The first season ever for Leksi80 (2010)

[Leksi80]

Greeting everyone,

I'm a regular Joe living in the northern wilderness also known as Finland.
This is my first go at growing something else than just excess hair and nails.

So I started by ordering the whole 3 pack of seed from Fatalii's collection.
Also known as "Fatalii's Complete Chile Collection!"

The reason for this thread is to showcase what I'm doing(Like this parth of the forum is supposed to be used) and hopefully for some of you guys to tell me what I'm doing wrong and/or give me productive criticism. I truly am a total newbie, with just a month of frantic research from these forums. I'm starting to get the basic theories at heart, but truly have miles to go to get the end product that is the point of all this hassle =)

While killing time and waiting for the seeds to arrive, I started to buy heaps of stuff to keep me going. I am one of those people who really live by the motto: "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" =)

Pictures bellow:
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/12001069/1/Chili?h=d121f6

This is actually just a portion of the things I've ordered. Some are still on route, like the light fixtures. Also some more hydroponic stuff is on it's way from www.chilitarvike.fi.

So here is the road so far:

I started by getting 3 mini-greenhouses from the local dealer. They were 4,4€ a piece.
After that I checked from the local recycling market where people drop of load of crap that they don't really need anymore. That was a gold mine for a grower and I'm surely going back soon.
I got tons of mirrors(small pieces and medium bathroom ones and also one really larger round one), light fixtures and lamps, etc.

With those combined I raided one of my many closets and totally cleared it down.
After that I filled it with mirrors and aluminum tin foil and added some electric cords and lights.
I also searched long and hard a way to find some king of heating element with a thermostat.
I finally found a perfect candidate with a 200W electric heater designed to keep a small confined space from going bellow freezing point. I bolted this close to the ceiling of the closet so that it wouldn't make a difference where the mini-greenhouses were situated bellow(right beside the heater would be bad).

Voilá, all done and then I started the germinating process at 06.11.2010.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12001069/Chili/IMG_0045.JPG


To be continued...

[Leksi80]

I started out with a fear of messing the seeds up, so I decided to do a trial run first with non-Fatalii seeds.

I chose two different varieties. Aji Cristal and Dutch Red Habanero. Both store bought and the Aji is actually from Fatalii's range of produces. This way I got tons of seeds to give me wiggle room to mess things up a bit.

It turns out that I didn't need that life line, but I did mess one thing up. I used a green specimen Aji Cristall as a seed donor. After some more research this turned out to be a tremendous cock up, since only the seeds from a totally ripe chiles actually germinate. Live and learn.

Like you can see from the pictures, the Habaneros have thrived in the closet at 27-31C of ambient air temperature. The temp inside the soil must be closet to the ideal 28-29C.
The germinating took about 9-10 days for the first seedling to push through. Others followed in suit very soon after. The last picture is taken today(2 weeks and 4 days after seeding the soil). Some lacy seeds are still pushing through.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12001069/Chili/IMG_0117.JPG

I must be doing something right.

To be continued...

[Leksi80]

In all the pictures the green mini-greenhouse is always empty.
This is because it held all the seeds from the impotent green Aji Cristall.

Now it has been re-seeded with the Fatalii-seeds. I planted all of them, but I only used about half the the seeds per variety. This way I still have some for the hydros when I start to germinate in rock wool cubes.
The seeds went to the soil at 22.11.2010 and today I did the labels for them.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12001069/Chili/IMG_0144.JPG


Fatalii was very adamant about this, since you will forgot them when re-potting if there are no labels.
I used an excel sheet to keep track and today at work I laminated the printouts to keep them readable even when I spray them with water.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12001069/Chili/IMG_0145.JPG

Now, the waiting game starts once again. But then again, this gives me time to plan the building of the hydros.

I took a couple of picture from my skylight. This is the location for my first or second hydro.
I'm planning to bolt down a "roundabout windowsill" at the bottom part of the skylight and raise the fluorescent lights up to the half way.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12001069/Chili/IMG_0132.JPG
After that I'm using a 160mm sewer pipe with 90 degree turn angles to make an infinite loop where the water is gonna circulate. The reservoir is going to wall close to the ceiling. Don't worry. I'm 207cm or 6'9" for all of you imperialist out there, so I will manage the height problem when adding nutrients and water to the system.

Sometimes I think that I'm actually more excited about planning and building the systems than the actual growing but it's really had to make that distinction =)

To be continued...

[Leksi80]

My first guesting to all of my colleagues:

When is it time to re-pot the seedling to a bigger volume of soil?
All of these are going to one of those 15cm x 80cm windowsill pots.
I have 20 basic ones which don't have the "water bottom"(for ebb&flow purposes later on in the summer inside a big greenhouse), and 4 of ones that do have it to help me not messing up with too much watering.

This first batch is all soil-based growing so I'm gonna pick the most vibrant ones and use them.

But when is it time to re-allocate the plants?