SuburbanFowl 2019 Glog - First grow from seed

After waiting for a very long time some of my seeds have been germinated so here is my glog.
 
I am running a small grow tent with 4 T5 double bulbs at 55w each.
I removed one of the bulbs because the fixture runs hot. There is a small fan blowing on the plants 24/7 and the lighting is also 24/7 at this point.
 
These are planted in double cups in coco coir and perlite. The bottom 70% layer of medium is a mix of coco and perlite at a 70:30 ratio and the top 30% is just coco.
The bottom cups have a small layer of hydroton (clay pebbles) at the bottom to make sure the plants aren't sitting in any runoff.
 

 
They are being fed from the top until 20% of the nutrients drains out into the bottom cup and then the runoff is emptied out. They sit for 5-10 minutes after that and then any remaining runoff is emptied out and they're put back under the lights. Ideally watering from the top with at least 20% run off will prevent salt buildup inside of the medium.
 
Sadly not many varieties have germinated yet.
Jays Peach Ghost Scorpion from Juanitos Seeds.
The big one has a little bit of leaf curl and I'm not sure if this is normal or not. Flat leaves would be nice
After a week or so all but healthiest looking will be culled.
 

 
Caramel Bhutlah (F2 or F3, can't remember) from WHP.
 
I think this strain is unstable or maybe there are different phenotypes here. Some have dark cotyledons and some have light ones. I will cull these and probably keep one with dark cotyledons because they look cooler.
 

 
Chocolate Bhutlah SM from WHP
The cotyledons of this look dark. A few more are still germinating, hopefully they pop up because it would be nice to have multiple plants.
 

 
Lemon Drop from Juanito's. It sounds like an neat pepper to grow.
 

 
 
The plants will be fed nutrients with every watering. At first they will get watered every 2-3 days (maybe longer if the coco stays wet) but after a few weeks they will get water every day.
 
Luckily the tap water here is very clean. My truncheon can't even measure the electrical conductivity or the ppm because it's so clean but according to the local council website it is approximately 50 ppm (.5 conversion), 70 ppm (.7 conversion) or 0.1 EC which is probably the cleanest tap water one could ask for. Any reference of ppm from now with be using the .5 scale.
 
The nutrients being used at the moment are
MaxiGro 10 - 5 - 14
MaxiBloom 5 - 15 - 14
Flairform CMX 4 - 0 - 0
 
I mixed the MaxiBloom and MaxiGro because the MaxiGro imo doesn't have enough phosphorous but the Maxibloom is slightly lacking in nitrogen for foliage growth.
 
Normally with the MaxiBloom or MaxiGrow you would add 7 grams per gallon of water but I have added 3.5 grams of each which in theory makes up 7.5 - 10 - 14 NPK
 
Adding the Flairform CMX (2ml/gallon) at half strength brings that up to 9.5 - 10 - 14 NPK.  All together the mix  is 2.2 EC or 1100 ppm which is too strong for baby seedlings and perhaps even fully grown plants. I diluted the nutrient solution with tap water until it reached 0.6 EC or 300 ppm and then added 3 ml/10 litres of roots excelurator and pH'd to 6.0
 
That's all for now. hopefully my plants do not die and if they don't you can expect to see some updates and hopefully a bigger variety of plants when the others start germinating.

 

[SuburbanFowl]

Edit

 

[PaulG]

Hey, SF. Looks like a promising start.

Good luck going forward. Hope the
sprouts grow big and strong!

 

[SuburbanFowl]

Thank you Paul.
 
Small but very exciting (for me) update.
 
A Carolina Reaper from WHP has finally emerged. This seed was originally sowed 16 days ago. It will be left in the heated propagator overnight because there are 2 more seeds in the coco coir but if they don't show up tomorrow this cup will be placed in the grow tent.
 

 

[SuburbanFowl]

Unfortunately the reaper dampened off.  As soon as a seed starts hooking it needs to be removed from the humidity dome and placed under lights. Lesson learned.
 
The seedlings that are starting to grow their second set of true leaves are now getting 0.8 EC of nutrients at each feeding.
 
Two varieties have popped up over the last couple of days.
The yellow brainstrain seeds were sowed on the 29th of June and came up yesterday. This sprout took 5 weeks to emerge.
The paper lantern habaneros were sowed on the 22nd of July and came up this morning which is exactly 7 days.
It is strange how some seeds take a long time and others come up quickly. Patience is the key, apparently.
 
