Scandinavian indoor/outdoor grow

Ohjay · Dec 24, 2024

2023 was not a good year for growing for me. When I started I was unaware that I would be traveling a lot and also moving from a large city to a smaller city 500km or so to the north. The move and the traveling did not make my plants happy and several died and the remaining ones didn't produce much.
So in 2024 I wanted a better grow year. I traveled much less and I could also have plants outside, on a balcony, for the first time. So everything was in place for having a bounce-back year. It was definitely an improvement but quite far from the success I had in my first two/three years of growing peppers.
I got enough peppers to last me over the winter/spring but the yield was not great and most plants didn't really start producing until the season was almost over.
This is what six of the plants (I had 10) looked like in middle of October, a few days before I had to move them inside:

At this point I hadn't even started thinking about 2025 or if I was going to grow anything at all, but then I watched the documentary Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People and I got bit hard by the pepper bug. I wanted a better season, more peppers, more varieties and most of all, I wanted to get my tolerance up again after a few years of barely not eating any fresh peppers at all.

So I got to thinking, what went wrong in 2024?
It felt like all the prerequisites were there. Good start with healthy plants and I used 7 liter (1.5 gallon) pots which should give decent sized plants. Also having the plants outside with lots and lots of sun and natural wind was sure to do wonders for them.
The more I thought about it, and also thinking back to the other years of growing, I came to the conclusion that the only thing I could've done better was feeding nutrients to the plants. I only gave them nutrients every 3rd to 5th watering and that could definitely be why the plants grew like they did.

I formulated a plan for 2025:

Grow many varieties of different heat levels
Have more plants outside, as many as possible
Feed the plants more frequently and actually "listen" to what the plants tell me while growing
Go back to basics and have a KISS approach (in case you don't know, KISS=Keep It Simple Stupid))

That felt like a good plan, but like all good plans it changed... several times.

I've been curious about growing in hydro and did some research, but initially felt like it required too much effort. I did a coco grow in 2018 and I did not like it due to how much effort was required with that medium. So I scrapped the hydro ideas... until I saw a Khang Starr video where he grew in mini hydro systems using a Kratky method.
It seemed so easy, didn't require buying anything fancy, and simply something worth trying without anything to lose. So a small trial hydro grow was added to the 2025 plan.
But watching more of K.S. videos made me curious about crossing peppers. Something I've never done. So the hydro grow was expanded with more plants.

Then a few days ago I saw the excellent video @Pepper-Guru posted about container growing and I wanted to try growing in wide & shallower pots to see if it would affect the plants. But to see that I would need to grow the same variety in normal pots that are of similar volume so I could compare.
Since space is kind of an issue, especially with the number of plants I had in mind, I had trouble finding small enough fabric pots that still were wide & shallow, in the end I managed to find some decent ones that were about 14.5 liter (3.5 gallon or so). Twice the size of my regular pots, but not being able to find anything smaller I decided to go for those.

So in addition to the original plan the following will be done in 2025:

Try growing in hydro
- If successful, try to cross peppers
Grow most plants in wide & shallow pots
Have 4 plants in "normal" pots to compare with the plants in the wide & shallow pots

So what started as a "going back to basics" season, has now gotten small side quests of experimentation and trying new things. :think:

During all of this my list of varieties to grow has changed continuously but the final list is the following.

Hydro:

Aji Cirel
Aji Melocoton
Aji Verde
Aribibi Gusano
Olive Jolokia
Peach Ghost Jami
Peter Pepper Red
Peter Pepper Yellow
PI 439416
White Bullet Habanero
White Moruga
Yellow Bullet Habanero

Soil:

Bhut Jolokia Peach
Black Scorpion Tongue
Bonda Ma Jacques
Chocolate Hand Grenade
Cumari
Fatalii White
Habanero Brown Egg
Habanero White Giant
MA Pale Rider
Murupi Amarela
Papa Joe’s Scotch Bonnet
Scotch Bonnet Brown
Sugar Rush Peach Striped
Thor’s Thunderbolt
Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Caramel
Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Chocolate
Trinidad Scorpion Peach
White naga

If all varieties germinate with the current plan then it will be 12 plants in hydro and 22 plants in soil.
I'm going to sow a few extra seeds for soil in case I have bad germination, just to make sure I have 4 different varieties (2 plants each) to do the container experiment with.

Seeds were planted today, but this post is already too long, so I will do that update in a day, or two.

Pepper-Guru · Dec 24, 2024

Sounds like you're thinking and on the right path. Don't forget how important container size is, even more so than the shape. Volume is king first, then shape...but never forget shape.

Ohjay · Dec 29, 2024

As I mentioned in my last post, I planted the seeds on Christmas eve. I sowed some extra seeds for a few varieties to have backups in case I have bad germination rate for the plants I want to do the container experiment with, so all in all 28 seeds sown:

First time sowing in rockwool as well, so that was kind of interesting.
And since sowing I have checked for sprouts at least three times a day even though I know it probably will be closer to a week before they get going. Besides, some of the seeds are quite old and might not germinate at all.
Anyway, yesterday I actually got the first sprout, Sugar Rush Peach Striped:

I am starting a little bit early and I don't expect to be able to put plants on the balcony until the second half of April, at the earliest so I am expecting to run out of room in my grow tent. The solution, get a second tent :party:

My first tent is a 120x60x180cm (4x3x6') Mars Hydro and I have been very happy with it, so the new one is also a Mars Hydro but bigger at 150x150x200cm (5x5x6.5').

I also bought some additional lights that I plan to use for the plants in hydro:

These are Mars Hydro VG80. Not a whole lot of light coverage with them, but I figure they will work fine mounted on a shelf and have the plants close to the lights.

