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Tokyo off-season 2021-2022: More Tent Fun

OK! As we get rolling on the next phase of this ongoing series of marginal successes and impressive failures, let's take stock.

Currently happy, healthy, and producing fruit:
  • Casados
  • Sugar Rush Peach
Recently rooted via coffee filters and just planted in coir:
  • Jamaican Red Hab (hi Paul!)
  • Sugar Rush Cream (hi Paul!)
  • Zapotec jalapeno (hi Mr. White!)
  • Huacho Amarillo (hi... whoever sent me this as an extra on an order!)
No hooks yet:
  • Carolina Reaper (hi Alejandro!)
  • Caribe (see Huacho Amarillo above)
Below you have today's work. There are five seeds in each one, and all but a few have hooks, so the prospects seem pretty good for healthy plants, and probably extras for some more fruitless (mwahahaha) experiments besides. There's even a Sugar Rush Cream that put its cotys out before I even knew anything had happened, so that's an impressively ambitious little guy. We will watch his career with great interest.

seedy.jpg


Yes, I know you can see my sexy leg in this picture. Control yourselves! I'm married!

I was expecting to wait longer for these seeds to get started, as all of them are several years old, but they've been very enthusiastic; I'm not concerned about the reapers yet, as those take forever to do anything, and I think the Caribe is one I've tried to sprout from this batch before and might just not be viable. But we'll see.

As is tradition, I'll leave you with a completely irrelevant photo. A friend of my wife's recently gave me my first Gundam model; here it is, in all of its 13-cm-tall glory.

gundam.jpg
 
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Your grow looks great, all plants look green
and healthy. With pods! Especially glad to see
the JA Hab starting to put out some pods.
Nice work, @internationalfish!


🦆
 
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Wow that's quite an update! Curious to know how the mash ferment will do. I'd love to give that a try myself one day too!
 
MarcV said:
Wow that's quite an update! Curious to know how the mash ferment will do. I'd love to give that a try myself one day too!
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I've done more than a couple brine ferments before, so I'm hoping I've got it down well enough that this should be a slight twist on a familiar routine. Of course, should I fail, I shall publish it here in spectacular fashion. :cool:

PaulG said:
Way to take on the fermenting thing, buddy!
That still intimidates me a little bit 😂.
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Ain't nothin'! I target-rot stuff all the time. :D

What I mentioned earlier is, unfortunately, just the tip of the iceberg (I've decided to thoroughly overextend myself again). To start with: Dem bonchi!

it-has-begun.jpg


The back two have two Longhorn hooks each, just transplanted. I uberglued together some disposable chopsticks (god how I hate the texture of those things), and plan on wrapping the strongest survivor around them with bonsai wire. Same with the tombstone. While I really wanted to get the latter into a root situation, it would just take more space than I'm willing to dedicate to a single plant, so I'll play the long game and try to get a good trunk wrapped around it instead.

In front, of course, my one Carolina Reaper sprout. I figure I'll just try to keep it healthy rather than messing with it. There are still four seeds in the filter, so it's possible we'll see another hook, but I doubt it... for now, I'll just hope this one works out.

Still in the filter from this batch, with no hooks, is Pepper Joe's cayenne. No big loss.

...in another bag of filters I started today, however... :crazy:
  • CGN 21500
  • Naglah
  • Ghost
  • Caribe
  • Devil's Tongue White
Now hear me out, guys! 🙏

All of these are from stock that's going on (at least) half a decade old. While I do have my own seeds from the CGN 21500, this is the last of the original seeds I got from the US; for the Naglah, I never ended up getting pods from the previous plants. The DT White plants I had ended up yielding orange pods, so I'm hoping to get an actual white pepper out of them (and, again, these are the last seeds, and quite old). Caribe are also the last of their batch.

My intention is to put these into small (8mm; smaller than the ones pictured above) pots, similar to what the current big plants quickly started fruiting in. Now that I know I've got a winning formula with the medium and nutrients, this seems like a good time to hit the gas and restock the vault before everything is too far past its prime.

