Rabid48's 2012 Grow Log

Hello all! I'm new around these parts, but I've been lurking around the forums ever since I figured out how to eradicate the aphids from my overwintered plants by reading Pepperguru's guide in the main growing section. I've been hooked ever since.

This will be my log for 2012, but I'm playing a little bit of catch up because every time I come here I wind up salivating over someone else's photos rather than posting my own. I started back on February 1st, so hopefully this will get me back on track.

Last year I had a pretty basic season, with just a few small jalapenos, sweet cayennes, Hungarian waxes, California Wonders, and one lonely chocolate habanero that I bought as a plant at a greenie festival up in Rochester. I grew them all out of some 6-8" pots outside my apartment, so they never got very big. I decided to overwinter them in the hopes of getting some better production this year while being able to focus on a few more varieties.

Unfortunately, things didn't go so well; battling aphids, cold, and a few fungus gnats really took their toll on the plants. I started out with around 10 and I am now left with only 4: one jalapeno, one sweet cayenne, and two Hungarian waxes that are intertwined in the same pot.

This is the jalapeno, with its one lonely leaf of new growth:

And these are the sweet cayenne and Hungarian Waxes:

The leaves on those look pretty terrible, but that is just old growth ready to be trimmed. I've since cut them back a little bit and they seem to be doing fine. Hopefully they'll keep on truckin' til plant out, which should be after Memorial day around here.

So, that's what's left of last year's grow. Onward to 2012's grow.

I've gotten a much earlier start this year. I don't think I started until April last year, so hopefully that won't be too much of a hindrance. Just lots of potting up.

Here is a list of what I have planted so far (No superhots unless somebody wants to do some donating):

• Cayenne (amazon via wholesale via toddsseeds.com) x8
• Poinsettia Pepper (Burpee) x11
• Tequila Sunrise (Burpee) x6
• Anaheim (from my mother's friend) x6
• Chocolate Habanero (from the greenie festival's plant) x6
• Caribbean Red (Ferry Morse) x6
• Pablano (Ferry Morse) x4
• California Wonder (Walmart) x7 + some non-thinned ones I might plant

I also planted some Roma tomatoes with those, and wound up with 50 sprouts! (I spilled the seed pouch and decided to spread the love around.

In addition to all of that I just planed a few more varieties on Monday 2/20 (numbers listed by cell, with three seeds per cell):

• Rocoto (CPI) 0/9
• NuMex Jalmundo (CPI) 0/9
• Pasilla (CPI) 0/9
• Pimient de Espelette (CPI) 0/9

That batch was a splurge to get some new variety that I hope will turn out well. I'm especially excited about the rocotos to see how they do in the cooler/hillier climate that we have up here.

As I'm sure you're wondering, no, I won't be planting all of those plants into the ground when the time comes. I plan on giving a few away to family/friends in the area who are also gardeners. I also think I'm going to put some poinsettia peppers in my office. Show everybody at work what I'm all about.

The main reason for not planting all those wonderful plants is because of space (shocker!). I think this year I will be able to plant in the ground around my apartment (east and West facing, unfortunately no south facing). Here is the West facing spot I plan to use:

There are some black-eyed Mary plants in there that I'm hoping I can take out.

So that pretty much sums up my plans/what I've been up to. Now for the seedling pictures. I have a whole bunch but most of them are just at the cotyledon stage. I'll keep it interesting.

The first batch, minus the Pablanos and bells. The Roma tomatoes are in the containers up front. This was before I thinned them out.

I had to pot things up to solo cup size so tat I could reuse my germ chamber for the second batch. I first went for theses cut-offs for more lateral space, but as you'll see I listened to Toby Kieth and just went for the straight up solo cups after my first batch of transplants.

This is post thinning and the first batch of transplants. Things got a little leggy while I was away for a few days. No worries there though.

...and here is the most current set up. Today I added all those cfls on the strip (ala stc3248's grow log). They're bright as hell! I could physically feel the eye strain from them after I was done looking at the set up for a while. I'll have to get some sunglasses.

They're only 5000, but I'll switch 'em over to 6400 like everything else is if they don't work well.I also added a fan to the mix to help beef up the stalks, but most of them haven't crested the tops of the cups, so it isn't doing much.