I set up the tent yesterday but need to install the lights and so on, so pictures of that will have to wait a little bit.
Now... should I go check the seeds for the 3rd time today...? :snooty:

Ohjay · Jan 4, 2025

I honestly think this is the worst part of the growing season for me...
The waiting for things to sprout and not knowing if the seeds will or won't germinate. :neutral:

After day 8 I still only had 6 seedlings and I was beginning to worry a bit. I would've thought that the annuums would've started showing in force by then. But on day 9 I suddenly got 6 more sprouts and yesterday (day 10) I got a couple more.
If I didn't miscount I am now up to 15 out of 28 seeds that have germinated.

So far only 4 seeds sown in rockwool has germinated and I checked the ones that haven't sprouted and the cubes felt quite dry so I added more water. Not sure if that's the right thing to do or not, we'll see.
The first to sprout in rockwool was the Aji Cirel and it has actually grown a decent root that is peeking out of the bottom of the cube:

So I filled up the bottle with water containing half-strength nutrients and made sure to only get water to the bottom of the netcup.
And to try and prevent some algae growth I bought some coozies on amazon that fits the bottles quite well:

As I mentioned in the previous post I set up the new grow tent and my little corner for growing is a bit cramped:

I also set up the new lights the other day and I was pleasantly surprised about the amount of light they actually provide. So this might work quite fine for the hydro plants:

wiicek · Jan 4, 2025

I noticed - and it may be only my own weird experience - but the difference between 7 and 12 l pot size is what makes it worth for me to grow peppers. It is almost twice the size tho, so I shouldn't be shocked but peppers I grew in 7l pots barely even gave me one small harvest of maybe 5-7 pods through the year and those in 12l made it way more enjoyable to check on them everyday. I have to confess tho, I did not gave them as much attention as the rest, they still got nutrients and water when the others did but being in the smaller pots they probably needed more of it.

Still, for my personal comfort and enjoyinment I think 12l pots and above are the best, they give me the best satisfaction.

On the first picture there I can see that they get stupid amounts of sun there - bigger pots would make wonderfully, I think, if prepared soon enough. I don't really know how long the season you do have there and if you could let yourself to lose the time needed for roots to develop in bigger containers but maybe it is worth it? April as the month of taking plants outside sounds really awesome!

And oh, I love your obsession. I tend to behave similarly from time to time and seeing you can be like that is a relief

~~~~~~
Omg, I have 5 glogs to check

Ohjay · Jan 5, 2025

Biggest pot size I've ever used was 7L due to limited grow space so it will definitely be interesting to try these larger pots.
I tried finding some images from my first year using the 7L pots because I did get huge plants with lots of pods and two or three harvests.
This is from 2016 and I think the pot size was 6L, plant is a Peach Ghost Jami and it gave me several harvests as well:

Yeah, the plants on the balcony have a great environment for growing. The balcony faces southwest so has sun pretty much the entire day, the only downside is that it can get very hot so have to be mindful of the watering.
We'll see how soon I can put plants outside, but as I mentioned I hope for late April but could wind up being early May as well. Then I probably have to take the plants inside in late October so 5-6 months outside is not bad at all.

wiicek · Jan 5, 2025

My idea is to make the last transplanting the double cup and feed them hydro solution, I wanna see how much time I can buy that way xd

For the sun I bought 30% shadecloth and it helped a loot at afternoons when they were getting dry really fast...

Your 2016 ghost looks way better than my habaneros from 7l pots, I mean having harvest from few plants at the end of the season was awesome but I can see that they were neglected and could give me more. I think you will have amazing reaults in 2025 with those 14.5 l pots

Remember, space problems can be easily fixed by sneaking in more plants and thinking "one more won't hurt anyone" as many times as the heart calls for. Not brain, heart, this is very important difference xd

Ohjay · Jan 8, 2025

Apologies for the poor photo, I'll take a better one of the tiny plants during the weekend...

21 out of 28 seeds have now germinated and I will take proper inventory this weekend but I think mostly one of each variety has germinated. That's good, but also bad because that kind of derails my container experiment.
I'm also a bit sad that the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Caramel hasn't germinated but I'm also not surprised. I think this is the third season I'm trying to germinate them without any success, and the seeds come from a reputable source so I am a bit surprised.
21 is a bit misleading though because I have two casualties. One seedling came up without cotyledons and another had trouble getting out of the dirt and it turned out to have a bad case of helmet head that unfortunately caused it to perish.
So this weekend I think I'm going to plant a few more seeds and perhaps try a different germination method for the Caramel Scorpion.

Oh, speaking of casualities, we'll see if this one survives or not, here's to hoping:

CaneDog · Jan 8, 2025

Seems like things are coming along well. That one looks like a survivor to me!

Ohjay · Sunday at 2:33 PM

Decided to do some reallocation of some of the seedlings this weekend. I moved them out of the mini greenhouses and into the larger tent and put them under the new grow lights:

This one did not like it initially but has perked up since:

I also moved the hydro plants that have long enough roots to give them water & nutrients:

This is from the seedling that sprouted first, tiny but quite long root. It should take off quite soon:

Also decided to sow a few more seeds for some varieties that had only given me one seedling but I wanted two (Black scorpion tongue, Bonda ma Jacques & Sugar Peach Striped) as well as a White Naga since the one that sprouted had an unrecoverable helmet head.
Since I've been having some trouble germinating some of the Trinidad Scorpion varieties I also decided to try the paper towel method for three of them, we'll see how it goes:

And on the note of T.S. Scorpion, I sowed the T.S. White variety in rockwool and when I checked on it, I saw that it had sprouted but the seedling had not broken out of the cube and it also had a reddish color and all around it were these microscopic brown round objects.
I have no idea what it was but I figured it was bad and threw it away immediately. Don't think it shows very well in a photo but here it is: