Ohjay's 2017 smaller indoor grow

Malarky · Jan 27, 2017

Welcome Back!

Illsstep · Jan 27, 2017

I'm looking forward to following this! Indoor grows fascinate me. Can you talk a bit about your grow area? What size, what lights you use, what you use for air circulation and ventilation, if you do anything to manage humidity, etc.?

Ohjay · Jan 27, 2017

Malarky said:
Welcome Back!

Thank you.

I'll promise to not go MIA this season

Illsstep said:
I'm looking forward to following this! Indoor grows fascinate me. Can you talk a bit about your grow area? What size, what lights you use, what you use for air circulation and ventilation, if you do anything to manage humidity, etc.?

This is a pure apartment indoor grow so space is definitely an issue. I have two shelves that I use for plants and I use a combination of T5 lights and Mars Hydro LED(it depends on growth stage). But most of my plants are on my windowsills and rely solely on sunlight.

I never bother with humidity because it's generally quite high.
In terms of ventilation I use small fans(USB-powered that don't move a lot of air) for the plants on the windowsills and a big floor fan for the plants on the shelves(because heat is an issue there).

If you look at my glog from last year you'll see some pictures of my setup last year(which was the first using lights): http://thehotpepper.com/topic/58655-2016-is-ohjays-year-of-the-habanero/
There'll be images of my setup in this glog as well, and if you want to see anything specific, just ask and I'll try to accommodate.

tsurrie · Jan 27, 2017

Nice list Oscar. Good luck with the grow.
Will be following...
:cheers:

Devv · Jan 27, 2017

Good luck this season. I'm looking forward to your glog.

Ohjay · Jan 30, 2017

tsurrie said:
Nice list Oscar. Good luck with the grow.
Will be following...

Devv said:
Good luck this season. I'm looking forward to your glog.

Thanks to the both of you!

The seeds were planted on saturday and now the usual impatient waiting game is on. :lol:

The final list ended up being the 23 varieties above the line in my first post.
I'm going to try my hardest not to plant any more... but I've said the same every season and still end up planting more anyway :crazy:

Trident chilli · Jan 30, 2017

Good luck my friend ... 23 an odd number I am sure you could find a few more varieties. All the very best for a indoor aphid free grow

Ohjay · Jan 30, 2017

Trident chilli said:
Good luck my friend ... 23 an odd number I am sure you could find a few more varieties. All the very best for a indoor aphid free grow

Oh yeah definitely. I could probably grow 50+ varieties

But space is a serious issue. Last year I had roughly 30 plants and even if it is doable I think they didn't like to fight each other for sunlight. So this year I'm giving them more space, mainly to see if there is a noticeable difference.

Ohjay · Feb 7, 2017

Felt like a slow start this year. After a week I only had a few sprouts but it has since improved quite a bit.
28 out of 46 have now sprouted:

I actually overwatered in the first few days so there is some beginning stages of mold but it's nothing to worry about. I'll repot in new soil as soon as they're a bit bigger.

There's still a few varieties that still haven't yielded anything.. I plant two seeds of each to have some margin for error and then I try to give away plants when I run out of room.
Anyway, I'm sure they'll come around within the next week or so. The varieties I've been most excited have all sprouted apart from 2, Purple Bhut and the Moldavian Heart x Purple Bhut.

OCD Chilehead · Feb 7, 2017

Off to a good start. The others should start popping soon. Some pop sooner than others. This year I had some germinate in 2days and others are still thinking about it after two weeks.

Good luck!

Ohjay · Feb 12, 2017

Thanks OCD Chilehead.
I know.. I'm just impatient really

I had a bit of an accident yesterday while I was setting up lighting on a 2nd shelf and almost snapped a seedling.
Decided it'd be best to repot it to make sure it would survive and while I was doing that I thought I might as well repot the rest as well. It was definitely too early for some of them but so far they seem not to have taken too much damage.

Some of the annuums had already decent roots for only being about a week old, it was a bit of a surprise to see 5+ inch roots .

As I did the repotting I did a big no-no and dug out the seeds that hadn't shown any progress and most of them showed no progress and were tossed.
But a few had tiny hooks so I threw them into some new soil. They might not grow, or they might. It'll be a little experiment.

The 7pod White were actually close to breaking ground so I repotted it just below the surface and it has since then popped up and seems very healthy.

Speaking of healthy.. this Submarine did not like repotting. I strongly doubt it'll survive, but we'll see:

At the other end of the spectrum, this Cantina is furthest along and is extremely happy:

In other news, I finally took delivery of some bottles:

Sometime this coming week I'm hoping to try my hand at making sauce with some of my peppers from last season.
It depends a little on if I can find a suitable recipe and if I do have time to do some cooking, but I'm hoping so. A report will come here when I do

tsurrie · Feb 12, 2017

Looking good. Nice batch of bottles you got there.... gonna look even nicer when filled up with hot sauce

Ohjay · Feb 13, 2017

tsurrie said:
Looking good. Nice batch of bottles you got there.... gonna look even nicer when filled up with hot sauce

Yep I hope so.
Bought 50 bottles and I'm not sure it's going to be enough :rolleyes:

I mostly have supers to make sauce of and it will be more than I can use up so I have to give some bottles away and to be able to do that I have to make as weak a sauce as possible I suspect. But we'll see... There's room for experimenting :twisted:

In other pepper news, I s'pose I did good with the repotting because those seeds I repotted have now all sprouted:

Perhaps not quite as visible in that image but they are all growing nicely. Well.. except for the SB7J. It came up without any cotys and I suspect it will wither and die soon, but the other SB7J seed has already sprouted so it's not a major loss.

I'm especially happy that the Moldavian Heart X Bhut Purple decided to play nice. I'm really excited about that variety.

With these final sprouts I've managed to germinate 22 out of 23 varieties if memory serves me right. It was only the Datil that refused to cooperate.
Oh, and it's a total of 37 plants out of 46 seeds, not too bad(but not great either).

Ohjay · Feb 18, 2017

Today was the day... that took my sauce virginity away :shh:

Ingredients:

Chopped, chopped and then blendered some:

Then some cooking:

Voila! Sauce:

Initial impressions are good, and I'm happy considering it's my first ever attempt at cooking a sauce.
I ended up using a bit too much vinegar which is evident in the taste but once it properly cools down and settles I think it'll even out and be a pretty good sauce.

Only ~2kg peppers left from last season to make sauce of :hotsauce:

But that'll be another day. Gotta figure out a nice recipe for some superhots. Something with peaches I think... or melons? Is that even possible?

tsurrie · Feb 19, 2017

Everything is possible. Good looking sauce.... Talking 'bout some good sauce devirginization

Ohjay · Mar 5, 2017

Long overdue update...

The plants are doing okay. Or well.. some of them are doing great, but most of them are not so happy.
Most of the plants are already suffering from edema. I thought I was careful with watering but I've come to the conclusion that I water them the wrong way after repotting.
As soon as they are in new dirt I start bottom-feeding, and since the roots aren't as developed yet it means the soil is too soaked which brings on the edema.
I also waited a bit too long with getting a fan(or two) up and running for some air circulation, which might also affect things.

I'm not too worried yet but I do think it is impacting their growth a bit.

Sorry for the potato-quality photos. Just quick and dirty with the phone...

Genetikx · Mar 5, 2017

Looking real good on this side... The plants and the sauce. How's the sauce now after its had a while to gel?

Ohjay · Mar 6, 2017

Genetikx said:
Looking real good on this side... The plants and the sauce. How's the sauce now after its had a while to gel?

Thanks!

I'll try to take some photos with a proper camera soon. The plants deserve it.

The sauce is fantastic!
After I let it sit for ~24h in the fridge it got a lot better. The taste of vinegar was almost completely gone, there's still a hint of it and it's apple flavour but it's not longer as evident.
I've had some friends and co-workers try the sauce and they have all been over the moon, so I guess it was a success. :eek:

If things go as planned, then a new sauce will be made this weekend.
Tsurries positive reply got me researching melon-sauces and I'm gonna try that next hopefully. That or a peach sauce.

Ohjay · Mar 19, 2017

Update time!

The first year I grew chili I used Chili Focus as nutrition. Decent results and definitely easy to use.
Second year(last year) I stepped it up 10 notches and used BioBizz. Great results but mixing 4-6 different nutrients every watering got old real fast, and I mean reaaaaally fast.
So this year I'm trying something new yet again:

As for the plants, they've started looking a lot better since the last update. I still have a couple that aren't super healthy but I'm hoping they'll turn around eventually.
These two photos are from this morning:

Way too crowded under the T5 lights so I had to do something about it.
These two photos are from this evening:

Much better.
But I am running out of room under the lights. Soon I'll have to decide which plants will stay on my window sills and which will stay under lights.
I also think it's getting about time to repot them into their final homes, but I'll wait another week or two.

I've also been trying out new sauces with the peppers from last year.
Making sauce is just becoming more and more fun

This was yesterdays attempt:

Great color in the blender:

Not the most elegant solution, but it works:

Result:

I really like the flavor of this sauce. You can definitely taste the watermelon.
But I'm not happy about the consistency, the sauce is way too runny for my tastes. And I went overboard on the heat. It's just on the brink of what I can manage to eat, and then it's half a teaspoon max. :fireball:

Lesson learned though, taste the mix as you add peppers and don't just chuck 'em all in and think it'll be fine :rolleyes:

With that said, I had to have another go at it today:

Mmm, thick:

Quite a decent batch:

I like this one and it's going to be interesting to test it on some food.
It's really sweet, great texture. Heat starts of at a good level and after a few seconds it starts building and levels out at a quite high level but still quite tolerable.