They're ALIVE!!!! 2010 Garden Growing Tips, Tricks, Pron Thread

[landarc]

Smoke, I do not have any chilhaucle in the ground this year, I should have some interesting stuff though. Let me get it in the ground and I can let you know. Had a lot of non-starters this year due to working with old seeds that I should have planted some time ago.

 

[SmokeJumper]

Those chilhaucles are a beautiful sight Dave.

Don't feel bad about thinning because if even a couple of those plants make it to fruit you will have an heirloom seed bank, killer moles and interesting chile powders much of the year.

As for the other varieties, my sister reported this week that of over 50 cascabel seeds planted this spring she only got 2 to germinate. It may be because those seeds are three or four years old. In conrast, the chilhuacles seeds were harvested in Oaxaca last summer.

What did you plant in your aerogardens?

 

[82muchhomework]

What size pots? Do you know how to do pots for plants? Are you going to irrigate?

I bought some trays of peat pots to transplant these guys in under the fluorescent lights. They are 5" diameter by about 4.5" tall.

:shocked: do pots? Irrigate? I don't have any experience doing this sort of thing. But I am willing to ask questions and research like crazy to make it work. Please, clue me in.

Those peat pots come with soil pucks. That makes me think that those expandable pucks are "dead" soil without the beneficial bacteria and nutrients. Should I use some other kind of soil, or should I just mix in some organic fertilizer? What would you do?

What did you plant in your aerogardens?

Wife wanted the English Cottage garden flowers. That's how I convinced her to buy them. :becky:

 

[SmokeJumper]

Wife wanted the English Cottage garden flowers. That's how I convinced her to buy them. :becky:

Smooth operator!

Just make sure those flowers don't grow too well or you'll never get veggies started in there!

 

[landarc]

For vegetables, versus houseplants, the manner in which you set up the pots can differ. If you are going to irrigate them with a timer (always a good thing versus hand watering) you also make some changes to the setup. The type of pot and size makes a huge difference. For peppers, you can get away with 3 gallon size pots, tomatoes really want a 5 gallon size (buckets work).

What I would consider...once you get pots, there should be at least two holes 1/2" in diameter, fill bottom two inches with 1" rocks and top with some filter fabric. Put potting soil into each pot. Then plant you seedling after they get three sets of true leaves. Water with a dripper into each bucket at the base of the transplant. (this assumes you are not do hydro of some sort, if you are doing hydro, the most important thing will be to block sun from hitting the pots if they are outside. Algae is not good for hydro.

As far as the peat pots and moss pucks, they are somewhat sterile, use them anyway and when you water, add a teaspoon of liquid nutrient to each 1/2 gallon of water. Once you get to three true leaves, harden them off and plant them out.

 

[chobint]

Wife wanted the English Cottage garden flowers. That's how I convinced her to buy them. :becky:

boo. Shoulda put herbs in the aerogarden. Can't beat cutting fresh herbs right off the vine as you are cooking.

edit: for transplantation, your plants should be very robust and ready for the outdoors before they outgrow the biodegradable 5" pots. Keeping the bio pots watering can be a serious PITA b/c they dry out so quickly. You can easily remedy this by putting them in a tray and overwatering a bit, just make sure you let the pan dry out every few days to avoid unwanted friends due to stagnation.

As landarc mentioned you will want something considerably larger if you want to take your plants to maturity indoors. The only issues I see is that putting holes in the pot and using active irrigation indoors is impractical... mostly b/c drainage is nonexistent unless you are growing in a bathtub (which would be awesome). I prefer to just put some extra gravel at the bottom to help supplement drainage. The reason I place the tube in my pots to see the water level is to ensure that I don't over water. Anyway, good luck.

 

[82muchhomework]

The seedlings have been moved to their temporary home. Its a 96 watt, T5 (4x 24" lamps) grow light. They are in 3" peat pots with coco coir medium. They have been there about a week and are on an 18 hour on, 6 hour off light cycle. Right now, the chilhuacles are in the front, yellow jalapenos in the middle, and more tepins in the back. I have more tepins and yellow jalapenos outside in small pots. These were planted a few weeks behind the others already outside.

I'm thinking that I need to move the lights closer. They are about 6-8" right now. There is a fan on them (which seems to dry out the coco quickly). I am watering from beneath and will start to add nutrients according to Landarcs previously posted instructions soon. Am I on the right track?

Also, I JUST got some interesting seeds in the mail, purple glow in the dark peppers, black nubian peppers, and Thomas Jefferson cayenne. Is it too late in the season to start those?

 

[chobint]

Looks good.

