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Wolf's Second Year-Adventures in Better Recordkeeping.

Last year didn't go so well. Major problems getting started, lots of plant die-off out of what I sprouted, and poor performance of my plants contributed to a lack of recordkeeping and thus poor results in the mutation plots. However, I did get enough of a crop to keep seeds from most everything, and I have better plans for this year. But it all hinges on getting seeds to sprout, and keeping good records.
 
It's almost time to start sprouting seeds, but this year I'll be using the Jiffy peat pellets as I was given a LOT (1500+) of them for free. I also have the trays and the like to use with them so convenience wins out. I am tired of dealing with big hot bulky lights so my cousin and I built some LED grow lamps from surplus LED modules bolted to big hunks of heatsink extrusion I got at the local scrap yard. We'll see how they go. I see a lot of folks using pre-mixed or mixing their own seed mix, and I did that last year, but I didn't see any better results, so if anyone has any details or tricks for using the Jiffy pellets, I'm all ears.
 
This year I'll be sprouting:
 
Black Pearl
Yellow Cayenne
Trinidad Scorpion
Yellow Datil
Mutant "Incredible Hulk" brown bell
Fish Varigated
 
Hopefully I can get the first crop to come in fairly quickly, and mutation/crossbreeding seed can be sprouted and I can start the grow out this year. I have two rooms where it would be trivial to keep three or four plants alive over the winter, but I don't know if things will get that far this year or not.
 
I'm also starting some tomato seeds, san marzano and mortgage lifter varieties. Seeing as the local university's agriculture farm is my back yard, I'm going to also ask them if they would like to participate in the mutation studies this year.
 
 
 
Click to expand...
After the plants sprout hit them with half strength fish emulsion and some mycorrhizae to kick start the biological process, if you're doing organic, or diluted liquid nutes if you're going the chem route. When the plants are forming true leaves they need real nutrients that won't be in the jiffy pellets. Plants will just sit there forever not really doing anything. Transplant to some potting soil as soon as you possibly can, that'll get growth going rapidly. I'm usually potting-up plants within 2 weeks of them sprouting. 
 
Good luck with this year's grow!
 
 
That's what I learned last year. I had plants 23 inches tall in 2 cubic inches of soil, that fruited. Weirdest thing though-it took them 9 months.
 
The mycorrhizae and fish emulsion are on the shelf, ready to go. I ran with dyna-gro last year from mid-year on and it was FANTASTIC.
 
Some real classic, old school varieties in your grow, Wolf.
Good luck going forward with your sowing.

Jiffy pellets work great if you use hot water to expand
them, and mush them around a bit to get the whole
plug soft. GeorgiaGrowhead tipped me off to those
hints, several seasons ago, and they made a real
difference.

Good luck with them.
 
Got seeds in the paper towels tonight. Hopefully in five or six days, I'll have some germination going on and I'll start putting them down into the starter trays. I've started with all of the Incredible Hulk Mutant A26, which produced HUGE fruits and stood almost 6ft tall with no stakes or cage. Hopefully I get some of those traits coming through this year. It took ages to set fruit and the fruit to mature, and they weren't anything spectacular flavor-wise, but they were big, blocky, meaty brown bell peppers. It's something.
 
Picked up these four LED integrated lamp modules from Amazon. 14$ for all four, delivered.
 
QSJSWqg.jpg

 
A little bit of the forbidden marshmallow creme, some scrapyard heatsink material, and a little time in my machines shop and they're bolted up:
 
EQFGUFG.jpg

 
They are pretty bright-looks like they're overloading my camera here.

TUvok9z.jpg

 
And this is the view through a #10 welding shade, approximately the same light intensity at 4 feet as looking into the sun through the same shade. Still overloading the camera a bit, though.
 
bStzJRi.jpg

 
And the printout from the integration sphere-this is a machine designed to measure lightbulbs and shows the spectrum and light intensity. With all 4 modules on, the sensor was reading over-limit. Backed it back down to a single module, which was JUST BARELY within the measurement capabilities of the system and multiplied up from there for the following figures.
 
sgkhgim.jpg

 
So, what did I get for 21$ in parts?
 
1,153,200 PAR. It's a portable sun!
 
This year, I should not have the leggy super-tall, slow growing plants like I had last year, when I had a single 18W LED, a 60W incandescent gro-light, and a 60W flood light at the peak. we'll see in a few weeks, as it'll be 5-8 days till I see seeds starting to sprout in the paper towel.
 
