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Stefan_W's 2013 Pods A-Ripenin'! Glog

I am going to start the new glog for my upcoming growing season on a bit of a personal note. One year ago tomorrow (January 3rd) is the one year anniversary of the day that my daughter was diagnosed with a tumour that is lodged in the middle of her brain. The past year has involved treatments and hospital stays, and there were at least three different points when we were pretty sure she was not going to make it. But she is a fighter, and nothing could keep her down for long.

Sofia has personally planted every pepper and tomato seed that I have started in the past three growing seasons. She beat the odds last year to help me, and once again she is defying what medicine has to say to help me out this year.

We started a jalapeno plant about a week ago just for the sake of watching it grow, because we both love it so much. One of the jalapenos grew to the point that it had its firt couple of leaves, so we transplanted him into a bigger pot. While we were at it I decided to put in some aji lemondrops, partly because they take a long time to fruit up and I wanted to give them a huge head start.

This is the jalapeno plant. I pulled the second one out because we did not need it, and discovered that the roots had grown all of the way down to the bottom of the cell.
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My daughter personally doing the transplant.
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Her aim is better than mine, and so it turned out perfectly.
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Next up was taking out the lemondrop seeds from peppermania.
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I need a few extras of this type, so I asked Sofia to plant two seeds in each of the four cells. Two plants will be for us, and whatever else grows will be given away to good friends.
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Two of the three tiers in my lighting stand are currently being used as toy shelves, which is cool for now. The lights are adjustable, and moved down to get close to the seedling.
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The heating pad works extremely well, and once the cells are covered the top clouds up in no time.
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A happy early jalapeno seedling in his new home. I thought I heard "feeeeeed meeeeee" coming from that direction, but I'm not sure.
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That's it for today, folks! Welcome to my new glog :welcome:
 
The biggest challenge with playing with the F-Stop is that I don't have a tripod. I could buy one easily enough, but it seems like a pain to haul around as I am taking pictures of my plants in the summer. I set the F to 25 and did some test pics of my early jalapeno plant, and about 4/5 turned out blurry.

This is the best I could do with just holding it in my hands.
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For this shot I sort of perched and rested my elbows on my knees to give the camera more stability.
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For this one I turned a four inch pot I had laying around upside down and rested the camera on it. It was the most stable surface I tried, and it turned out the best so maybe a tripod is in my future.
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Try stopping you aperture down for more depth. Just need more light when you do or a slower shutter.

Down in this case actually means a bigger number, like from F2 to F22. F22 is smaller.

Thank you very much for the tips and the inspiration to play with my camera settings again!
 
Blurry at higher f-stops just means your shutter is too slow. During the day outside you shouldnt need a tri-pod to use a smaller aperture. Inside might be little trickier not using a flash. Generally you want the shutter speed to match the mm of your lens or faster. I dont know what lens you have but if its a zoom and youre set at 50mm you want your shutter at 1/50th/sec or faster. If its at 35mm then you want greater than or equal to 1/35 sec. Lower and you will get blur especially if you have shaky hands like mine.Then move your aperture up until the exposure meter is right. This should help expand your field of focus and keep the pictures sharp.

Good luck with your pics and the grow. Im looking forward to seeing how this turns out.
 
Seedling are looking very nice...I will be starting my aji lemons next week, along with all my other peppers... Oh, that
pizza you made looked delicious. Did you make the dough also?
 
Stalling just means getting ready for a growth spurt, like a growing kids can be extra tired before a growth spurt. Only peppers can't tell you the stalk is hurting them. :)
 
if you plan to use slower shutter.. put them camera on timer.. so you dont need to push the button andmove it

hows the Biker Billys>?

I'm planting them by length of growing season, so the BBs are not even in yet. My plan is to start them at the end of Feb with the other jalapenos and the habs :)
 
Stefan your plants look so healthy, wish I could start mine inside and bug free ... think I'm past the mites now so things looking up in my garden. Keep dem great pics coming, can't wait to see your pod porn, by then you'll be shooting like a pro after these online lessons ;)
 
I woke today and discovered that some of the seeds my daughter planted Sunday evening are starting to pop. So it is baby picture time!

This first shot is of the lemondropsn tabascos, and jalapeno plant. You always have to include the older ones in pictures, otherwise they get jealous.
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Next up are the Butch T and Yellow Scorp hooks. I am absolutely amazed, because 6 of the 8 Butch T seeds we planted popped today. There are actually 4 yellow scorps, one in the foreground another one is pressed against the marker in the back, and the other two are too small to easily catch in a picture.
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One peach bhut (middle of top right cell).
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One Red Giant 7 Pod.
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So that is a dozen hooks and counting on day five after planting. The way they are popping it would surprise me if a couple more showed up before I shut down the lights for the night.

Stefan your plants look so healthy, wish I could start mine inside and bug free ... think I'm past the mites now so things looking up in my garden. Keep dem great pics coming, can't wait to see your pod porn, by then you'll be shooting like a pro after these online lessons ;)

As luck would have it I was posting some pics as you put up your message! My picture taking skills still suck, but at least I'm practicing a few things so that I am better at it when it counts during the summer time.
 
Glad to see your most recent sowing is popping up Stefan! To get a 5-day germ your daughter must have put a little magic in the seeds when she planted them...

Yeah, I'm always impressed when they pop so early. Sofia must have had some pixie dust on her fingers when she planted them :)
 
Going off Stefan !!! .... I love the baby stages so much less work and angst then when they start getting larger ... at least in my experience .... I think I over love them though!!
 
Going off Stefan !!! .... I love the baby stages so much less work and angst then when they start getting larger ... at least in my experience .... I think I over love them though!!

You can never over love your babies! I completely agree that this stage is a lot of fun. Aside from when they start putting out pods this is my favourite stage.

I am soooo tempted to just start a new batch of seeds. This waiting is killing me and it has been almost two weeks. ugh

I had the same feeling with my first batch of rocotos. I waited and waited, and at 2.5 weeks I tossed the first batch. This time around, instead of putting in 8 seeds from the rocotos I put in 15-20 and finished off the seed packs. If they don't germ I am honestly say I'm destined not to have them this year.

I would rent out Sofia to put your seed in for you, seeing as she has pixie dust on her fingers and all that, but you are too far away.
 
5 days? That's awesome! So glad to see the hookage. I agree, so much fun at that stage. Everything between the first pot up and the first pod is just work! Great shots!
 
Her magic touch is desperately needed. Maybe she can send her pixie dust on a air current and help me out.

She'll send some telepathic pixie dust ASAP!

5 days? That's awesome! So glad to see the hookage. I agree, so much fun at that stage. Everything between the first pot up and the first pod is just work! Great shots!

There are a few more this morning too. I completely agree about how it is just work between pot ups and pods, and I'm not looking forward to it. The one thing I do look forward to though is when tomatoes hit this stage, because every time you move them or brush against the plants as you are watering you get this heavy tomato smell that makes your mouth water. Maybe I should get some tomato plants going to entertain myself ;)

Please tell her to bottle some pixie dust up for me, I'll buy her first case :)

That is so funny, because my winfe and I were just joking five minutes ago about how we should bottle up her pixie dust and sell it!
 
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