Stickman's 2015 - That's All She Wrote...

Hi All! It's been an incredibly busy winter dealing with one thing and another, and it's only about half over here.   Still, it's time to get on the stick and put my seeds in the dirt in preparation for plant-out in another 12 weeks or so. I have a Manzano over-wintering inside that's going on its third year. It's next to a sliding glass door with a great southern exposure but the light it gets here this time of year is pretty paltry... I expect it'll start to perk up sometime in March. I have a couple of MoA Scotch Bonnets over-wintering at a friend's house because there wasn't space in front of the sliding glass door for them and my wife's indoor plants... the deal is that if they both survive the winter, we'll split the plants. If not, he'll keep the one that lives. That seems fair since he did all the work.
 
The rest of the list is looking like this...

Pubiscens Varieties
Total bust this year... nothing that germinated survived.

Baccatum:
Ditto

Frutascens:
Tabasco
Hawaiian Bird chile
 
Chacoense:
Ditto

Chinense:
7-pot Yellow Turned out to be a red "Not"
MoA Scotch Bonnet
Beni Highlands... Also turned out to be a "Not"... maybe a Mako Akokrosade cross?
Ja Hab
Trinidad Perfume
Zavory

Annuum:
Cabe Rawit (mouse turd pepper, in Singapore where the seeds were collected they're called Cili Padi)
Red Thai
Biggie Chile Anaheim
Poblano Gigantia
Jalapeno Ciclon
Jalapeno Tormenta
Serrano Tampiqueno
Hungarian Hot Wax
Almapaprika
Ethiopian Brown Berbere
 
I'll also be planting a sweet Criolla de Cucina plants and about 20 sweet Kurtovska Kapijas. The Kapijas have the longest growing and ripening times of any Annuum I know, but they're big, meaty sweet peppers that average around a half a pound apiece... just the thing for making that eastern european condiment called Ajvar.
 
Too tired to say more now, but will pick up later... Cheers!

 

[Jeff H]

Sprouts looking good Rick .

 

[stickman]

Nice one buddy! Them Bahamian Goats are mighty tasty in my opinion

 
The ones I've had before sure were Lourens! I'm looking forward to comparing them to the MoA Scotch Bonnets and Tobago Treasure chiles. Let the best balance of heat and flavor win!

Great start Rick everything is looking very nice. Been cooking anything good lately? all the best

 
Thanks guy! I'm always cooking something up... we kinda missed the Chinese New Year this time around, so I'm going Korean and making Duk Mandu Gook (rice cake soup with dumplings), Sigumchi Namul (seasoned spinach) and Kakduki (cubed Korean radish kimchi)
 
I hope you'll be running a glog again this year, I always look forward to seeing it.

Sprouts looking good Rick .

 
Thanks Jeff! I definitely got quite a few vigorous seedlings going... I wonder how much of that is due to the Kelp meal stirred into the Pro-mix BX.
 
The first of the Pubes popped today! I came home from work a short while ago and found a Costa Rican Yellow hook!

 

[ronniedeb]

Wow. Cant believe I missed 7 pages of glog Rick! Had some catching up to do. Glad the CAP267 and El Oro have germinated. 
Amazing hawk photos, great stuff. 
 
Did you take any photos of your Korean New Year food?

 

[stickman]

Thanks for stopping in and sending the good vibe Ronan! No pics of the meal last night... I had to jump into (making) it after getting home from work last night and was too tired afterwards. There's lots of video online about Korean food these days so it's easy to find out about. I used ground sirloin, chicken stock and a 3-inch piece of Kelp in mine, and I left out the egg since my wife has a thing about cholesterol. I also added a package of Korean dumplings made with chicken, tofu and minced kimchi along with the rice cake.
 
Looking in on the seedlings I see a couple more Brown BBG7 hooks. Still waiting on the Locato, Mozambique PeriPeri and JA Hab. I moved 3 sections of cells from the flat downstairs to the grow box in the cellar and started 3 more with only Kurtovska Kapija seeds for a total of 72 seeds. I'll be increasing the number of Kapija plants I set out because I love Ajvar so much!
 
The growbox isn't an elegant solution to growing in an unheated basement but it certainly does the job. I already had a tabletop growlight setup consisting of a 4-foot T8 flourescent fixture set in a frame, but it wasn't putting out the kind of lumens I wanted, so I got a 4-foot twin tube T12 shop light, set up a wooden sawhorse on the table with it and put screw eyes on the underside of the crosspiece on either end, threaded parachute cord through the eyes and attached the ends of the cord to the light fixture so I could raise and lower the fixture.

 
The next piece was to make an enclosure that would hold in the waste heat and return the side-scatter from the lights. To do that, I made the sides out of 1/2 inch styrene board that was faced with foil on one side, turned the foil side inwards and taped the whole thing together with gorilla tape. The front panel "hinges" are more gorilla tape, and allow it to pivot upwards. Add an AC muffin fan and we're in business!

 

[PaulG]

Awesome, Rickster!  Nice little grow chamber there.
I'm a believer in foam core board for growing enclosures, as well!
 
Foam Core, Duct Tape, Binder Clamps and steel wire are my go-to materials!
 
The little seedlings look mighty happy in there!

 

[Pulpiteer]

Yep, like the grow chamber too. Gorilla tape? I'm an amateur with all the duct tape I'm using then. You're stepping it up a notch!
I have not had any luck getting my locatos to germinate yet, but I'm still waiting. You've got an interesting grow list. Lots of tasty stuff.  What is the difference between a Tobago Seasoning pepper and Tobago Treasure?

 

[stickman]

Awesome, Rickster!  Nice little grow chamber there.
I'm a believer in foam core board for growing enclosures, as well!
 
Foam Core, Duct Tape, Binder Clamps and steel wire are my go-to materials!
 
The little seedlings look mighty happy in there!

 
S'right brother! Unfortunately one of the Tobago Treasure seedlings got too leggy too fast and crisped itself, so out it goes. Still 5 more though... Also lost a Bahamian Goat to "helmet-head", but still have one that looks OK. The rest are either holding their own or increasing their numbers.
 
Current O.B. report:
 
Hawaiian Bird Chile   - 9
Brown Egg                -4
Bahamian Goat         -1
Brown BBG7             -9
7-pot Lava                - 7
Tobago Treasure      - 5
Beni Highlands         - 2 (one of these has quad cotyledons)
CAP 267                   - 4
El Oro de Ecuador    - 9
 
The new kids on the block are the Costa Rican Yellow Pubes. Still just hooks, but looking strong! 

 
 

Yep, like the grow chamber too. Gorilla tape? I'm an amateur with all the duct tape I'm using then. You're stepping it up a notch!
I have not had any luck getting my locatos to germinate yet, but I'm still waiting. You've got an interesting grow list. Lots of tasty stuff.  What is the difference between a Tobago Seasoning pepper and Tobago Treasure?

 
 I haven't gotten any hooks from the Locatos yet, and in my experience you score fast or you lose fast with the Pubes. I decided to hedge my bets by planting a few more pube seeds... some of Judy's Golden Rocoto, Some of my Manzano seeds harvested last year and some Inca Rocoto seeds I got from Smokemaster. Even if I get nothing from any of them it's still OK... I have my OW Manzano and some Costa Rican Yellows.
 
As near as I can tell from the pics I found searching online, the Tobago Seasoning pepper ripens red and looks like a Habanero, The Tobago Seasoning Pepper is longer, tapered and ripening to an orange/yellow. However it comes out it'll still be interesting.

 

[Pulpiteer]

Ahhh... I might have lost fast with the locatos then. I'll have plenty pubescens since most of my overwinters are those, but they looked like cool peppers. Oh well. I'll see if any pop yet.
I am growing the Tobago seasoning pepper for the second year this year. They are terrific tasting. I was very pleasantly surprised by them last year. Just wondered how the "treasures" were different. I'll be curious what you find, if it's all shape or if there's a heat difference.  But with those and the Bahamian Goat Peppers, you have some great tasting stuff growing.

 

[Spicegeist]

7 Pot Lava... I wanna see how that turns out!

 

[Devv]

Good to see all those young plants Rick!

 

[Pinoy83]

babiesss....next thing you know u will be transplanting like crazzzzzyyyyyyy....

 

[stickman]

Awesome, Rickster!  Nice little grow chamber there.
I'm a believer in foam core board for growing enclosures, as well!
 
Foam Core, Duct Tape, Binder Clamps and steel wire are my go-to materials!
 
The little seedlings look mighty happy in there!

 

Yep, like the grow chamber too. Gorilla tape? I'm an amateur with all the duct tape I'm using then. You're stepping it up a notch!
I have not had any luck getting my locatos to germinate yet, but I'm still waiting. You've got an interesting grow list. Lots of tasty stuff.  What is the difference between a Tobago Seasoning pepper and Tobago Treasure?

