Violentglitter's Time to Grow!

... grow those growing skills, that is.
 
2018 was a bit of a fumble. I ran out of time, I STILL have plants in solo cups that are just now (in JANUARY) podding up.
 
If I've learned something from 2018, and going into my third year of growing (or second of actually attempting more than just 'hey, cheap seeds lets see what I get") it would be to get the shit into bigger pots faster, and get them out in the sun ASAP. I had big plans to try to plant out in ground, but couldn't get the time to spend in the field clearing the roots and such and amend the soil. I also had a moment of thinking that if I planted in ground, Murphy's law would take over and hurricanes would come. This year I'm thinking of maybe going the Walmart-reusable-bag route or something. If I make more bags like the handful I made this year, they will need to be out of better landscape fabric, as the one I had sitting on the ground grew right into the ground. It also performed worse than the one constrained to a slightly smaller bag.
 
My mom got me a little greenhouse for Christmas (one of these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ogrow-56-in-W-x-29-in-D-Deluxe-Walk-In-3-Tier-6-Shelf-Portable-Greenhouse-OG6834-S/204840639
nothing fancy. Finances, finances. ). I got a black 13-gal ish garbage can full of water to hope for enough heat for our cold nights that if getting below freezing usually isn't for long. I'm open to any other ideas, too!  
 

Just has my solo-cup guys (that are SCREAMING for more space but flowering and setting pods) and my scraggly Russian Queen tomato with it's one green fruit on the ground for now.
 
 
Now, what better way to start off a glog than with a pic of a small harvest from a few days ago:

 
That pepper with the hole bugs me that I didn't catch it. Ohh well.
 
Decided to try using coco coir to start, so let's see how much I screw up with it! Perhaps the lack of nutrients will guilt me into potting up sooner.

 

3 of each variety, in case I need to abort and restart.
 
Front is (from right to left, because that's the direction I went):
Sri Lanka Chili Red - growdown
Sri Lanka Chili Red from Ella, Sri Lanka from Guru's pod
Bahamian Goat
Bahamian Beast Peach F3
CGN 21500
Coyote Zan White
 
Back, right to left:
Fatalii (I didn't get any to germinate last year. *crosses fingers*)
Cumari do Para
Legacy
Early Jalepeno (My husband loves jalepenos, so I made sure to include them in first round)
Bolivian Rainbow
Black Pearl
 
I somehow couldn't find the clear lid, so saran wrap it is:

... and on to the heat mat it went.
 
I know I will do another round of stuff I do have that didn't go in this round, and I might order a few more varieties. I was near loading up all of my converted ice-cube trays and various other seed starting things, but decided for the sake of survivability I'll leave it at that. .
 
Now, the wait.

 

[Ghost Pepper Revolution]

I've no idea what a bahamian beast f3 is, but please pot it in a container that you're able to separate from the rest of your garden - 300 ish yards should do. 

Im pretty sure she got them from white hot peppers lol
They have like 3 kinds of F3s

 

[violentglitter]

I've no idea what a bahamian beast f3 is, but please pot it in a container that you're able to separate from the rest of your garden - 300 ish yards should do. 

 
 

Im pretty sure she got them from white hot peppers lol
They have like 3 kinds of F3s

 
That's exactly where they came from.   It was one of the freebies I got with my order that I got pretty excited about, a cross between a Bahamian goat and some superhot. 

 

[violentglitter]

Ehhhh, I got a little carried away mixing soil and moving plants around and forgot to take many pics, but I moved 8-10 of my year old solo cup plants into 2 gallon poly bags. They aren't fitting as neatly into my greenhouse this way, so they are starting to line the fence for the time being in hopes that we don't get more freezing temps. My first round seedlings got moved into solo cups and into the greenhouse with the exception of the black pearl, CGN 21500, and coyote zan white because I ran out of usable cups as well as time for the day. 
 
A lot of the old solo cup plants were looking rough, and lost a LOT of their leaves due to what I can assume is getting a little too cold and humid in the greenhouse. I decided to not dwell on it, or try to do anything radical to nurse them to health, and sure enough they are all shooting out tons of new healthy growth at every single node. 
 