Yellow brainstrain and paper lantern habaneros:
 

 
Lemon Drop:
 
This one is growing fast.
 

 
Chocolate Bhutlah SM:
 
It's hard to tell from the photo but it has dark leaves. I'm looking forward to growing this one.
 

 
Caramel Bhutlah:
 

 
Jay's Peach Ghost Scorpion:
 
The big one from the first post was culled. These ones are looking weak.  One has strange wrinkly first true leaves and the other one is taking a long time to show it's first true leaves.
Interestingly this strain took a very long time to germinate. I have more seeds germinating and if they germinate I'll grow a lot of them before culling and pick only the strongest.
Perhaps these are just a slow growing variety.
 

 

 
 
 
 
There are a lot more varieties in the humidity dome. hopefully they germinate.
 
Thanks for reading.

 

[SuburbanFowl]

After not having much luck with germination a few seeds have finally sprouted. I thought they wouldn't sprout so ordered more seeds. A few days later they started sprouting. That's okay, one can never have too many seeds.
 
Babies
 
Over the past couple of days some seeds have sprouted. 2 chocolate fatalii's, 2 reapers, 1 cap1546 and 1 red devils tongue.
 
Patience is the key here.
 

 
Also babies
 
Habanero paper lantern, 7 pot brainstrain yellow and 7 pot BBG red x naga.
 

 
 
It's still just over 3 months until these can be planted outdoors which means these things will have a long time to spread their wings inside .
 
Fingers crossed they all survive. If my other seeds start sprouting then most will have to be culled. There is room for 15 plants outside at most and I have started over 30 varieties.

 

[SuburbanFowl]

More seeds have germinated and there are still about 15 - 20 more varieties that haven't sprouted yet.
The seeds I ordered have arrived and have been sown:

• Fatalii Gourmet Jigsaw
• Yellow Fatalii
• Carolina Reaper
• 7 Pot Brainstrain Red

I only have room for about 15 plants outside so some of these will eventually get culled.
 
Things are finally looking promising. Since there are nearly 90 days before these plants can go outside they will have to be topped.
 
The CAP1546 looks very interesting. The cotyledons and the stem are entirely purple.
 
For some reason the C. Annuum's are harder to germinate than the C. Chinense seeds.
 
Another lesson learned today. They say don't put all your eggs in one basket so I put my eggs in many baskets and they all hatched.
 

 

 

[PaulG]

Looks like a good start SF.

It is always great to see the Southern Hemisphere
folk getting underway when we are just reaching
the late summer part of our grow here.

 

[SuburbanFowl]

Thank you Paul. This is my first true grow from seed, it's exciting to watch the entire process instead of buying plants from a store.

Small update.

I couldn't cull any peppers so they have all been replanted into 200ml double cups. All with pure sieved chunky coco, no fine coco at all.

Even though I don't have enough room for too many plants I will grow more than I need anyway and see what happens when they're ready to move outdoors.

I think my setup is dialed in now so hopefully things go smoothly. The lemon drop perhaps got too high of a concentration of nutrients (It got fed 0.8 ec once and then 1.0 ec once which was probably too much).  Out of all of these the CAP1546 are the coolest looking. The cotyledons are purple.


Some more seeds have germinated. Four varieties were sown on the 4th of August Fatalii Gourmet Jigsaw, Yellow Fatalii, Carolina Reaper and 7 Pot Brainstrain Red seeds and today is the 11th of August. Somehow all but the Yellow Fatalii seeds germinated in 6 days.

Those seeds came from the hippy seed company and have had the fastest germination I've seen and on top of that lots of the seeds came up. It's strange that they germinated so fast but I'm not complaining []

 

 

[SuburbanFowl]

Well I cannot reccomend the hippy seed company enough. I haven't had much luck with the reapers or yellow fataliis yet but both of those can be very hard to germinate.
 
On the left are the fatalii gourmet jigsaws and on the right are red 7 pot brainstrains. 12 seeds were planted and 1 of each was needed but so many have come up so perhaps 2 will be translated in bigger cups.
 

 
 
I told myself not to grow a tomato plant this year but decided to germinate some seeds anyway. One of these will be transplanted in the next few days and when spring comes it will be planted directly into the ground. We are moving house soon and one of these sprouts will be grown into a tomato plant to test how fertile the soil is.
 

 
 
This whole process is very slow and at times frustrating but I have learned a lot already. I am very grateful to be a part of this community and would like to thank the members of this website for providing motivation, advice and reassurance. 
 