I'd say you can move the lights in quite a bit. Standard wattage fluro tubes do not get hot. I keep my plants an inch or two away from my t8 fluro's, and have not had issues with burn. If the bulb is cool enough to touch comfortably with your hand, 1-2" is plenty.

 

[bbqbull]

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84145&highlight=grow+boxes

 

[landarc]

I like 4 to 6 inches, but, one inch is fine (maybe better). It all looks good to me. You should be able to start a few seeds of peppers now. Put em in a very warm soil mix, keep it at 85F or so and you can push them along nicely.

 

[stiffy]

Started some basil seeds along with 70 pepper plants, the peppers are in my big garden but decided to do the basil in small containers, so I tried chobints' method of the "Self-Watering Planter Box", see below for PRONO...

hopefully it works out we shall see,,

 

[landarc]

Very nice, and in a month, pesto!

 

[82muchhomework]

I think that Chobint's method is a good concept. I did a similar thing with a sealed bottom, plastic flower pot and that jalapeno is doing the best of all of my plants. I also drilled a small drain whole in the side of the pot so the whole thing cannot get water logged. It works well and the plant loves it. I think it also prevents all the nutrients from flushing out of the soil completely by retaining them in the bottom.

Target has some pots that are very similar to these: http://www.agardenpatch.com/ where the watering hole and "over watering drain" is executed with a spout made in the side of the bottom of the pot (the target pots are round not rectangular). The top half has wicking baskets built in. They work really well and are really cheap ($3-$8 depending on size, I think the $8 on is about 4 gallons or so). The only problem is positioning the planter so that algae doesn't grow where the sun peaks in the bottom. I also threw a piece of a mosquito dunk in the bottom of mine to prevent fungus gnats.

Keep us updated Stiffy. That basil is going to be a monster.

 

[chobint]

heyyy, glad to see someone used my planter idea. 82muchhw makes a great point. An overflow drain is an excellent addition to the original plans for outdoor use.

Looking forward to seeing how everyone's plants are doing. I should have a round of pics up here in about a week.

 

[Dylan's Dad]

I've been lurking on this thread on and off for a while, so I'll show ya my plants so far. My son and I went out over Memorial weekend to Lowe's in order to start his Topsy-Turvy strawberry garden. They only had 3 strawberry plants left :sad: but...they had tons of pepper plants. :clap2:

I bought Habaneros, Jalapeños, Cayenne, Chili Red, and Thai Hot peppers and filled 8 of the remaining slots in his Topsy Turvy. Since then they have taken off like gangbusters! :becky: I'm not sure how good the setup is for peppers, but so far so good. :thumb:

 

[landarc]

Very nice DD, I have never seen peppers done in one of those, got me thinking.

 

[Dylan's Dad]

It takes about a gallon of water a day but it has excellent drainage. As the plants get bigger I think it will even need a bit more water and fertilizer. It's almost like a greenhouse inside for the roots so they grow really quick. I can already see them on the backside thru the holes that I didn't fill with a plant.

The strawberries are growing just as fast but I keep cutting them so that they are not blocking the peppers sun. :redface:

I'll buy Dylan some strawberries!:-D

 

[SmokeJumper]

That look like a great idea DD. I'm thinking you might get some hybrid peppers from the close proximity. That might make for some interesting eats!

 

[Mark]

Dylan's Dad:

I make my own bags out of surplus vinyl and have grown peppers in slits in the side very similar to your pictures. I found that it works fine for compact pepper plants (including habenero's). But not so good for tall plants as the trunk can't bear the weight when the plant is full of fruit.


Here's an old post about it.

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showpost.php?p=261311&postcount=1

 

[chobint]

So, I never got around to posting it, but my garden was taken over by a malicious swarm of aphids. Long story short, I contracted the little buggers from some nursury plants from lowes and went away for a weekend. Came back and the garden was nearly destroyed, so I restarted. The only thing I managed to keep alive and disinfected was the strawberry plant. It's going well so far, as you can see in the pics.

On a side note, genovese basil is a freaking weed I tell you, albeit a tasty one. It grows so fast and propagates amazingly well. The basil plant pictured is one that I cloned off of my aerogarden. I have since successfully cloned 15+ basil plants and given them to family and friends.

PICSSS... Not pictured are some jumbo jalapeno, sweet banana and fajita bells that I just germinated and transplanted recently.

This is a pic just before I took my week vacation to visit my family .

This is a pic just after my vacation (a week later). Look at those 'maters and basil go!!!! The basil grew into the light 6-10 inches above, which is why it's bent over.