 
This'll be my third year using the growbox, and I'm really happy with it. All it took to make was a full sheet of the styrene board, a roll of Gorilla brand tape a craft knife, a straight-edge and a tape measure. The temperature in my basement ATM is 41 degrees f (5 degrees C) and inside the growbox it's 62 degrees f (16 degrees C) I'm leaving the lights on 24/7 for the next few weeks to get the plants established and keep the temperature constant. I understand it helps the seedlings drive their roots deep. I want to encourage root development, so I'm also bottom watering and adding RapidStart nutes once a week until plant-out.
 

Ahhh... I might have lost fast with the locatos then. I'll have plenty pubescens since most of my overwinters are those, but they looked like cool peppers. Oh well. I'll see if any pop yet.
I am growing the Tobago seasoning pepper for the second year this year. They are terrific tasting. I was very pleasantly surprised by them last year. Just wondered how the "treasures" were different. I'll be curious what you find, if it's all shape or if there's a heat difference.  But with those and the Bahamian Goat Peppers, you have some great tasting stuff growing.

 
Sorry to hear the Locato seeds didn't work out for you either Andy. I think it's harder to get viable seeds from the Pubes because they take so long to fully ripen that most folks harvest the pods when they look right, but aren't fully mature.
 
Here's what I was able to find on the Tobago Treasure pepper looking online. I guess the guy who runs Refining Fire Chiles grows them and sells the seeds.
http://www.localharvest.org/tobago-treasure-hot-pepper-10-seeds-C29223
 

7 Pot Lava... I wanna see how that turns out!

 
Looking forward to it myself Charles. I'm searching for something as hot as a Butch T. pepper that tastes better, and Jamie's description of his sounded like it may fit the bill. It'll be interesting to compare the Orange 7-pot, Naga King and 7-pot Lava to see which one has the best balance of heat and flavor.
 

Good to see all those young plants Rick!

 

babiesss....next thing you know u will be transplanting like crazzzzzyyyyyyy....

 
Thanks guys! It feels good to have my hands back in the dirt... especially the way this winter has been dragging on! Cheers!

 

[Sawyer]

Great progress, Rick.  I know the T5 and T8 fixtures are more popular now, but for the overall value, it's still hard to beat the old T12s.  I've recently bought a couple of 2-bulb 4' T8 fixtures for the grow-out station, but as long the T12s in the germination station keep working, I'll keep using them.  Assuming I can find the bulbs.  T12 bulbs are starting to get harder to find.
 
Sounds like you plan to kick your Ajvar production into high gear this year.

 

[RocketMan]

Babies seem to be liking that grow box you built Rick. Can't wait to see them all getting big and waiting on plant out. 
 
I'm planning on some Bahamian Goat Peppers too but now you've got me thinking about adding some of those Tobago Seasoning Peppers to the mix, hum. 
 
Stay warm Brother

 

[stickman]

Great progress, Rick.  I know the T5 and T8 fixtures are more popular now, but for the overall value, it's still hard to beat the old T12s.  I've recently bought a couple of 2-bulb 4' T8 fixtures for the grow-out station, but as long the T12s in the germination station keep working, I'll keep using them.  Assuming I can find the bulbs.  T12 bulbs are starting to get harder to find.
 
Sounds like you plan to kick your Ajvar production into high gear this year.

 
So far, I haven't had any problems finding 4 foot T12 bulbs at Home Depot. I don't buy "grow light bulbs" that's just wasting money on somebody else's advertising budget... The "daylight" bulbs are 6500k light temperature, and that's all you need for getting seeds started. Maybe someday the industry will get their s*** together and market reliable LED grow lights at affordable prices that provide the lumens needed for the plants, but I don't see it yet. I tried one a few years ago, but while it had the right wavelengths for the seedlings to get maximum growth, it didn't provide enough radiation for the plants. I tried to get the manufacturer to tell me what the light output was in measurements I could apply to existing knowledge on plant propagation, but they wouldn't do it... just gave me some gobbledygook about it wasn't relevant without explaining why. S**** 'em... I'll stick with what works until I see something better.
 
Looking in on the seedlings downstairs I see another Costa Rican Yellow hook, so they'll be well-represented this year fo' sho'!
 
 

Babies seem to be liking that grow box you built Rick. Can't wait to see them all getting big and waiting on plant out. 
 
I'm planning on some Bahamian Goat Peppers too but now you've got me thinking about adding some of those Tobago Seasoning Peppers to the mix, hum. 
 
Stay warm Brother

 
Thanks brother Bill... will do! I'd be interested in getting your take on them for sauce-making if you do grow them.  Drive on buddy!

 

[Sawyer]

So far, I haven't had any problems finding 4 foot T12 bulbs at Home Depot. I don't buy "grow light bulbs" that's just wasting money on somebody else's advertising budget... The "daylight" bulbs are 6500k light temperature, and that's all you need for getting seeds started. Maybe someday the industry will get their s*** together and market reliable LED grow lights at affordable prices that provide the lumens needed for the plants, but I don't see it yet. I tried one a few years ago, but while it had the right wavelengths for the seedlings to get maximum growth, it didn't provide enough radiation for the plants. I tried to get the manufacturer to tell me what the light output was in measurements I could apply to existing knowledge on plant propagation, but they wouldn't do it... just gave me some gobbledygook about it wasn't relevant without explaining why. S**** 'em... I'll stick with what works until I see something better.

 
I agree with you, Rick, about the "grow light" bulbs.  For the two new T8 fixtures I have I also bought two 6500K bulbs and two 5000K bulbs.  They are for supplemental lighting in the grow out station and I'm going to compare the performance on two different shelves.  WRT LEDs, you've struck a chord, so I apologize in advance for the ensuing wall of text.
 
LEDs are coming, for sure.  The CCT (correlated color temperature), the 6500K or 5000K or whatever, while not quite irrelevant, certainly loses a lot of usefulness when dealing with discrete wavelength LED systems.  It retains a bit more usefulness when talking about the so-called "white" LEDs.  Output radiation, though, usually measured in lumens in our world, absolutely retains relevance, but a huge caveat.  Everyone is used to thinking about lumens in terms of the output of the various quasi-white light systems, fluorescents, CFLs, HPS, MH, all of which are more or less approximations of natural sunlight.  I've read somewhere that a rule of thumb is that you need a minimum of 2000 lumens of white light for horticultural production.  (I've calculated what three 4' 2-tube T12 shop lights are providing for a 2'x4' germination chamber and it comes in right around that minimum or a little better.)  The thing of it is, though, the plants use only about 1/3 of that light.  Most of the green spectrum is reflected away and is wasted energy.  Light much beyond 700 nm (not that there's much of that there in a fluorescent spectrum) is not used efficiently.  Light below about 400 nm (again, not that there's a whole lot of it produced) also is poorly utilized. 
 
I know you know this, but for the sake of cohesiveness, please bear with me.  There are relatively narrow ranges for which chlorophyll can efficiently absorb and utilize light for photosynthesis.  This image shows typical spectra for chlorophyll A and B:

These spectra are obtained from chlorophyll in solution and it turns out that in vivo, the absorption spectra shift significantly.  How much and which way is something I'm still investigating, but it will be critical to know when designing LEDs for specific horticultural applications.  Carotenoids also play a role and when you sum up all the contributions, you get what's called photosynthetically active (or available) radiation.  That's where my 1/3 number from above comes from; it amounts to about 1/3 of the natural solar spectrum.
 
Even that's not the whole story, though.  There are critical light-based plant life processes other than photosynthesis.  Photomorphogensis refers to types of light-mediated plant development processes other than conventional chlorophyll-based photosynthesis.  This is something I'm just beginning to learn about and I think it is (or should be) an active area of horticultural research.  An understanding of it will be critical to optimizing LED-based agriculture.  When you fold the photomorphogenic light response in with the photosynthetic light response, you get a much better idea of what a plant-growth-optimized spectrum would look like.  These spectra are called Action Spectra and an understanding of these for each specific plant species of interest will be the holy grail for optimizing LED-base agriculture.  So far, I've found only a single paper that presents these spectra and it is old and I have questions about the authors' experimental design.
 
The point of all this is that you can have LED systems that produce much less total light output, as measured by lumens, than a conventional "white light" system and yet are more effective in growing plants because all (or at least a much larger fraction) of the light produced is utilized by the plants.  What's needed is a new way of talking about light output.  Lumens per nanometer would be best, but then you can only communicate with graphs.  Maybe something like photoactive lumens makes sense, but you really do have to include the wavelength dependence for completeness.  Maybe a double red/blue photoactive lumen designation would be a good compromise, so you would read something like, "this LED system produces xxx/yyy lumens of red/blue photoactive output."  Kind of a mouthful, but more useful than simply stating the lumen output irrespective of wavelength.
 
So when the manufacturer said lumen output isn't relevant, they are really just covering for the fact that either they don't understand the technical details or our language has not yet evolved to accommodate the wavelength precision of LEDs, or both.
 
 

 

[Trippa]

 
I agree with you, Rick, about the "grow light" bulbs.  For the two new T8 fixtures I have I also bought two 6500K bulbs and two 5000K bulbs.  They are for supplemental lighting in the grow out station and I'm going to compare the performance on two different shelves.  WRT LEDs, you've struck a chord, so I apologize in advance for the ensuing wall of text.
 
