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Wolf's Learn to Grow Log.

Growing peppers out at my workshop this year, using leftover stuff from past years at the house. Hoping to get a few in dutch buckets, but will settle for getting any to grow at all. I've never done hydro so I am starting with what I know, and what I know, is how to kill a BUNCH of plants. Good part is, if they survive me, NOTHIN' will keep them down.
 
But if you're gonna kill a bunch of plants, you have to *start* with a bunch of plants. And that's where we are now.
 
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I'll start with these old 3" square nursery pots I found up there too. Filled them with Miracle-Gro seed starter mix, that has been in a sealed bag for at least a year, but left on the front porch. Put some seeds in a paper towel, got them to sprout out, and into the dirt about 1/4" deep. Watered in till the water ran out the bottom, and let them sit in a 75F room for 20 days...no luck. they seem to have died quickly in the dirt.
 
So, next up, I found this 72 cell seed tray in the rafters of the workshop, and tried again. But, since I hadn't quite given up on the first batch, I didn't have enough starter mix left, so I mixed up my own.
 
50% miracle-gro starter mix
50% coconut coir starter brick thing, Burpee branded, mixed with 8qt water
Added 1/4 cup of "Burpee Seed Starting and Transplant" Fertilizer with mycorrhizae
 
Let sit a few days and then filled up the seed tray, planted the following:
 
25 Maduro Mutant M1
 
22 Cali TCW Bell
 
25 Chinese Giant Bell
 
Bottom of the frame is the chinese giants, top of the frame (the ones starting to sprout) are the Maduro Mutants.
 
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More seeds are in the germination zip-locks, I have Tequila Sunrise (Third try, first try last year turned out to be purple bells, second try died in some of the 3" pots this year, and now the third try is in the zip-locks) and some yellow datil seed that I found on e-bay...guess we'll see if it's the real thing or not. I was unable to find it from any other sources, all of them are out of stock so far. Like I said...I'll be happy to get any to come up at all.
 
I'll keep this thread updated with a few photos as things happen. I know it's late for the C. Chinense datils to get started and out, but I am hoping I can bring them inside and keep them going long enough. Last frost is expected to be this coming weekend, and we won't get 50F overnights reliably till end of the month...but normally overnights will still be over 50 till mid to late October...and occasionally November. I'm gonna try to keep the datil plant/plants over winter anyway, they'll be decorative enough to keep inside and I won't get complained at.
 
Click to expand...
Counts as of this evening (4/12/2018):

22 Maduro Mutant M1
25 Chinese Giant
0 Cali TCW
0 Tequila Sunrise
0 Datil Yellow

I planted two or three seeds in each cell of the starter tray, so ultimately I could wind up with 75 of the first three...but I plan to cut back the weaker plants or if they are pretty equal, I'll separate them.

Seeds germinated via the ziploc method are separated and planted one to a pot, and I cut a 1.25l Coca-Cola bottle in half, to give two humidity domes till they come up.

How many days do C. Annuum take to go from cotyledons to first true leaves, usually? I am worried that the two 65W incandescent floods are not going to be even close to enough light, I have 4 more 4ft LED 5100k t8 lights in the same room, but I may have to break out the soldering iron and PCB stock, and use up some of the reels of older LEDs discarded from an old job.
 
T8 works really good with 6500k bulbs, incandescent probably won't work, or at least I have never heard of them working.

My annums are starting to get true leaves and it hasn't been long since they popped. They are under led strips, cheap ones. I will have to look back in my glog and see when stuff sprouted exactly
 
The 4 4ft LED's are the room lights, the room is 8ft by 12ft and 8ft ceiling, the incandescents are additional lights mounted to the bottom of the cabinet for now.
 
I haven't found any 6500K bulbs that are LED, just 5100K so far. I also have 3000K LED's, but they are older and are not as bright. I have a crap-load of old cree 3w LED engineering samples that are not terribly efficient by today's standards but I could make them work, I'd have to make boards to mount them to, but that isn't hard. Then drivers, etc...it starts to add up.
 
If I can use the LED 5100K tubes, they are 4$ each at the local Home Despot...and a fixture to pop them into is readily assembled from junk in my shop.
 
I'm playing with a wifi-enabled microcontroller, goofing around with setting it up as a hydro controller or a light controller, maybe both. Idea is to have it pick up internet time, turn the lights on/off, turn a fan on/off, run a watering system on a schedule, check for temperature/humidity, check for water level in reservoir if equipped, and be configured via a web page or maybe a phone app. I have no idea if this would take off or not,
 
Today's counts, 4/14/2018:
 
45 Maduro Mutant M1 (three seeds per pod...I separated and repotted...)
54 Chinese Giant (same...)
0 Cali TCW (I abandoned these, digging up the seeds in two cells showed only a hard dry seed...)
0 Tequila Sunrise
0 Datil Yellow
 
I have led strips, some cool white, some warm white, and rgb+cw. I have to keep it pretty close to the plants but they seem to like it. I moved the bigger plants and started more under the LEDs, so I don't have a complete side by side. But it works good enough and uses 77 watts. I hear ya on the parts adding up, I used a psu I had laying around and still spent over 100 bucks putting it together.

