Recruiting serious chileheads for ambitious project

[TXCG]

While looking at AJ's latest amazing harvest pics and accompanying spreadsheet, it dawned on me that most of us chileheads have a penchant for documenting every little detail about our peppers.

I figured why not put this to good use and get as many people together from as many places as we can, get everyone to log basic data like daily max & min temps, day length, humidity etc & what varieties they're growing, how often they water, etc... We'll need to discuss what all should be recorded and create a template spreadsheet so we can standardize this.

I'd like to kick this off as an ongoing project and try and compile as much information as possible and see if we can just create a knowledge base to help determine what conditions affect what peppers positively and adversely. And of course have tons of nice graphs & stats, cause that's like nerd porn. Anyone else interested?

sign up & discussion starts NOW!

 

[TXCG]

Hey TXCG, that sounds like a great idea! Count me in!

As far as what should be recorded here are my ideas:

One time info:
City
Growing zone
Any pertinent average climate information like average rainfall, etc.
Varieties/species of chile being grown
Seed source
Possible cross or purebred seed
Growing Medium
Container size
Full sun or Partial sun
if apartment which direction growing area faces

Every day logging:
Sunrise/Sunset(daylength you can find it on any weather website)
Max/Min temps (decide on C* or F* to standardize this)
Avg wind speed if exposed to wind
Avg humidity
(you could probably get all these off a weather website once a week & just enter them for each date)
Watered y/n
Fertilized? If so w/ what(N-P-K)


Weekly:
# of unripe pods
# & weight of ripe pods harvest

And maybe decide on some metric for tracking plant growth? Height/width maybe?


Man if we can get enough people to actively participate in this I think this could be pretty sweet.

 

[texas blues]

Dude...that's too mad scientist/nerd for me. I guess I don't have the attention span or patience to do that all the time. I much prefer to let others do all the work and then I steal the info from them. Okay I'm a lazy nogoodnick.

Cheers, TB.

 

[rainbowberry]

I can do 3-4 of those on the list, one of them being the growing location. It's a great idea though.

 

[TXCG]

Dude...that's too mad scientist/nerd for me. I guess I don't have the attention span or patience to do that all the time. I much prefer to let others do all the work and then I steal the info from them. Okay I'm a lazy nogoodnick.

Cheers, TB.

Lol thanks anyway TB you just stick to showing off your badass cooking then. This is definitely targeted at my fellow nerds

 

[TXCG]

Of course if this is just too nerdy to work we can tone it down a bit and record just the basics. It's a long time til next season plenty of time to figure this out.

Another thought i had, logging every plant is a bad idea, too many varieties. We'd have to see who's growing what and pick the ones that are the most widely represented.

 

[AlabamaJack]

so since you are talking about it, are you going to be the keeper of the data?....or how do you propose the data should be kept?....you would almost need a shared server with password protected entry to "your section" and read only for anyone else that just wants to look...

I am in....

 

[TXCG]

so since you are talking about it, are you going to be the keeper of the data?....or how do you propose the data should be kept?....you would almost need a shared server with password protected entry to "your section" and read only for anyone else that just wants to look...

I am in....

Yeah AJ I'll definitely keep up with the data, once we figure out about how many people would even be willing to participate we could get a more reasonable idea of the logistics that will be involved in data collection/storage. Small scale e-mailed spreadsheets will work, we get enough people i'd have to make like a web form for submission but i don't forsee that being a problem. I could even create a little standalone application for data entry/logging.....I do stuff like that at work all the time.

Also I am kind of thinking just collecting the data individually over the season then compiling results at the end might work.

I'd love to have lots of your input on this Ronnie.

 

[ABurningMouth]

Lol thanks anyway TB you just stick to showing off your badass cooking then. This is definitely targeted at my fellow nerds

I'm not nerdy enough either.

 

[ABurningMouth]

But seriously-
Fertilized? If so w/ what(N-P-K) < that's a good one. Every different plant has it's own needs.
I think the Datil's special requirements need to be addressed. I'd love to grow real dark green plants with massive juicy peppers. So far I haven't been overly successful with them. This is a research project that I would love to help work on for a while.

 

[pepperfever]

I'd like in on this one too, at least collect enough info to see the patterns,might get interesting. I'll give it a try anyway.

 

[imaguitargod]

Sorry, just a little past my work load. Good idea though.

 

[texas blues]

IGG...you stick to the brewski my friend. Like Ralph Cramden said to Ed Norton...."I'm watchin' you!..."

Cheers, TB.

 

[wordwiz]

Sounds like a great exercise in keeping one busy but not enough of a controlled experiment to help me. Finding out plants produce best when the temps are between 68-92 degrees with an average humidity of 74.2 percent may be great, but I can't control that.

But finding out that pruning plants when they are small or applying 10-10-10 fertilizer rather than 5-10-15 produces large plants with more pods - that's something I can use.

Mike

 

[AlabamaJack]

I can say without a doubt, I am not changing my nutrient regimen I used this year at all...I am going to stick with it...seems to have worked fine for me...

 

[willard3]

Reinventing the wheel is busy work......it's ok if you have nothing else to do, but the Chile Pepper Institute has already done it and if they haven't done it, UNAM in Mexico has.

Real scientific research requires much more closely controlled conditions than a hobby grower can do.

 

[fineexampl]

Reinventing the wheel is busy work......it's ok if you have nothing else to do, but the Chile Pepper Institute has already done it and if they haven't done it, UNAM in Mexico has.

Real scientific research requires much more closely controlled conditions than a hobby grower can do.

agreed, but there is the better chance of finding an anomaly you can't get in a controlled setting.

I probably would not have the time for this, but i keep a mental log of these things.

 

[bigt]

It's a lot of work, but maybe people would have time to log data on just one of their plants. Would need to see what everyone is growing in the spring (N Hemisphere)and go from there. OZ's should be up and running by now.

 

[TXCG]

Maybe just agree on one type from one seed source and just distribute those around and compare results? That sounds like a lot less work and possibly useful. I need to drink more beer and less coffee lol

 

[texas blues]

Reinventing the wheel is busy work......it's ok if you have nothing else to do, but the Chile Pepper Institute has already done it and if they haven't done it, UNAM in Mexico has.

Real scientific research requires much more closely controlled conditions than a hobby grower can do.

Hobby grower? Oh no you didn't! While we're not pro's, i.e. getting paid to grow, we are most assuredely addicts. Building model planes is a hobby. Chile's, hot sauce, and bbq are LIFESTYLES!!

Cheers, TB.