Fear of Clowns

My hot lemon pepper a few weeks ago - came back from having no leaves due to neglect in a flood and drain system - after 1 week in the deep water culture system:

Two weeks:

Three weeks:

From seeds purchased on eBay, "Punjab small hot". This pepper seems to be low growing and bushy, unlike most hot peppers. At two weeks in DWC:

Three weeks:

Naga jolokia, in DWC since seedling stage, a week ago:

Today - dozens and dozens of flowers:

All eight of my hot chilis in hydroponic deep water culture today. I added some bloom nutrients as most are budding now:

Labels: chili peppers, diy, gardening, hydroponics, peppers

// posted by Erik @ 8/07/2008 10:13:00 PM
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To measure Lux with a camera's light meter, use the equation above. Taken from this page.

Here are conversion factors from Lux to Photosynthetic Photon Flux for varius light sources.

Sunrise or sunset on a clear day - 400 Lux
Sunlight on a cloudy day - 5,000 Lux
Sunlight on an average day - 32,000 - 100,000 Lux

Labels: gardening, hydroponics

// posted by Erik @ 3/22/2008 12:28:00 AM
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• Repotted sinicuichi and lagochilus seedlings
• Started kratom seeds on top of soil (I've twice failed to establish them on rockwool)
• Transferred 7 varieties of chili pepper sprouts, pesto basil, oregano and rosemary into a flood and drain system (lower right corner of photo)
• Started 6 salvia species on rockwool cubes - they get gelatinous like basil seeds. I'm intending to come up with an interesting hybrid.
• Fed the three flats of chili seedlings I'm growing 100% organic for sale on eBay.
• Transferred a few more chili sprouts and black tomato sprouts into rockwool
• Foliar feed everything with stinky Fish-Mix solution.

Labels: chili peppers, germination, hydroponics, peppers, photos

// posted by Erik @ 3/14/2008 01:55:00 AM
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Today, I began soaking some chili pepper seeds in 6.0 pHed 100 ppm gibberillan R/O water. Generally from hottest to mildest,

• bin jolokia
• bhut jolokia
• naga jolokia
• Red Savina
• chocolate habanero
• Jamaican yellow Scotch bonnet
• orange habanero from Summer Habiscus
• Burpee orange habanero
• red habanero
• tepin
• Cayenne long slim
• Punjab

They will soak for a day after which I'll place them on paper towels in plastic containers. Hot chili peppers can take a lot longer than bell peppers to germinate. Out of the 12 tepin seeds I placed in paper towels 25 days ago, only two have sprouted.

Labels: chili peppers, gardening, germination, hydroponics, peppers

// posted by Erik @ 2/15/2008 11:30:00 PM
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• Greek oregano - 2 sprouts out of approx. 20. One each from the buried and surface sown.
• French rosemary - 1 sprout out of 10 or so. Surface sown.
• lemon basil - 10/10 - surface sown and buried
• Italian pesto basil - 10/10 - surface sown and buried
• Italian sage 3/10 so far
• Teppin chilis - 0/4. I've since read that most chili germination problems come from peat being in the medium. And these are in peat pots.

For my "just soak them in giberillin solution and wait," I've moved four seeds of each species into rockwool cubes, two cubes/two seeds. Nothing sprouting other than ones I had to mark "??" as I didn't label them and I don't recognize them. They could be roma tomato all puffed up, but I believe more than the two would have sprouted by now.

The string beans got mushy.

Labels: chili peppers, gardening, germination, hydroponics, peppers

// posted by Erik @ 2/14/2008 07:49:00 PM
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Here are sinicuichi and kratom sprouts from even tinier seeds,

The basil sprouted in just three days,

The tomatoes and melons are running wild,

Here's that first cucumber,

Labels: gardening, hydroponics

// posted by Erik @ 12/29/2007 11:56:00 AM
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Today my Christmas present to myself came - new and exciting seeds.

This evening, I seeded in rockwool cubes "Greek" oregano, "pesto" basil, rosemary, sage, intoxicating mint, kanna, and sinicuichi. Half of the cubes were soaked in plain reverse osmosis water, half in r/o water with 70 ppm B'cuzz root and 40 ppm gibberellin and pHed to 5.0. The sinicuichi seeds are as small as large specs of dust - I sprinkled these on a 1" thick slice of a large rockwool cube and tried to push some of the specks into the wool with a fork. I can't imagine such small seeds could grow to seedlings on such a minuscule endosperm, so I just used the weak B'cuzz/gibberellin nutrient solution.

I also started some larger non-herbaceous plants - wild dagga and kratom - again experimenting between plain reverse osmosis water and the weak nutrient solution pHed to 5.0. The kratom seeds are as large as the smallest wood sliver you could get under your skin.

The seeds with hard coats - the intoxicating mint and kanna - were soaked in near-boiling water for 2-3 minutes.

Kanna seeds naturally contain a germination inhibitor which gives the species the advantage of a generation of seeds germinating over time. The germination inhibitor can be overcome with gibberellin at a higher dose than I used this time, but as the plant's natural germination inhibitor is water soluble I'm soaking 15 seeds in r/o water. The high concentration of gibberellin required to overcome the germination inhibitor would possibly have unwanted side effects - such as elongation of roots and stems.

Labels: botany, gardening, hydroponics

// posted by Erik @ 12/20/2007 07:40:00 PM
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Here's my recirculating deep water culture hydroponic garden. It's called "deep water culture" because the roots are completely submerged in water and it's called "recirculating" because water constantly flows through each bucket (as opposed to aerating water in individual unconnected buckets). I spent $150 - 175 on the parts, less than half what one would pay for an equivalent pre-made system.

To emphasize that the system will grow garden-fresh winter produce I chose to "set out" my seedlings on Thanksgiving Day - our culture's harvest celebration.

1. 

   Rinsing landscape "lava rock". This will support the roots.

    

2. 

   Assembled buckets, tubes, pipes and grommets from Home Depot, Menard's and a hydroponic specialty store. Water comes in through 1/4" pipe, exits through a 1" grommet on the opposite side.

    

3. 

   The reservoir. A submersible pump pushes water out to buckets, gravity returns water to reservoir.

    

4. 

   Air wands from aquarium shop in the reservoir. The water must have a lot of dissolved oxygen in it it or the roots will drown.

    

5. 

   Can't have too many bubbles. The more oxygen in the water, the faster nutrients are absorbed through the roots.

    

6. 

   Covering the reservoir. If light hits the water algae will grow, wasting nutrients and looking scummy.

    

7. 

   Seedlings dropped into the contraption.

    

8. 

   Two weeks later.

    

Labels: gardening, hydroponics

// posted by Erik @ 12/06/2007 08:46:00 AM
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