@PaulG I still have a bunch of your Trippaul Threat and Purple Thunder! If this little Hail Mary works out and I finally end up with the relatively-quick germ-to-fruit I've always wanted, hopefully I'll get a batch of those in some coir in the next round. :)
 
Update! The Reaper is still alive, so that's a plus. And the Longhorn sprouts intended for shaping should be ready to get their first wires in place fairly soon.

new-kids.jpg


I got at least one good hook for all the seeds I started, with the exception of the Ghost; I culled that up front since it's honestly just not as interesting to me as any of the others, and I'm already swimming in plants.

new-new-kids.jpg


While there's only one Devil's Tongue hook, I went ahead and put the rest of the seeds in a second pot, just in case. I know for a fact at least some of the seeds in there were not the correct (white) phenotype, so I'd like to grow out at least two going and see if I have any that'll grow true.

The larger plants are mostly puttering along happily. The SR Cream, however, is not in great shape.

While it's producing healthy new leaves, the larger ones continue to look worse.

yikes.jpg


They're in close proximity to the other plants, none of which have this problem. The only thing I've found in searching that seems to look similar is chemical burn; is this plant perhaps reacting poorly to the same nutrient balance the others are enjoying? Any input would be appreciated. :confused:

[edit: In case it's relevant, the SR Cream is the only baccatum I have growing right now. The others are chinense and annuum.]
 
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MarcV said:
Wow that's quite an update! Curious to know how the mash ferment will do. I'd love to give that a try myself one day too!
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Specifically regarding this: It's... not great. I think 3ish percent salt was not enough, but then I also think my house is a really bad environment for this in winter; with the indoor temperature in the low to mid teens at night, a brine ferment tolerates it a lot better. The mash has consistently generated more surface mold than I'd expect. I'm going to skim the top and add a bit of brine tomorrow, and I think mash with a bit of ~5% brine to start is how I'm going to try the next batch, when the next round of peppers ripen.
 
PaulG said:
@internationalfish - If the new growth on the SRC
looks good, just cut those big uglies off. No use
making the plant deal with them.
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Done and done. The new growth seems mostly fine, though I'm holding out for a while before declaring it miraculously healed... that plant just seems completely uninterested in growing leaves, just fruit. I've had to stake two branches, and the thing just sits there, budding and setting fruit, not making leaves, not ripening peppers. It's freaking maddening.

Alejandro said:
Thanks a lot for the seeds and extra plants.
The plants are not that gorgeous green any more but alive
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My pleasure! I hope they're playing nicely with all their new brothers and sisters. :)
 
So... yikes! While the previous issue hasn't resurfaced, the SR Cream is losing young leaves to wilting despite still growing new ones, and seems to have mostly stalled otherwise. It's at least ripening pods, so I should get to try them and collect seeds, though the plant seems either unhealthy in some fundamental way or not suited to the environment I'm growing in. If it keeps going this way, I'll likely end up culling it or moving it outside (the weather has finally started getting nice here in the last couple of weeks).

In better news... everything else! :) The Huacho Amarillo is ripening the wrong color, but at least it is ripening, so I'm guessing I just have an off-pheno plant and crossing my fingers that those pods taste good enough for me not to care. The JA hab pods are big and gorgeous, and the jalapenos are also looking good, so I'm not concerned on that front.

The small plants are also coming along. I now have three healthy Reaper seedlings, five Naglah, and two 21500 (as well as a few others), so things are looking up mightily there. The Longhorn kids are growing quickly and have been twist-tied into their initial shapes, which is fun.

The local plant store has started stocking spearmint plants again, so I'm hoping it's not long before they'll have basil, shiso, and/or sage, and I can decide just how crazy I want to go with the herb experiments.
 
Hey, 'Fish, glad to hear that the JA Habanero is
podding up for you. Can't wait to see some
recent pics of your grow
 
Kind of a middling update.

My last fermentation went entirely into BBQ sauce rather than straight hot sauce, which turned out really well. And my wife somehow ended up with an entire pineapple this week, so I'm going to start a ferment in the next couple days with a small batch of ripe pods I pulled off this morning.