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Lots of seedlings up with the cotyledons out, but when they first came out, they spread out flat and were nice and green. Today, almost all of them had their cotyledons folded almost straight up. Is this normal, or something to worry about?
 
Agreed. What's the room temperature like?

Looks like you'll have plenty of Maduro Mutants and Chinese Giants.

Read with interest your goal of IOT CEA. Will follow your progress with interest.
 
They are just showing a little appreciation to the Creator! My plants are like that every morning when the lights come on. I think maybe they try to get their leaves up above the competition too
 
Alright, after burning a few due to too much light, not enough water, etc..I finally got some tequila sunrise to sprout up.
 
The current survivors:
 
36 Maduro Mutant M1-some seedlings showing first sets of true leaves
36 Chinese Giant-some seedlings showing first sets of true leaves
12 Tequila Sunrise-still only cotyledons up.
2 Datil Yellow-seeds germinated, will plant in 4-5 days.
 
Bonnie plants had a large "it's gonna frost again" sale at Home Despot, so I now have a Tequila purple bell, an Orange Bell, and two Mucho Nacho jalapenos, along with all the tomatos I plan to grow this year. Frost danger should be past now, so planting may happen tomorrow for some stuff.
 
Looking at the plants I have played with fertilizers on, this is what I have found.
 
A bottlecap of burpee transplant fertilizer (pretty sure it's made of dried chicken shit) into a liter of water turns it coffee black after a day. Bottom watering 8 seedlings with this bumped their size up dramatically and pushed them almost a week up in growing the first true leaves-they're on the same level as the seedlings that sprouted a week earlier.
 
Is it too soon to start applying fertilizers like that? I have available the Burpee 3-6-4, a grain depot 10-10-10, and pretty much any Monty's liquid stuff, as he lives not too far from here.
 
One of the multiple-sprout cells that has Maduro Mutant M1 seed sprouted up had two come up, and so I pinched off the weaker one.
 
The dang thing has split the end of the remaining stalk and sprouted up a new growth tip. it's had no cotyledons at all since day 2 of sprouting up, and it's about to set its first true leaves 10 days later. Maybe I should reconsider which plant in that cell was the strongest!
 
Yep, that pinched-off stem now has its first true leaves, actually beating out it's bigger brother in the same cell.
 
Was out of town for work today, found a garden center with some Fresno peppers. Bought one, it'll be neat!
 
Current counts:
 
36 Maduro Mutant M1-some seedlings showing first sets of true leaves
36 Chinese Giant-some seedlings showing first sets of true leaves
12 Tequila Sunrise-still only cotyledons up.
6 Datil Yellow-seeds germinated, will be potted up tomorrow in 4" pots
 
Purchased:
Orange Bonnie Bell
Purple Bonnie Bell
2 Mucho Nacho Bonnie Jalapeno
2 Fresno
 
Also Planted:
3 Park's Whopper Tomato (will be set up in hydro)
Thai Basil
Stacks of Cucumbers (wayyyyy more than I'll want ultimately, but enough to ensure pickleable batches.)
Carrots
Onions
4 Yukon Gold taters
14 New Red taters
 
Volunteers in the garden patch:
Buttercrisp leaf lettuce...it's taken over an approximately 50ftx70ft section of the garden! That's ok, though, it's delicious.
 
 
This is a photo I took when the end of the pinched off stem started to swell up a bit.
 
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This is the same plant a few days ago.
 
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And this is today. Contrast kinda sucks but you can see the thready bits of the first leaves coming up out of the split there.
 
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These two are my most advanced Maduro Mutant M1, they aren't yellow at all in the shop, but they show up that sickly yellow color in the photos.
 
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Everything else seems to be lagging behind, but today I gave them all a shot of 2-15-15 liquid fertilizer and we'll see how they do.
 
Lucky me, I looked at those fresnos I bought and turns out there are two of them in each pot. When transplanting them, I carefully seperated the roots, although one of them didn't have much left. Hopefully the 2-15-15 will help out a bit and they'll only be stunted a little. I did plant them a little deeper, so hopefully I see new root formation near the base of the stem.
 
 
Nice pics , this is a slow time in the life of the seedlings , between germination and the first true leaves.
Just hang in there.
 
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