I was scared at first when I just saw them mounted to that thin piece of aluminum...Then the big Heat sink made me feel alot better...pheww.
 
How is that bad boy for heat with just the sink or do you have a fan on it at all?
 
Those integrated chips are nice and are basically penuts now to buy...saw a couple new models where even no soldering involved just plug and play basically with the wires.
 
Edit nevermind I think you have that model by the looks of the pics?
 
These are the modules I bought-however when I bought them they were 7 bucks for a pair, not 13.
 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D1XMF8L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
That heatsink gets warm to the touch, but that's about it. No fan on it. I do have a muffin fan to bolt on the top middle, then tape over the top of the fins so the air must be blown out each end. This method works pretty well.
 
The first 72 seed cells were filled today.
 
6 cells each:
Hawaiian Pineapple Tomato
Paul Robeson Tomato
Mortgage Lifter Tomato
San Marzano Tomato
Bistro Hybrid Tomato
 
6 cells each:
Dorset Naga
Fish Pepper
Yellow Datil
Purple Bell
Mutant Incredible Hulk
Yellow Cayenne
Black Pearl
 
The Potatoes will be coming in late march, Dakota Rose and Huckleberry Gold.
 
I've decided that if I'm going to make any decent progress in developing neat varietals I'll need to grow more limited numbers. Only the mutation experiments will be grown out in large quantities, but we'll see how A26 works out this year.
 
WolframMalukker said:
These are the modules I bought-however when I bought them they were 7 bucks for a pair, not 13.
 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D1XMF8L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
That heatsink gets warm to the touch, but that's about it. No fan on it. I do have a muffin fan to bolt on the top middle, then tape over the top of the fins so the air must be blown out each end. This method works pretty well.
 
The first 72 seed cells were filled today.
 
6 cells each:
Hawaiian Pineapple Tomato
Paul Robeson Tomato
Mortgage Lifter Tomato
San Marzano Tomato
Bistro Hybrid Tomato
 
6 cells each:
Dorset Naga
Fish Pepper
Yellow Datil
Purple Bell
Mutant Incredible Hulk
Yellow Cayenne
Black Pearl
 
The Potatoes will be coming in late march, Dakota Rose and Huckleberry Gold.
 
I've decided that if I'm going to make any decent progress in developing neat varietals I'll need to grow more limited numbers. Only the mutation experiments will be grown out in large quantities, but we'll see how A26 works out this year.
Click to expand...
Thanks Man!  Time to get busy/
 
8 days no hooks? Sorry to hear about the job situation, hopefully it all works out. 
 
**Sorry saw you put them in paper towels on the 16th
 
Not quite Nothin!
 
Three tomatos have popped up-but all of them with the seed jacket still on. All of them will require helmet-removal surgery  or just resowing.
 
WolframMalukker said:
Nothing happening in the seed department. 72 cells of nothin'.
 
Not sure if i mentioned but I am unemployed *again* this year, last year I was unemployed december-may, then got hired on doing what I do best and loved the job. Then, in november the entire department was eliminated and so I'm back gardening again.
 
As they say...
 
https://www.youtube.com/embed/cmQwL6qiByo
Click to expand...
+1 Outlaw. Sucks about the job situation  :mope:
 
Eight days is not enough time to start
worrying about the chilies. Give them
2 or 3 weeks.
 
WolframMalukker said:
Like I said above, some of the tomatoes are up already, and I just had a look at the gauge seeds in the paper towel/baggie germinator. The peppers have sprouted in the bag, so it won't be long before the first ones start coming up
Click to expand...
Great idea having the paper towel seeds to
gauge how the ones in dirt are doing!
 
Hope they hook soon for ya!
 
12 San Marzano Tomatos are up
6 Mortgage Lifter Tomatos are up.
 
A tip on those LED modules-The heatsink I'm using is 7"x16"x2.25" thick, and the fins are 3/32" thick. It weighs 10lbs just by itself. IT IS NOT ENOUGH HEATSINK for 4 modules! Even with a pretty decent 6" 120v fan blowing on it, four modules (200W) brings the heatsink up to "OW!" temperature in about an hour. The thermocouple datalogger is on it right now, and while the temps are perfectly safe for the LED's even with all four on, they're not friendly. Plus side is that no heat mat is needed, but I did have to raise the light up to 24" to keep the soil temperature from climbing higher than 75F. With only two modules on, 16" keeps the soil temperature at 78F, so I've got that going for me.
 