Thanks for stopping by and having a look! I really love the community here and I hope I didn't take too much of your time from slobbering over those other awesome looking posts.

Nathan


Nathan

 

[PaulG]

Hey, Rabid, your seedlings are lookin' really good! Cayennes are
very robust growers, indeed. Your grow log is progressing nicely;
It will be great to see how your potting up and transplanting goes.
Good luck as you move forward with your grow! Hope those over-
winters pull through for ya.

 

[rabid48]

Hey Nathan,
They're looking really good brother! Just an FYI I think some of the soil issues that several of us had (me, big cedar and MGold) were due to not understanding the nute content of the soil we were using and then giving the plants some nutes they didn't need ...the MG for example is loaded with nutes and shouldn't need to be fed for several months. Hope that helps with your soil issues. In spite of your soil your plants look fantastic!

Good luck on your soil change...it sucks way worse than potting up having to try to get the old soil off then repot...

Keep it up man!
Shane

Thanks for the advice! I agree that the nutrient balance seems to be a big issue, but I think the stuff I'm using basically has none and is a little bit to small and granular to really get any significant growth going. For that reason I probably won't focus too much on the removal of the soil around the center of the roots too much, but I'll probably dump quite a bit of what's in the rest of the cups.

Hey, Rabid, your seedlings are lookin' really good! Cayennes are
very robust growers, indeed. Your grow log is progressing nicely;
It will be great to see how your potting up and transplanting goes.
Good luck as you move forward with your grow! Hope those over-
winters pull through for ya.

Thanks for your compliments, Paul. Unfortunately, It looks like the Sweet Cayenne from last year is all but gone. It's starting to loose it's green color and some brown is starting to creep in. The jalapeno still looks ok though. We'll see how it goes.

In better news, however, Ahijoes's hot and super hot mix showed up in the mail today! Now I'm off to go get some more seed starting stuff (and mosquito dunks, as I am seeing a few more F-gnats) from the big box! It'll be a little late of a start I think, but there's always overwintering for next year!

 

[ajijoe]

your babies are looking good

chin up your just geting started we all have pitfalls in the beginning, but i know you will do just great

let me know when the seeds i sent sprout

thanks your friend Joe

 

[mjdiamond83]

Your seedlings look great! Good luck getting those gnats killed off. I spent a couple hours last night making sure all my plants got a nice dose of mosquito dunk tea. The container I put in with the plants that had a mosquito dunk floating in some water already had 15-20 dead gnats in it by noon today. The sooner they're gone the better!

 

[rabid48]

your babies are looking good

chin up your just geting started we all have pitfalls in the beginning, but i know you will do just great

let me know when the seeds i sent sprout

thanks your friend Joe

I just tossed some of the seeds into some dirt tonight. I also transplanted my second tray of CPI peppers into solo cups w/ pro-mix BX. Pictures to come sometime tomorrow after I finish transplanting everything else, but first I'm going to sleep. Transplanting makes you tired....

 

[ajijoe]

I just tossed some of the seeds into some dirt tonight. I also transplanted my second tray of CPI peppers into solo cups w/ pro-mix BX. Pictures to come sometime tomorrow after I finish transplanting everything else, but first I'm going to sleep. Transplanting makes you tired....

great just let us know how they do

tghanks your friend Joe

 

[PaulG]

Wake up! Wake up! Time for pics!

 

[rabid48]

Boy, Sorry about the delay. It took a lot longer to re-pot than I thought it would, and I had plans change so I didn't get around to posting anything yesterday.

Excuses, excuses...anyways, here's the Transplant/re-pot update.

Here was my set up. A drill for drilling drain holes, some pro-mix BX, a small trowel shovel, a spray bottle, mychorrizae, and seedlings. On, and of course a box of frozen thin mints.

I went through and transplanted all of the jalmundo, espelette, pasilla, and rocoto plants first. I had to whittle them all down to the six strongest of each type. It was sad to have to pluck off some of the babies, but I still don't know what I'm going to do with 24 more plants on top of all the others I have.

