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PJ's 2013 humble grow

In a land where everyone is going big, i decided to go small. Last year, i did around 70 plants or so of 45 varities. It was overwhelming and a pain in the butt to maintain, i kinda stopped updating my glog too. Here is what it looked like in its prime:

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I auctioned peppers off, gave them away, dried them into flakes, made hot sauces, and pickled them. This year, i went more practical in mostly growing what i would use in everyday cooking plus some rare ones. No intentional overwinters except a neglected serrano plant that i cut back which is in a 10 gallon pot and it looks like it survived the cold freezes we had. Here is what i'm growing. The mystery seeds are a mystery until i know they grow true and i will share them with everyone as they are requested sometimes on the forums but never found :) Stay tuned!

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I started seeds in early february using the cups method. Germinated on a heat mat at 85 degrees. I'm using the following nutrients and innoculants. Some of the new things i'm trying these year are noted:
  1. Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Grow
  2. Botanicare Liquid Karma
  3. Botanicare Cal-Mag
  4. NEW: BioAg Ful-Power Fulvic Acid - one of the best fulvic acid (better than humic i've been told). It help in the uptake of nutrients. Mixed with kelp for use in foliar it is amazing. The leaves look like they are raising their arms "hoorayyyyy" lol
  5. NEW: BioAg VAM-Endo Mix Mychorrizhae - known in the "other" industry as the best mychorrizhae as it has more of the Glomus intraradices than Mykos.
  6. NEW: Actinovate - great to combat fungus, leaf spot - used this early on with some of my seedlings that had some leaf spot. Stopped it cold.
  7. NEW: Acadian Seaplants Seaweed powder - best kelp in the industry as it is cold pressed, much better than what i used before "sea magic, pfff".
Here are the plants ready for being moved out of the 72 plug tray into the 3.5 wide x 5 height inch square pots. I'm using ProMix BX in the square pots. I used gardeners supply seed starting mix in the 72 plug tray.

March 3rd
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Before moving each plug, i made a slurry mix of the BioAg VAM Endo Mix Mychorrizhae and spring water and lathered each of the plug's roots with it. Myco needs to touch roots. Here is how they look after 4 days. Pretty remarkable. I don't know if its just the extra root space, the mychorrizhae, or the nutes, but they are growing FAST in 4 days.

March 7th
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You can figure out the peppers using the ID numbers listed above if you care to know what is what :)

The 4 plug tray is for the MOA scotch bonnets i recently got (thanks STEVE!). I got 3 seeds, of which 1 has germinated so far. All i needed was one :)

Some more pics for those who care about the setup. I'm using a dehumidifier in there so that i don't encounter any bacterial leaf spot due to the humidity that i got last year (lesson learned).

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and for those who want to know what the mychorrizhae pack looks like:

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Thanks for looking!
 
Cool start PJ, looks great! Interesting Vam-Endo mix too. I completely understand the mid season energy drain that a large quantity of plants can effect on a person. I decided to slow down as well. I'll be watching your progress.

Good luck with your season, Mike
 
Very nice start and I completely understand ... there's days where I don't want to work in the garden but then I just think of the wonderfull taste that I'll be missing in my meals and off I go out to weed & feed, lol. Great luck in 2013 mon!
 
Thanks everyone for the kind words! I have a MOA seedling up and running! Wohoo. The other 2 seeds were not budging, so i did some scarification, 3 days later i got a tap root on one seed and into the dirt it went. Lets see if that comes out the dirt with no issues :)

Just an update. Everything is looking good so far. The dehumidifier is doing its job, hopefully i won't have any issues with leaf spot this year.

On a non-pepper note, i bought 3 mighty mato grafted tomatoe plants from a local nursery (sun gold, san marzano, brandywine). Why grafted? because i always get diseases for some reason with regular tomatoes and last year i got a mighty mato grafted black krim and it exploded in growth and tomatoes with no diseases at all! Had to build a PVC cage as the regular wire cage buckled from the weight of the branches.

The ones in the front are reapers :)
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A MOA scotch bonnet seedling. The other seed that has a taproot is under the humidity dome so it doesn't dry out.
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Thanks meat freak. Just a few days and i'm seeing amazing growth here. Already having some small buds! My first post's picture was only 10 days ago and they were so small and look at them now! wow!