I've currently got two out of the four LED modules operating, and as soon as I cut out another chunk of heatsink I'll re-mount the other two on it. It will give more even lighting anyway.
 
WolframMalukker said:
12 San Marzano Tomatos are up
6 Mortgage Lifter Tomatos are up.
 
A tip on those LED modules-The heatsink I'm using is 7"x16"x2.25" thick, and the fins are 3/32" thick. It weighs 10lbs just by itself. IT IS NOT ENOUGH HEATSINK for 4 modules! Even with a pretty decent 6" 120v fan blowing on it, four modules (200W) brings the heatsink up to "OW!" temperature in about an hour. The thermocouple datalogger is on it right now, and while the temps are perfectly safe for the LED's even with all four on, they're not friendly. Plus side is that no heat mat is needed, but I did have to raise the light up to 24" to keep the soil temperature from climbing higher than 75F. With only two modules on, 16" keeps the soil temperature at 78F, so I've got that going for me.
 
I've currently got two out of the four LED modules operating, and as soon as I cut out another chunk of heatsink I'll re-mount the other two on it. It will give more even lighting anyway.
Click to expand...
Good to know on the heat. Thanks.
 
Yeah Cobs tend to throw of a ton of heat..even smaller 10w and 20w chips can get pretty hot. I have a few chips of each from 10-to 50ws but have not done a full build as I want to really get a very large heatsink and hopefully have a 200w, similar to yours actually.
 
For now I just went with a bunch of strip lights, I am more comfortable working with 12v and less of a worry of burning the house down. Cobs are extremely effecient though but to anyone I suggest make sure it is done right or it could end up pretty bad, not really something you wanna play with it you don't know what your doing.
 
Wolf you certainly get it good sir /tip my hat
 
I mean if you had the whole assembly where it wasn't going to be touchable, there would be no problem. It can be HOT, and not damage the LED's at all. But it's about elbow high on the counter in the CNC/Radio office, so being hot enough to deliver 1st degree burns is just not good.
 
I found another pair of good aluminum-framed fans that are a bit thicker and have higher rated airflows, so I may try all four again and see if I can keep the temperature where I want it to be. We'll see how it goes.
 
Today's count:
 
Hawaiian Pineapple Tomato - 2 Hooks
Paul Robeson Tomato - 3 hooks, 3 cotys unfolded
Mortgage Lifter Tomato - 6 cotys unfolded
San Marzano Tomato - 12 cotys unfolded
Bistro Hybrid Tomato - Nada. But, this is old seed. (2005 old.) And the others were sown in wet paper towels for a few days first.
 
6 cells each:
Dorset Naga - Nothing
Fish Pepper - Paper towel germ gauge seeds all have 1/2" radicle
Yellow Datil - Paper towel germ gauge seeds all have 1/16" radicle
Purple Bell -Nothing
Mutant Incredible Hulk - 1 or two germ gauge seeds have what could be a radicle
Yellow Cayenne - Nothing
Black Pearl - Nothing
 
Of the peppers, nothing in the seed trays (all of which were planted out of the paper towel seed now being used as gauges) has shown it's head yet-but it's still got plenty of time. I expect to see the fish peppers first-seeing as they're nearly busting out of the paper towels!
 
Preparing to move forward, it's time to work on getting potting soil ready. I'm still unemployed this week so the plan is to repurpose what is on hand rather than spend money.
 
I've got around the house, from various origins, all at least a year old:
Shitloads of jiffy pellets, which I soaked and de-socked to get seed starting mix for the trays
8qts of perlite, minus a handful or two
2qts Dry organic fertilizer for seedlings with mycorrhizae (mostly poultry litter by the smell)
2ish cubic feet of peat moss
4ish cubic feet Miracle-Grow "Garden Soil" which is black, heavy, and supposed to be mixed into your garden dirt, NOT potting mix.
A brick of compressed coco coir, which I didn't know I had. Mixes with 4.5qt of water to make 5 qts of coir. Still shrink-wrapped.
 
Right now, I'm thinking:
4 parts garden soil
2 parts peat moss OR coir
1 part perlite
1 part dry organic ferts with mycorrhizae
 
which would give me :
 
2qts ferts
2qts perlite
4qts peat moss OR coir
8qts garden soil
 
To which I would blend together for the potting mix. How's that sound?
 
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