\
The process was pretty simple. Take a drilled cup, fill it about 3/4 with pro-mix, make a plug shaped hole with my finger, sprinkle some mychorrizae into the hole, drop in the plug, and add a little dirt to cover. some of the neck of the plant. Once finished, spray with a little mosquito-dunkified water and put it back under the lights. Here's an example of what some of the root balls were looking like. I was very surprised to see how good they looked.

My ornamental poinsettia peppers all got re-sized into 6~8" pots so that I wont have to pot them up again. They are also now enjoying some of this wonderful sunshine we've been getting the past few days. I guess I lost one along the way because I swear I had six at one point...oh well, still have too many plants.

Finally, here's a shot of the potted up Anaheims, California Wonders, and Pablano peppers. For whatever reason, the bell peppers are really struggling. On the flip side, however, the pablano peppers are thriving. I think most of their original potting soil was broken-up jiffy pellets, which they seem to really enjoy.

That's all for the transplants/pot-ups for now. Hopefully I'll start seeing even better growth over the next few weeks.


So, on to the new seedlings. I decided to plant one seed in each cell of my 36 cell tray of ajiJoe's super hot mystery mix, and 8 pellets worth of hot mix into my smaller tray, since I only picked up 8 new pellets from the store.

There was one exception, however, which was this type right here.

I planted all of those in the same cell since they were still all attached together. Hopefully at least one will take.

Here's the rest of the bunch. Any guesses on types? Maybe we should get a contest going. Whoever guesses the type of peppers correctly gets some seeds from those peppers at the end of the season? I dunno. Maybe Joe can help us whittle down the list to a few choices.

Looking at it now, they're all in order, except I think i took out that one on the top right and moved one from the bottom row up there. Whatever. I just hope they all sprout.

These all went into the dirt less than two days ago, so hopefully sometime this week I'll be updating about hooks and sprouts, but it will most likely not be until next week.

Keep checking this log out for more updates, and let me hear your guesses about those seeds!

 

[ajijoe]

looking real good!!

 

[rabid48]

Good news, ladies and gents.

HOOKS!

Some of the AjiJoe Mystery Hots:

(hard to tell but a few in the back have hooks too)

AAAAANNNNNDDDDD....my first super hots! Courtesy of AjiJoe's mystery Super Hots:

(Again, hard to see: 1st col, 1 down; 2nd col, 3rd and 4th down; 5th col, 2nd and 5th down; 6th col, 5th down)
So for anyone keeping track, that was in dirt to hock to seedling in <6 days for some of these. This morning when I checked none of those super hots were up yet either.

Some very potent seeds there, Joe!

As a side note, anybody know what these little things are? I found a bunch of them in my one cayenne plant that is in MG potting soil. They look like eggs of some sort, with a yellowish color and a gooey opaque white fluid on the inside. I've been checking every day to make sure I take them out because I am assuming they are not good.

No damage to the plant though. It's as happy as could be.

 

[PaulG]

I think those are little fertilizer pellets - the orchid mix
I used had some of them, too, but mine were yellow.
Your sprouts and seedlings are looking good, rabid!

 

[rabid48]

Had some more sprouts pop up today. Including a super hot with a very interesting Purple stem...

I think those are little fertilizer pellets - the orchid mix
I used had some of them, too, but mine were yellow.
Your sprouts and seedlings are looking good, rabid!

I hope they're not bad. I'm leaving them out for now. It seems like I only found them in the top inch or so of soil. We'll see.


-Nathan

 

[ajijoe]

would be glad to help with i when there ready however i wont be able to help with all

the seeds with the pepper attached looks like it may have be a hab dont quote me

the contest would be a great idea and if i can id it i wil let you know

again everthing looks great!! keep it up

thanks your friend Joe

 

[rabid48]

would be glad to help with i when there ready however i wont be able to help with all

the seeds with the pepper attached looks like it may have be a hab dont quote me

the contest would be a great idea and if i can id it i wil let you know

again everthing looks great!! keep it up

thanks your friend Joe

I do have one question;
I had a sprout come up today with what I would call "marbled" leaves, which I think is similar to your Purple flash (at least from the picture on your grow log). Did you see any marbling on those from that early on? It's very cool looking.