I will post another update in a few weeks time when some more progress has been made. I'm hoping at least one yellow fatalii seed comes up and then I'll be all set for the coming season.
 
Thanks for reading.

 

[SuburbanFowl]

Chocolate Bhutlah.
 
It seems to be doing well.
It has been fed every 3 days but it's getting thirsty so I'm going to feed it every 2 days.
 

 
Lemon Drop
 
This one is also very thirsty, it will be getting fed every 2 days, maybe even every 1 day. The very bottom leaves are getting a little bit pale so maybe I need to up the EC or just feed it more often.
 

 

 

[PaulG]

Looking good in the Spring sun, SF!
Those plants should really be ready for
plant-out when the time rolls around

 

[Bhuter]

Looking great! Justin (WHP) has a caramel Bhutlah?! Wow! Must be new. Sometimes he lets me know when any new or exotic caramels arrive. But he's been crazy busy...understandably. Great customer service!

I wanna see that baby grow! Will be watching!!!!

 

[luvmesump3pp3rz]

those plants look nice and healthy. good luck with your grow! 

 

[Downriver]

Nice, healthy looking plants! Best of luck with your grow SF!

 

[SuburbanFowl]

Thanks guys.
 
About a month ago I decided to try the paper towel method with some "reaper" seeds.
 
It was a success. These were just placed on a paper towel inside of a ziplock bag on top of the fridge. I didn't add any extra water at any point.
 

 
 
I didn't have any plans for them but have decided to sprout them and then pick only one and grow it out in coco coir inside a solo shot cup to see how big a plant can get in a small container. It holds maybe 30 ml of coco coir.
 

 
All done.
 

 
After a while the surviving sprout may need to be transplanted to a bigger container other wise when summer comes it will need feeding many times per day. Maybe it will go in a 200ml cup or maybe even a 500ml cup. We'll see.
 
We are moving house in 2 days. I'm kinda nervous about moving the plants but hopefully everything goes well.
 
 

 

[PaulG]

Looks like a pretty healthy germination rate!

Good luck moving...

 

[SuburbanFowl]

Well, the move was successful. We can't let our cats outside for 2-3 weeks so I can't keep the window to my room open for long. It's getting very hot in here.
 
Some of the plants were getting too big for the 200ml containers, perhaps they were planted a bit too deep because it was hard to feed them without getting the bottom leaves wet.
 
They're still being fed @ 0.6 EC / 300ppm. I switched from using 50/50 maxigro:maxibloom. Now they are getting Maxigro, Calmag and roots excelurator. Once they're a bit bigger I'll transition back to using the maxigro and maxibloom together.
 
The Chocolate Bhutlah SM and Lemon Drop plants have been transplanted in red solo cups.
 
 
Chocolate Bhutlah SM
 
This could have been grown in the 200ml cup for a lot longer but it's okay because now it has room to spread its roots out even more.
 
The internodal spacing is beautiful. Nice and tight. I bought 2 "carolina reaper" plants last year which were definitely chinenses but probably not reapers. The internodal spacing on the purchased plants was nowhere near as tight. This tight internodal spacing is great because when this plant gets topped it's going to create a lot of sideshoots .
 

 

 

 
 
Lemon... drop top... growing hot peppers in a hotbox.
 
The roots on this plant are wild, some of the roots actually have their own roots beginning to grow.
I think something is eating it or it's getting some kind of infection. I cut the two bottom leaves off. It hasn't even been topped  yet and the side growth is huge. Can't wait to plant this one outside.
 

 

 

 
 
The rest of the family are slowly catching up. The Serrano peppers on the right grow very fast. They will almost definitely have to be topped.
 
It is interesting how some chinenses get crinkly leaves while others remain flat. Fataliis and 7 pot brainstrains seem to have more flat looking leaves. Perhaps it is a heat issue.
 

 
 
Finally.. The "reaper" experiment. In about 1 week or so every single sprout except for 1 will be culled. Who will be the biggest by then? Find out on the next episode of dragon ball z...
 

 

[SuburbanFowl]

All settled into their new homes.
 

 

[SuburbanFowl]

I found a bug in the grow tent today. Maybe that is what has been biting holes in some of the plants .
 
Small update to the "carolina reaper" experiment. The babies were getting too big so one had to be transplanted and the rest were culled.
 
There were a lot of helmet heads but 99% of them were coming off on their own. One of them died before the seed could come off of it. The rest were fine.
 

 
There can only be one...
 

 
Planted in very chunky coco coir with 0.6 EC nutrients.