Spork's 2013 Glog - Indoor Superhots

Hello Everyone,
This is my first post here, first Glog, and first attempt at growing peppers indoors.
 
Start Date: Saturday 11/02/13
 
I currently have:
7x Ghost Pepper
4x Scorpion
3x Reaper
4x Some sort of thai ornamental
9x Habanero (Red and Golden varieties)
 
11/02/13:
Soak seeds in dilute H2O2 mixture with added KNO3. (approx 1 tbsp H2O2 and 1/4 tbsp KNO3 per cup of water)
Expand coir overnight with boiling water in a bucket.

 
11/03/13:
Prepare 'starter mix':
   Remove coco coir from water and squeeze out excess (one handful at a time).
   Add fine vermiculite in approx 6:1 ratio by volume and mix.
   Add a bit of water back in if necessary. I use a 'squeeze test', if you can squeeze out 5-6 drops with moderate force, you have enough water.
   No other ingredients were added to soil.
Note: Don't go squeezing all of that vermiculite, you will compress it and it will be less useful.
The result is a very loose medium with a sandy texture that will hold moisture for several days in a mini-greenhouse. Great for starting seeds.

 
Pot seeds in mini-greenhouse with bottom heat.

 
 
11/04/13:
Found soil temp at 90*F, a bit warm. Adjust bottom heat to shut off every 4 hours 45 minutes for a 30 minute cool-down.
 
11/05/13:
Check soil temp 24 hours after adjustment, soil stable at 84*F.
Note: 3 Ghost peppers are hooking.
 
11/06/13:
The ghost of pepper past gave me 5 hooks this morning. These things are great!
Also have 3 Thai, 2 habanero and 2 scorpions showing now.
 
 
 
 
Future:
Lighting setup will consist of 4 ballasts with two 24W T5 bulbs each. These bulbs are only 2 feet in length for a smaller footprint in my apartment. All bulbs are at 3000k for vegetation, will swap for 6500k for fruiting to experiment.
 
 
Will add pictures when I get a chance, nothing too interesting so far anyhow.

 

[Spork]

12/16/2013: Strange thing happened today. I pulled the pots out for watering and found three buds on one of them. I think they're too young for babies, any reason they would go into early fruiting? Lack of Nitrogen maybe?

 

[maximumcapsicum]

12/16/2013: Strange thing happened today. I pulled the pots out for watering and found three buds on one of them. I think they're too young for babies, any reason they would go into early fruiting? Lack of Nitrogen maybe?

 
Maybe the temps went up quickly? I find it hard to determine when buds will form. Could always pinch them to encourage more growth!
 
Interesting glog, I am enjoying following along.

 

[Spork]

Maybe the temps went up quickly? I find it hard to determine when buds will form. Could always pinch them to encourage more growth!
 
Interesting glog, I am enjoying following along.

Ah, good call on the temp. We have had some crazy weather this week. We were averaging about 50*F and then hit 87*F yesterday, which was enough to raise the grow area from an ambient 75*F to about 85*F.

I will probably pinch it tonight, no reason to stunt the growth now. We have almost two months till the last frost.

 

[maximumcapsicum]

Ah, good call on the temp. We have had some crazy weather this week. We were averaging about 50*F and then hit 87*F yesterday, which was enough to raise the grow area from an ambient 75*F to about 85*F.

I will probably pinch it tonight, no reason to stunt the growth now. We have almost two months till the last frost.

 
I'm actually wondering, and maybe someone with a little more experience could chime in... does pinching buds actually promote more foliage growth? Last season I pinched a few on some plants and let the others grow, but didn't notice a huge difference. The ones I let grow produced more pods. Of course the plants were already 6 to 8 inches high at that point. This year, if I have space, I'll do something a little more controlled.
 
I got buds on some of my OW clones now, but I figure I'll let 'em grow, even though the plants are only 4" high or so. Don't need them to start putting on foliage for another month or so, and the flowers are nice.

 

[Spork]

12/16/2013:
First time 'bottom watering' and first full strength fertilization.
I literally soaked them in a fertilized (Texas Tomato Food) water solution at full strength. Left them in about a minute, then let them drain for a little less time than that. My only fear is that they won't dry out fast enough.
Also noticed some roots sticking out of my pots! This is largely because when I water I wet the sides of the pots and they stay wet a while in the cold temps.
 
--
 
Seems to be a split decision after some research. I'm going to let it go and see what happens. I may drop flowers (especially since temps are back down), but I'm ok with that.
 
The repot has not only given them some really nice growth, but the stems have thickened up nicely. I think they can support peppers at this point. They stand maybe 6" tall and are right around 3/8" in diameter. They love their fan.

 

[PaulG]

Right on, Spork!  The plants look great.  About the flowers.  My first season,
I pinched them.  This year I just let them go.  The plants will drop the flowers
they can't support.  The Tepins in my grow shelf haven't had any bud pinching
and they have set pods in great fashion.

 

[Spork]

Thanks PaulG. Your experience is encouraging, hopefully I'll see the same without disturbing them.
 
Update 12/18/2013:
I'm sick today, hate being sick. My plants don't seem to hate it though.
 
Lets start off with the pots, fabric pots dry out pretty quick on the outside, but since mine are on plastic (a plastic bucket lid) the bottom does not. I'm concerned about this, and plan to elevate them on chicken wire or similar to allow more effective drying/drainage.
Now, the fabric pots supposedly 'Air-Prune' any wild roots. While I have no doubt that this will occur eventually, the roots grow straight through the pot first. The nice, unexpected side effect of this is that I can basically see how big my root structure is by how many roots have poked through the side and where. The downside may be that if they don't die off fully, the roots will be stuck to the pot!