LEDs are coming, for sure.  The CCT (correlated color temperature), the 6500K or 5000K or whatever, while not quite irrelevant, certainly loses a lot of usefulness when dealing with discrete wavelength LED systems.  It retains a bit more usefulness when talking about the so-called "white" LEDs.  Output radiation, though, usually measured in lumens in our world, absolutely retains relevance, but a huge caveat.  Everyone is used to thinking about lumens in terms of the output of the various quasi-white light systems, fluorescents, CFLs, HPS, MH, all of which are more or less approximations of natural sunlight.  I've read somewhere that a rule of thumb is that you need a minimum of 2000 lumens of white light for horticultural production.  (I've calculated what three 4' 2-tube T12 shop lights are providing for a 2'x4' germination chamber and it comes in right around that minimum or a little better.)  The thing of it is, though, the plants use only about 1/3 of that light.  Most of the green spectrum is reflected away and is wasted energy.  Light much beyond 700 nm (not that there's much of that there in a fluorescent spectrum) is not used efficiently.  Light below about 400 nm (again, not that there's a whole lot of it produced) also is poorly utilized. 
 
I know you know this, but for the sake of cohesiveness, please bear with me.  There are relatively narrow ranges for which chlorophyll can efficiently absorb and utilize light for photosynthesis.  This image shows typical spectra for chlorophyll A and B:

These spectra are obtained from chlorophyll in solution and it turns out that in vivo, the absorption spectra shift significantly.  How much and which way is something I'm still investigating, but it will be critical to know when designing LEDs for specific horticultural applications.  Carotenoids also play a role and when you sum up all the contributions, you get what's called photosynthetically active (or available) radiation.  That's where my 1/3 number from above comes from; it amounts to about 1/3 of the natural solar spectrum.
 
Even that's not the whole story, though.  There are critical light-based plant life processes other than photosynthesis.  Photomorphogensis refers to types of light-mediated plant development processes other than conventional chlorophyll-based photosynthesis.  This is something I'm just beginning to learn about and I think it is (or should be) an active area of horticultural research.  An understanding of it will be critical to optimizing LED-based agriculture.  When you fold the photomorphogenic light response in with the photosynthetic light response, you get a much better idea of what a plant-growth-optimized spectrum would look like.  These spectra are called Action Spectra and an understanding of these for each specific plant species of interest will be the holy grail for optimizing LED-base agriculture.  So far, I've found only a single paper that presents these spectra and it is old and I have questions about the authors' experimental design.
 
The point of all this is that you can have LED systems that produce much less total light output, as measured by lumens, than a conventional "white light" system and yet are more effective in growing plants because all (or at least a much larger fraction) of the light produced is utilized by the plants.  What's needed is a new way of talking about light output.  Lumens per nanometer would be best, but then you can only communicate with graphs.  Maybe something like photoactive lumens makes sense, but you really do have to include the wavelength dependence for completeness.  Maybe a double red/blue photoactive lumen designation would be a good compromise, so you would read something like, "this LED system produces xxx/yyy lumens of red/blue photoactive output."  Kind of a mouthful, but more useful than simply stating the lumen output irrespective of wavelength.
 
So when the manufacturer said lumen output isn't relevant, they are really just covering for the fact that either they don't understand the technical details or our language has not yet evolved to accommodate the wavelength precision of LEDs, or both.
 
 

Great Info cheers bro!
looks like you have your germination Dialed right in there Rick ... Awesome stuff !!

 

[stickman]

Thanks for sharing the "wall of text" john... I'm glad someone who understands the technology is on the job. I'll have to spend a little time absorbing it and looking up the big words.

Great Info cheers bro!
looks like you have your germination Dialed right in there Rick ... Awesome stuff !!

 
It's really cool that John knows about this stuff and is willing to share. It's difficult to understand if you don't have the background.
 
Thanks for the good vibe Tristan, and thanks for stopping by!

 

[Plantguy76]

Hey stickman aren't you the one who makes the blueberry smoked habanero sauce?
If so though I never had any I know it has to be out of this world and I admire your sauce making skills

 

[Sawyer]

I know I'm not first or anything, but LED-based agriculture is something I'm really passionate about.  I have a background in the techniques used in the production of the semiconductor material LEDs are made from (Group III-Nitrides, typically, made by MBE - molecular beam epitaxy) as well as the kind of process control and integration needed to implement the concept.  You wouldn't know it by looking at my grow stations, but then, the cobbler's kids have no shoes, either.