The MOA
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Group shot, i've already raised the lights 3 inches and its already up there.
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reapers
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others
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others
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buds
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Thanks for looking!
 
Been a long time, took pics but never posted, lazy! A few weeks back i started to harden off the plants under a white shade cloth. I have some mighty mato grafted tomatoes also in the raised bed so everyone was having a partial sun party.

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One day we had some severe winds and it shredded some of my plants. I lost like 3 which is not too bad, and some of the leaves were soggy and i removed those mostly.

I got some MOA scotch bonnets from steve. Sent me 3 seeds, got 2 to pop and here there are today. I think i need to ease off the nutes, they are getting fert burn a little.

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Here are the plants potted up. It has been raining a lot so that is why the peppers look yellowish for now.

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I have a few in the raised bed too with my snap peas, cilantro, and flowers. This raised bed is filled with soil from all of last year's potted plants. I did not want to reuse the soil and risk disease on my new plants. I already harvested kale, spinach and lettuce this early spring with no problems. Lets see how the peppers do.

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I am also doing worm composting. I find that worms really love pureed trash. I have a juicer so i take whatever solids come from that and give it to them. I started back in early february and harvest my first worm castings a few weeks back. What a hassle to get castings out of a partially composted bin. I learned my lesson. Its hard to seperate the non-composted stuff from the worm poop and the worms. hehe.

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Here is some worm tea brewing in the garage, with some worm castings i harvested. It has humic, kelp, molasses and worm castings.

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and some non pepper pics

my mighty matos

brandywine
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sungold cherry
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san marzano
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my pomegranite tree
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Thanks for looking!
 
Awesome grow PJ! looks like you got yourself a self sustaining farmer's market!

MoA bonnets look great! Even more, you only had 3 seeds to work with. Are you growing any Papa Joe's this year?
 
Awesome glog man! Plants look really good!, and what a huge pom tree!

Thanks Jamison, yea i hope i get more fruit this year on that pom!


Thanks!

Awesome grow PJ! looks like you got yourself a self sustaining farmer's market!

MoA bonnets look great! Even more, you only had 3 seeds to work with. Are you growing any Papa Joe's this year?

Haha, thanks Steve. Great germination rates on these. I'm not growing any other scotch bonnets, only the MOA. Just the basics this year :)

And on a side note, i just gave all peppers and tomatoes a douse of fresh worm tea foliar tonite. Lets see how they do this morning. I gave the indoor MOA a nice watering of worm tea and foliar :)

Thanks all for visiting!
 
Teas are the bomb! should look good and happy in the morning.

Yes they are! Next time i'm gonna try fresh/wet worm castings cultivated from my worm bin instead of drying them out. I think there will be more beneficial bacteria this way.

On a side note, i learned about the Praxxus pruning method for pepper plants. Its a simple but powerful pruning method to get maximum yields and huge pepper trees :)

I'm testing it on my 3 jalapenos plants and a reaper. Here is a before and after:

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and after

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looks drastic right? but i've read about many people doing it with amazing results. Lets see how it goes! :)
 
Things are going great so far. Here are some pics:

Group shot

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Moa in raised bed

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Reaper in 10 gal

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Jalapeno zapotec - non pruned vs pruned.

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Serrano overwinter podding up

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Grafted tomatoes (sun sugar, brandywine, san marzano)

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Thanks PHB!
 
Here is a monthly update. Everything is doing well. Reapers are not really showing true to form initially. Maybe that will change :)
 
overall the plants are super bushy. Must be the myco + worm teas + sea kelp foliars i've been feeding them.
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reaper from puckerbutt seeds
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reaper pods (not good shape)
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MOA - leaves are HUGE, starting to form buds
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Kung Pao - great for stirfries
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Flowers in the raised bed - attracting bees ... and wasps lol
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Red Brandywine tomatoe forming
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San Marzano Tomatoes
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Sun  gold tomatoes
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There are 3 tomatoe plants in this raised bed only. These are the grafted variety. THey are going crazy!
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