 
 
Next, in a previous post I estimated the size of my plants. I was close, but not quite there. They are about 5" tall and have a 1/4" wide stem. That being said, the stem will definitely hold up a pod if the plant is up to producing it early.
 
To anyone who does not use a fan on their grow, this is all I have to say:

 
 
And lastly, what I have deprived you of for the past 10 days.
A canopy shot (you can see the largest bud in there just left of center) :

 
You may notice the bottom right side leaf has a round burn mark, that is from them reaching for the light... and getting it this morning. I've had to raise it twice in the past week.
 
 
I'd like to leave off with the plan to upgrade my lighting.
Up to this point, I have been using a setup that has 8x 24watt 24" T5 fluorescents at 3000K and after a helpful comment here plus quite a bit of reading, it seems that 6500K may have been the better choice for the entire life of the plant.
 
As such, I am upgrading my lights.
 
The new (Sun Blaze) fixture that holds 6x 28Watt 46" T5 bulbs. I plan to use High Efficiency T5s instead of my current High Output T5s. This will bring me from 192 watts to 168 watts and up from 15,040 lumens (mean) to 15,900 lumens (mean) respectively.
So I go down 30 watts of power consumption and up 800 lumens of output. Not a bad trade if you ask me. Additionally, the new fixture has built in reflectors, which I never had the chance to build for mine, so I will get quite a bit more light hitting the plants.

 

[Spork]

Ok, so after a month hiatus I wanted to make a post with lots of pictures and details, but it looks like I was sold 'fake' seeds. (http://thehotpepper.com/topic/44751-superhot-or-not/) Instead of superhots, I'm growing something else and I'm not quite sure what.

That being said, my thai chiles and habaneros were grown from seeds I harvested myself and they'll still be coming up shortly here. So I'll keep the glog going. Since we have a very long grow season here, I may try to start another round.


Cheers,
Spork

 

[Spork]

So a few things I've wanted to add, but haven't had a chance to.

1) I never pinched the flowers and quite a few fell off, but as you can see from the Identification pictures (linked in the post above) I did get several pods.

2) Despite the disappointment of my eBay seeds (Don't buy eBay seeds!), the 'reapers' have begin to flower. With any luck they are the correct plant. If not, hopefully they're at least something hot.

3) I've known that I have needed to pot up for a while now and have been neglecting it, so I started sewing my new size pots today. The original 4 inch pots hold just about a quart (.21 gallons to be precise). The new pots will hold right around 1.7 gallons. For comparison:

 

[Weed]

Very nice grow so far.
 
That one little seedling on page one looks like sun or wind damage. I know they werent getting sun, but was there a fan on?
 
Those pots look really nice.

 

[Spork]

Thanks mx5inpa.
 
No sun on these, just T5 fluorescent lights. No fan at that stage either. I think it may have been from being overly damp.
 
Since then I have had one die from drying out completely (I didn't see him wilting back there) and have one that just looks like poor genetics. It is pretty ugly looking.
 
 
My new seeds are in (non-scam seeds) so I can now get my grow re-started. Some include datils and some chocolate varieties. I will soak them in the same solution and start them this weekend.
 
Stay tuned...

 

[Spork]

Here we go everyone.
I got seeds from two reliable sources, one was a member here bravesfan (Thank you!) and the other was from semillas.de
Let round 2 begin:
Large Red 7-Pot 
7-Pot SR (CARDI)
Fatali
7-Pot White
Trinidad Douglah
Chocolate Bhut
Ecuadorian Pepper For Hell
Datil
Yellow Scorpion
7-Pot Primo
Peach Ghost
Yellow Brain Strain
 

 

[Teurf]

Nice Selection of Supers, I wish you better luck this time
 
Teurf

 

[Spork]

[02.17.2014]
Potted my 12 varieties a day later than I wanted. Hopefully an almost 2 day soak won't kill them.

Guess what this is (and ignore the burnt leaves, they grew too tall and hit my fluorescents):

Thanks Teurf, I have a feeling these will do well.

 

[Spork]

Update [02/24/2014]
Woke up to find this Pubescens (Ecuadorian Red Pepper For Hell) had hooked. Its fully sprouted at the time of posting this:

More to come as it unfolds. (Hah... No pun intended)

 

[Spork]

Woke up to another nice surprise this morning. You will notice that I'm removing them from the dome as they sprout. This is to combat any problem of having the seedling in a high-humidity environment and allows me to only run one set of lights for energy savings!
 
[02/25/2014] New hooks:
Ecuadorean Pepper For Hell #2
Chocolate Bhut #1
Jay's Peach Ghost Scorpion #1

 

[Spork]

The year is 2014. It has been a cold and rainy March for Southern California, with multiple 'storms' converging on this very spot. Yet, somehow the seedlings experience ignorant tranquility and bliss in their dome and under the light.
 
 
Update [03/02/2014]
Ok, enough of the theatrical intro, down to business. 11/24 have sprouted and been moved out of the germination dome as of today details below:

 

 

[Spork]

We're up to 12 today (last night actually). That marks 50% germination in 16 days. Not my best record, but doing OK considering I over-soaked them and thought I may have killed them all.
 
More to come when I get a chance to photograph my older plants. I'm getting some nice bell peppers and have about a dozen hot pods on the way to ripeness. My 'chilitos', that I believe to be thai peppers, are flowering for the first time at about 14" tall.
 
 
Cheers,
Spork

 

[Rymerpt]

Thanks PepperDaddler, I almost feel like I am among friends here after reading so many of the glogs and throwdowns. Some amazing stuff going on here and I hope to contribute at least a little bit to that.

I'm new here and feel the same way.

Rymerpt

 

[Rymerpt]

Our weather in Sac has been great. My seedlings have been outside for a good week now and are lovin it. I asume your weather has been good as well?