Tokyo summer 2021: Tent and AC, because 35C is not fun.

Welcome to the next episode of some half-witted fish neglecting pepper plants in Japan! While my wife will be keeping two of my off-season plants outside (KS Lemon Starrburst and Nanbu), the indoor stuff is -- aside from the SR Peach -- entirely new to me in terms of growing. So I'm hoping to get both some fun new flavors, particularly from the Casados, and a pod I'm absolutely in love with thanks to PaulG in the Jamaican red habanero. I expect this to be an excellent season for sauce.
 
The main characters were started in mini Kratky bottles based on Khang Starr's method for intentionally root-binding plants in small containers to force them to pod up quickly. Unfortunately, this did not work for me at all, so now I have a fun variety of adolescent plants that clearly have no intention of setting fruit until they get upgraded. I was going to be a couple of 1-gallon bags short, but I got those ordered and they came in right on time. Unfortunately, I failed to check on my coir stock, soooo everyone got a shallow grave temporarily while I waited two days for that shipment to come in. Starting off strong!
 
Using 1 gallon bags, with the size of my tent, 5 plants per shelf has been somewhere between ideal and a bit too much. Since I didn't manage to get the mini Kratky thing to work the way I wanted, I think I'll probably stick to the six plants I have, possibly four on top and two on the bottom; the Casados in particular seems to be quite the vine, so perhaps that and one other on the bottom, with the weaker light, and four up top with the better one. I am set to get some new seeds from a couple of pepper people in Japan, but if I end up starting anything, I suspect it'll be in small containers of coir, but that's a while off.
 
This is what we're starting with, and if everything puts out pods in reasonable quantity, I think it should be a smooth and easy season.
 

 

[internationalfish]

Okay, @internationalfish, maybe it's time to send
a little red habanero seed-containing powder?
Meanwhile, good luck getting your plant squared
away.

Sorry about the Datil. That has been a super productive
variety, and pretty darn hot, pepper the seasons I have
grown it.

Thanks for the offer, as always, but I think I actually found a few more red hab seeds last time I broke out the 'bank.' I'll set aside some time this week to at least start working on these plants and possibly get a few of those seeds in some coir.

 

[talas]

International fish those plants with really bad curling is severe nute damage by my eyes my advice would be brand new quality soil and let the plant settle and recover.
Coir is a great medium but perhaps use a 60/40 soil coir mix with balanced pH.
And perhaps away from the lights into natural light for a bit.

 

[internationalfish]

International fish those plants with really bad curling is severe nute damage by my eyes my advice would be brand new quality soil and let the plant settle and recover.
Coir is a great medium but perhaps use a 60/40 soil coir mix with balanced pH.
And perhaps away from the lights into natural light for a bit.

Thanks for the input, Talas! Definitely appreciate it. While I haven't changed anything with the nutrients or lights, these plants are in a different batch of coir than I was using previously, so it would make sense if that's where the problem is coming from.

Unfortunately, the whole reason I switched to coir is bugs. I had a couple infestations using soil in the tent, and since it's less than six feet from the desk I work at and there's nowhere else to put it, that's a big problem. I'm also kind of screwed on the natural light angle; Japanese people (at least in Tokyo) don't seem to care much about natural light, so my house is not exactly a windowed Nirvana. So I'm fairly limited on what I'm willing/able to do as far as the medium and natural light.

I will try giving them another flush and attempt to work on getting the pH checked and fixed, though; that at least I should be able to do.

 

[talas]

Can appreciate you using coir for bugfree but you can get..not sure about Japan something like Biobizz light which I've used and is amazing in an indoor grow and bugfree but coir is amazing used in the right context.
Sorry about Natural light been to Japan myself a few times and should of thought of that so yes windows are precious things indeed there.Well I hope you can get sorted and save your plants and keep my crossed for you that the plants recover.

 

[internationalfish]

Can appreciate you using coir for bugfree but you can get..not sure about Japan something like Biobizz light which I've used and is amazing in an indoor grow and bugfree but coir is amazing used in the right context.
Sorry about Natural light been to Japan myself a few times and should of thought of that so yes windows are precious things indeed there.Well I hope you can get sorted and save your plants and keep my crossed for you that the plants recover.

Thanks! It looks like I can currently get Biobizz Light or Coir Mix here; never heard of that before. It'd doesn't say anything specifically about being bug-free, but looking around, people seem to have good things to say about it in that regard.

 

[internationalfish]

Thanks again to talas for the suggestion: I re-bagged one of my Datils and my JR Hab (gonna get that bugger yet) in Biobizz Light, so hopefully we see some improvement over the next week or ten. If they start looking better, I'll get the rest transplanted (with the exception of the other Datil, which is either going into soil and staying outside or making its way to that dung heap in the sky).

Here's the updated top shelf. I moved up the Casados, since it's my favorite. Viney bugger, I want you closer to me!

Since I was trimming things, I pulled some fruit off my only two fruiting plants. Got some Sugar Rush Peach and, of course, Casados. Not that I have any idea what I'm going to do with them, other than pick a couple favorites and pull seeds, just in case.

And a final BIG thank you to Alejandro, who stopped by with some ghostly hot sauce and a CGN 21500 ristra!

 

[talas]

Hope things come together for you if and that sauce looks delicious and isn't a joy having pepper friends who pop by and bring some much needed heat.

 

[internationalfish]

Hope things come together for you if and that sauce looks delicious and isn't a joy having pepper friends who pop by and bring some much needed heat.

Thanks! It certainly is.

 

[internationalfish]

So Alejandro dropped in again to adopt some plants, and brought along a hilarious Korea-themed ristra for my wife's birthday.

Which leaves us with just two plants in the tent, my wonderfully viney Casados and the painfully slowly-ripening Sugar Rush Peach.

Despite its sloth, I do also love the flavor you get from SRP pods, so I'm currently pleased with what I've got.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get some seeds into some of Talas' recommended medium, so by the time the current batch of SRP pods are ripe, I should have mature plants.

Because of that and since the majority of my summer kids have left for the farm upstate been adopted by my friendly neighborhood pepper fixer, I think I'll probably start a new thread for the next part of the grow and mostly consider this one a misfire. Planning to start/restart some Jamaican Red Hab, Sugar Rush Peach, Zapotec Jalapeno, and at least one other I'm currently mulling over.

 

[CaneDog]

Looking forward to the new grow 'fish.

Spent plenty of time waiting for baccatums to ripen myself but usually worth it

 

[internationalfish]

Finishing out the season, I've started a ferment with a bunch of Casados, a few SRP, and some CGN 21500 and Ghost that Alejandro provided as a ristra.

Onion slices on top to keep things under the weight; I found out I didn't even have garlic in the kitchen, so this is probably the simplest ferment I've ever done. Pretty much just peppers, salt, and water. I thought I had a larger jar (and I might, but couldn't find it), so I ended up with almost no head space; for that reason it's sitting in a nice big dish to catch the overflow.

For the next grow, I started sugar rush cream, Jamaican red hab, Zapotec jalapeno, huacho amarillo, Carolina reaper, and Caribe seeds. If I get viable sprouts from all of them, that'll be eight total plants, so a comfortably full tent; if they actually produce, we'll be back to "holy shit, what am I gonna do with all these pods" territory, which is where I prefer to be. And if the reapers grow, that'll be a pretty massive step up for me in terms of heat.