I took a pic of what will likely be the growdown plant (unless one of the others sprouts quickly and gets with the program):

 
As well as the second one I did, my little lone Bahamian goat:

 
And then one pic of the dozen seedlings that got potted up:

 
The two I'm going to really keep an eye on are the OG chili red middle left, because it was a helmet head that left it pretty deformed looking, and so far the first "leaves" look like mini vines that curl under the cotys, and one of the Cumari do Para (third from the left, middle) because it looks like it just refuses to grow at all and is pretty pale. I don't expect it to make it, it popped before the one above it in pic by a few days, but seems to have no will to grow, though if I remember right it had a surprising root system, which gives me some hope it will be happier in it's new home.  
 
I guess I need to take more pics. 

 

[violentglitter]

That wimpy looking Cumari do Para didn't make it. It never really even tried to take off. 
 
I also lost two of my CGN-21500 and one Coyote Zan. I hadn't gotten to potting up those, and they looked like they dried up a little too quick outside with our 87F days lately on a shelf of the open greenhouse. 
 
Guess I'll need to start more. 
 
My odd-looking "serrano" is ripening, I'm curious as to what it crossed with:

 
A lot of the "overwintered" plants are flowering. Yay!

 

[violentglitter]

I'm still alive, and so is my grow, though I've hit several points where my season looked like it was over.
 
I lost almost my entire 2nd round, 30ish seedlings, apart from 3 or 4. I replanted some of those, and still ended up losing quite a few of them again.
 
Nearly all of my year old plants had (and have) pods set on them in their 2 and 5 gallon grow bags. Unfortunately, the newest member of our family is a terrier mix that we got after a friend pulled him from a pretty bad situation, having been badly abused and seems to have some form of PTSD. He spent his first month and a half, maybe two months leaving my plants alone. That is, until I took out the Alaska fish ferts...  He tore nearly every one of my peppers out of the bags, ripped up the sides of the bags that he didn't pull them out of completely, and even my 3-year-old little hab plant was pulled out of it's plastic pot, and I found the plastic pot nearly an acre away from the plant chewed to pieces.
 
Of course when that happened was on a day I was already extremely pressed for time, and all I could do was grab another grow bag and throw the roots in with what soil i could pick up and lay them down. I ended up getting them into various odd-sized containers, and by the end of it, I miraculously only lost one plant completely, though a good bit of them looked to be done for when I found them, with 4 that looked especially bad. They are all now on the other side of the fence where the dogs can't get to them... which is probably where they should have been to begin with.
 
We also recently had a bit of a bad storm with tornado warnings come through. I moved my younger plants to the bottom of the greenhouse and closed it to try to keep them safe. Also in the greenhouse was the fish ferts, which had been ignored when I've had the greenhouse open since the incident. Not that day, though. Now the greenhouse has a few large holes ripped into it, and about a foot or so sized piece torn off completely. Smaller plants got trampled and turned over, but ended up being fine. Fertilizer bottle has holes.
 
On the bright side, I have a handful of peppers across various plants waiting to ripen.
 
I also had this madballz chocolate x 7 pot burgundy from my newest replacement group grow with a double stem or something. I'm 99% certain I didn't have a second seed fall in, and the bottom of the stem looked to be fused. The taller of the two stems has since started to take over, since I've taken the pic, though:

 

 

[Blitz527]

My season took a heck of a hit too, had to start over for a third time after a second move. But the only way to keep going is keep trying. Things seem like they are looking up for ya

 

[violentglitter]

I had been mixing my soil with a pretty simple mix of peat, compost, and perlite. That was a big mistake. I have a few nutrient deficiencies going on.

 
The four on the right in back, and the two on the right in the middle are in basic Miracle Grow potting soil, just to see how it would compare.
 
My mix sucks. I'm not sure if I was thinking the compost would be more nutrient-rich, or that I'm just an airhead for not mixing more stuff into the soil. They've been treated and fed the same. I think I might mix a bit of osmocote into all 25ish plants that look yellow and see if they improve, but I have a feeling they will need more than that. 

 

[PaulG]

Sorry to hear about the dog issues, Liz. That's a
tough way to lose plants, but it sounds like you
are rescuing them in time to get a season out of
them. You go, girl!
 
As for the yellowing plants, how about side dressing
with some blood meal and feather meal, maybe a little
bone meal, too. Not a huge amount, but it might give
the plants a shot at greening up. Also, a foliar feed
with Cal-Mag and Kelp Extract might do them some
good.
 
Good luck keeping everything safe and prospering!