 

[ajijoe]

I do have one question;
I had a sprout come up today with what I would call "marbled" leaves, which I think is similar to your Purple flash (at least from the picture on your grow log). Did you see any marbling on those from that early on? It's very cool looking.

it is most likly Variagated Tri-Color, nice plant fruit is half decent tasting too, once it fruits i can tell you for sure

thanks your friend joe

 

[rabid48]

Boy, I haven't updated this thing in a while. Sorry, I've been slackin'. Anyways, here we go.

First off, lets have a look at some of the sprouts from AjiJoe's super and hot mystery mixes and see whats up. I've had a ton of sprouts since the first ones came up, and on last inspection I had 4 more hooks about ready to punch through the soil. You'll also notice some holes in the picture, which are ones that I lost, some literally, and some figuratively. I can't really figure out what happened, but it seems like the seeds in a few of the cells wound up sinking much further down that I thought they did, and I outright "lost" some of them. A few others rotted away I think. But, all is not lost, I have plenty more than I'm even going to be able to plant, lol.

Supers

And here's the hots. I pretty excited about those ones on the bottom right, were the brightest shade of purple I've seen on a pepper plant when they first sprouted. They've greened up quite a bit now, but they're still far more purple than anything else I'm growing. On a related note, I managed to pull a seed helmet off of one of them, but did so prematurely, which resulted in one of the cotyledons frying under the T5. It's still plucking along, though.

The transplants of all the other types are doing very well. I actually had to go in today and adjust the spacing of my shelves because the cayennes and Pablanos are getting so tall that one of them actually touched a cfl and burned part of its leaf (up front, second picture).

Finally, here's an idea of how the growth is starting to pick up a little bit in the new soil. This is also my "crazy uncle" plant, which has decided to bifurcate just after the first set of true leaves. The next two leaves then decided to grow down, towards the soil. Since then, they've seen the light (pun intended) and have started growing more upright. It's still a weird little Caribbean Red...

(5 days between left and right) The colored dots are to help understand where each leaf wound up. Crazy little plant...

That's about it for this week. I'll probably have to start potting up/transplanting some of those new sprouts this week as some of them are already poking roots through the netting and getting their first true leaves....that's only 15 days after I put them in...

 

[rabid48]

How about a small major update this week? Is that even possible? Oxymoron? Whatever. Here goes.

Most plants are chugging right along, especially the Cayenne plants, which made me have to move the lights up on both levels of my grow set up so they would touch them...

...And now, they're just as close as they were before. I'll probably have to start moving some to the window to make space, but hopefully that will slow them down until plant out...what happened to my nice early spring weather? Come Back!

Also, stc, you may notice that the leaves are definitely drooping, and that's after about 14 hours of light, so I'd give that theory of too much light in your grow log a plausible.

I also potted up all of the mystery hots the other day, and they are loving their new digs. Just some happy plants there, but their is one that decided it wanted to grow two first sets of leaves...so I guess it will have an early bifurcation...still don't know what type it is, but it's brother (back right) without the split has some very rounded leaf ends...hmm.

The superhot mix is also chugging along. I think I lost one of them to underwatering...it's cotys look wilted and it never really recovered, but the stem is still strong and hanging in there.

The major part of this update is about the overwintered Hungarian wax...first flowers/buds/pods! Woo!

The pod

Another open flower.

There is a strange section of the plant where nothing grew back, but then up top it has a nice flower and some new growth. Dunno what happened there.

I also put a rocoto into a 7 gal. smart pot this week, but it has a long way to go yet. Just wanted to compare putting it in there early vs. late.

 

[patrick]

The too much light theory may be an issue for Shane but I don't think it's your problem New York. I've noticed that you keep your plants on the dry side. Almost every picture you post the soil looks dry. Is it pretty warm at plant level on the drooping ones? Do you use a fan to circulate the air? If you water them when you see them drooping to they perk back up?

Best of luck to you.

 

[PaulG]

Hey, Rabid! Your grow out is looking very robust! You have some great plants. That little Caribbean Red reminds me of a Red Habanero that I'm growing this year. It branched at less than an inch tall, after growing very, very slowly at first. They should be nice bushy plants!

 

[ajijoe]

LOOKIN GOOD NO THE WEATHER HAS TO WARM GETTIN CLOSE!!
THANKS YOUR FFRIEND jOE