hand with nutrient solution in them read within .05 of each other.  They had all been adjusted with drops and a vial, which was what I had until today.  Pretty neat.
 
Bad news: All three jugs read high on the meter.  I got 6.93, 6.95, and 6.98.
 
Please discuss.  Assuming the meter is accuratish, what have I done, exactly?  I imagine the consistently too-alkaline water has interfered in the plants' relationship with some or other nutrient(s)?
 
Also, please.. to what pH should I be adjusting?  I always see "5.5 - 6.5," which sounds absurd to me.  I'm not a chemistry guy, but I know the pH scale is logarithmic..
 
Hey UE.  New gear to play with!  Cool stuff. Here's a link to the chart I'm used to always seeing regarding the effect of pH on the ability of plants to take in nutrients - https://www.epicgardening.com/ph-nutrient-availability/
 
Also, 5.5-6.5 doesn't seem absurd to me on a logarithmic scale.  That would just mean they prefer the acidic side of neutral, that it's a broader pH range than might be intuitive considering ranges of equal numeric spread closer to neutral, and that 6.0 isn't the middle of the range.
 
I think pH is more critical for hydro than soil, though important for both, and typically people aim lower for hydro, but I'll be hanging around and waiting for the more knowledgeable folks to weigh in and hopefully can up my pepper pH game.  When I do Kratky I aim for the highish 5's.  Now I'm curious if I'm doing it right!
 
I mean.. isn't 5.5 ten times more acidic than 6.5?  That seems like a helluva range.
 
Cayenne pods seem to be doing okay, though I have no personal experience to inform my judgment..  They're still growing, anyway.  Some are around four inches long.  All are still green.
 
Here's a biggun.
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I figure at a pH of 7 I'm at least five times more alkaline than I should be (five times if I'm shooting for 6.5, which I haven't been, lol).  That sounds bad.  I'm going to start replacing all my solution in the morning.
 
Cayennes, dunno.  I'll probably cut the first one off the plant and stick it straight in my mouth.
 
Ok Unc, I'll discuss but all I can do is throw in what little bit I think I know and I don't know a whole lot about pH except our well water is low. I started testing our well water with an aquarium test kit 20 years ago because of blue stain and knew quicklike after buying the 10 year old house the water needed some serious work because it was eating the copper pipes. The low limit of my test kit is 6.0 and that's always where the raw water comes in. I have a friend who works for a water district in Pensacola and their lab testing goes down to 6.0. I guess the premise is if it's below 6, you're screwed anyway so it don't matter. So I added a neutralizer tank in 2000 which adjusts to 7.6 and saved the pipes after only two conversions to pex. Yay.
 
Point is, I never knew how acidic our well water is until I got one of those Dr. Meter tester gizmos the other day. I haven't calibrated it with the buffers because I don't have de-ionized water but tested it against known standards. It seems quite accurate and now I know our water is waaay below 6.0. It's 4.6. When I mix full strength 9.5-18-38 MasterBlend hydro fertilizer, it goes all the way up to 4.7. For the purpose of hydroponics, I'm almost done because the plants are moving outside to the garden very soon. I guess high acid water is much better than high alkaline water for plants so I reckon I'll just keep adding hardwood ash to my outdoor growing media.
 
DWB said:
I guess high acid water is much better than high alkaline water for plants
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If you're getting away with 4.7 I'd better hope so - otherwise I've got something else wrong.  5.5 - 6.5 being on the acid side of things.. makes sense.  We'll see after a few days, I guess.
 
 
Uncle_Eccoli said:
Thanks!  The pH in the bucket was 8.12.  :doh:
 
Seems some plants can get by in alkaline conditions, DWB
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How did your pH get so high? Do you have rotten well water?
 
Trent has done a lot of research on proper pH for pepper plants. He likes 6.2. No higher than 6.5. 7.5 is way too high.
 
So, it's good to know your plant is doing well at over 8.0 pH and mine are okay at well below 5.0. This begs the question, what differences would we see if we adjust to 6.2 to 6.5?
 
I'm not concerned about it now. I have an alternative low pH test kit coming from China soon so that will back up the new meter. Regardless, there's no way in hell I'm gonna adjust garden water slightly higher while I adjust my house a whole bunch higher.
 
Hopefully we'll hear more discussion from those who are more fluent in pH and the real consequences at the outer limits on both ends.
 
 
I have extremely hard water, we had to install a softener when we moved in 2 years ago. I have not since checked the PH of my water which I should certainly do I spose. Plants seem to be ok though but badly need to add some salts as it ran out about 2 weeks ago now.
 
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