Current state of the tent:

eek.jpg


The huacho amarillo... isn't. It ended up being some sort of cross, so at this point it's pretty much just a generic chinense; I'm letting it die. Along, unfortunately, with the Longhorns I was shaping as bonchi. Turns out those are just really ugly plants, and since I'm not really excited about the fruit, they're getting the ax.

However, everything else -- two each of reapers, CGN 21500, Naglah, and Devil's Tongue Hopefully-White, are doing quite well in their small containers. And the SR Peach, on the left, is looking a heck of a lot better given a couple weeks to turn out some foliage without pods to worry about. In the back, the JR Hab (left) and Z. jalapeno (right) are doing well enough, despite some, uh, watering delays. They'll get a trim this week and should bush out again in short order.

The biggest problem recently, though, is the fact that the grow light on the bottom had some kind of issue, and something in there started burning. If I hadn't been in the office when it happened, I might not even have a house right now (and given the density of housing here, the entire block could've swiftly shared my predicament). So I'm more than a little nervous about this; while the top light is higher quality, it's still a Chinese white label brand, and this has made me a lot more concerned about its safety... if anyone has suggestions for grow lights that generate a lot less heat, I'd love to hear them. At this point I'm happy to spend a couple hundred USD to get something that's likely to be safer, and if I can't find something, I'm not all that sure about continuing to grow this way.
 
i bought this light in january, and it runs quite cool imo. the fan is big and does make some noise, but not enough to be bothersome, if you had the tv on or were in the next room. this is the first one i've ever bought though, so i have no comparison for the loudness/heat compared to others. you can see on the ad that the light intensity is quite high, that was my motivation to buy, along with the low price (currently $81 canadian but i paid $58 for it) and i am very pleased with the results it's given me so far.

 
Hey, 'Fish. Glad you were Johnny-on-the-spot
regards the lamp mishap. That is too much of a
close call .

Good luck finding a suitable replacement!
 
growyourown said:
i bought this light in january, and it runs quite cool imo. the fan is big and does make some noise, but not enough to be bothersome, if you had the tv on or were in the next room. this is the first one i've ever bought though, so i have no comparison for the loudness/heat compared to others. you can see on the ad that the light intensity is quite high, that was my motivation to buy, along with the low price (currently $81 canadian but i paid $58 for it) and i am very pleased with the results it's given me so far.
Click to expand...

Heh. Thanks for the recommendation; that's almost exactly the same thing I have in the top part of my tent. It's another one of those popular white-label products.

I went ahead and picked up a fanless light. It cost a bit more, but hopefully that at least removes a couple classes of potential catastrophic failure. For now I'm just going with one light. Getting rid of the not-huacho-amarillo and the Longhorns means I can reasonably comfortably fit everything I'm growing on one shelf for the moment.
 
Wow, sorry, it's been a long time since I updated this. Since we're heading for the end of the year, I'll try to start up a new thread if I make much of a change.

Currently, I'm down to two plants, a Sugar Rush Cream and a Jamaican Red Habanero, which so far are my favorite varieties (thanks, as always, to Paul!).

I'm nearing the end of a ferment that's mostly garlic. It's necessarily a relatively short one -- about two and a half weeks -- because the first floor of the house positively reeks, and this is coming from someone who adores garlic. When that gets processed, I'll start a ferment that's entirely SR cream, since that has finally ripened one of its famously voluminous batches.

garlic-and-newbs.jpg


I was part of a mass layoff last Thursday, so I have a bit of time on my hands while I job hunt... not exactly what I would've hoped for a couple weeks before Christmas, but hey, rich fucks with C's in front of their titles can't be expected to give a shit about us little people, right? Anyway, I'm planning to clean out the tent and hopefully start some basil and cilantro. Not sure if there will be more peppers on the menu; the JR hab doesn't seem to want to set fruit right now, but even if it doesn't start up again, I've already got so much hot sauce sitting around I don't know what to do with it all (and also plenty of saved seeds, so that's fortunately not a concern this time).

Hope everyone's been doing well! Merry Christmas! 🎄
 
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