First "season" - indoors!

[Trizza]

I've just finished planting seeds for my first "season" growing chillis. I'm not terribly experienced at growing things, so it'll be a great learning experience. This is going to be an over-winter indoor growing experiment from me, I'm not sure what to expect, but hey if they fail then I'll just plant some more in the new year, all I'll have wasted is time My goal is not big yields, just pretty house plants that give some handy pods.

The plan is to supplement sunlight from our south-facing windows with LED lighting. I'll be ordering them soon, hopefully arriving just in time for the babies to germinate. I live in Finland, so the winter will soon be here with its accompanying very short days.

Heres the list of varieties I planted tonight - two of each, hoping for one good healthy plant of each:

• Aji Cristal


• Naga Morich - to scare visitors with, and also I have in mind making an evil Naga Vindaloo!


• Peito de Moca - I'm really excited about these ones, the pictures look great


• Luiza Yellow Pumpkin - another pretty looking one


• Bird's Eye Baby


• Black Scorpion Tongue - for looks


• Short Yellow Tabasco

Most of these have been chosen based on small fruit, easy growing, and good looks.
Fingers crossed! Any advice to help take luck out of the equation is most welcome

[Fatalii]

Very good set of varieties!

I'm sure you will succeed at least with some of them as they might differ a lot from each other.

Don't be afraid to use scissors to keep them from growing huge !!

[Trizza]

Thanks - I would have had a hard time choosing varieties before I was pointed towards your site! I also seem to dislike many annuums like you, and loved the taste of Naga, so it was useful to read opinions from someone with similar taste

I just tried some of your Devil Dust by the way - very tasty! With the name I was expecting more heat but it seemed to fade away quite fast, a nice "hey I'm here" burn at the start and lingering heat after, not too overpowering. I'll find that very useful, I think - I scare my workmates by up-ending jars of commercial powders over my lunch until its all evenly coated with red to get enough heat

Your site should have an article "What to do to pass the time while you wait for seeds to germinate", by the way

[Fatalii]

Hmm.. I love the article idea!!

If devil dust isn't hot enough for you, then naga powder is!

[Trizza]

One Luiza and one Peito have germinated already! The Peito actually appeared yesterday. Thats seriously fast, I wasn't expecting to see anything for many days yet I'll wait for a few more to appear out of the soil and then move the mini greenhouse to a sunny spot on the windowsill - they're living in a nice warm cupboard in the entrance hall at the moment.

Edit: now with pictures! You can clearly see the seed in these here. Did I plant these too shallow?

[ylläpito on poistanut liitteen]

[zaxxon]

Heyy! I'll try to catch up with you soon

[Trizza]

Update: One of the Nagas is pushing up out of the soil Both Peito de Mocas have sprouted, and the Luiza Yellow Pumpkin is growing very strongly - its now about 3cm tall and some green bits are unfurling.

I'm intrigued that the only ones to sprout so far are all chinenses - I thought they were meant to be very slow to germinate?

I moved them to the windowsill this morning now that green bits are visible - hopefully our cat doesn't decide to do some "gardening" while I'm at work today!

[Trizza]

It really is amazing how fast these guys grow. This is my first attempt at growing anything except cat grass from seed, so I'm continually excited
The Naga is nicely visible, the Luiza looks amazingly big and strong, and the second Peito de Moca to sprout is about half the size of the Luiza with some baby leaves showing too.

Heres a picture the Luiza as it stands right now!


[ylläpito on poistanut liitteen]

[Trizza]

I decided on my lighting - I'm going to start with only white LEDs, and see how far I get with those. I might end up lacking in the red spectrum - if so then I'll build lights for those too. I've ordered 30 Cree XR-E R2 emitters, which I'll be assembling into a number of small lights - probably four or five emitters each. I'd like to dedicate one assembly to each of the 7 plants I intend to end up with. The specs of these LEDs are most impressive - a max output of 240 lumens each at 4W power usage, and reaching an efficiency of 100lm/W if you don't push them quite as much! Should be an interesting experiment

Growth update: All 6 chinense seedlings are now upright and looking good, and one Short Yellow Tabasco appears to have germinated

[Trizza]

It seems like the babies have been really enjoying all this great sunny weather we've had lately, plenty are up and looking great!

Naga is getting big fat leaves, wider than the other varieties:


[ylläpito on poistanut liitteen]

[Trizza]

Luiza is towering over everything else and has a nice third leaf appearing (forgive me, I am but a newbie - is this its first proper leaf?)


[ylläpito on poistanut liitteen]

[Trizza]

One birds eye baby is up and definitely in scale with the seed - its a tiny little guy, but seems to be doing well:

(testing pictures linked from Facebook here, apologies if they don't work)


One black scorpion tongue is up and is working on shedding its seed-hat:

[Trizza]

Both yellow tabascos have sprouted, though one of them has a bit of yellowing at the tip of one of its leaves. What might this mean? Any advice?



So all have now sprouted except for one Bird's Eye Baby, one Aji Crysal, and one Black Scorpion Tongue. And I just realized I have Lemon Drop seeds that I forgot to plant the first time around.

Its going to be hard choosing which plants to pinch off...

[Trizza]

And now for some more pictures:

First a group shot. I could find any name tags for them anywhere I went (Plantagen were all out and couldn't even find the spot on the shelves anywhere else) so I gave up and cut up a few plastic knives instead Totally ghetto, but hey it works..



Here you can see how strongly the Luiza Yellow Pumpkins are growing - these guys are amazing, totally thrashing everyone else:



Another shot of Luiza, definitely got some proper leaves happening now:



Same guy, neck to Naga. Nagas are doing brilliantly too



Our cat has to inspect them every time I pull them off the windowsill for some photos:



Question time:

• Do you think I should I rotate the box around so they get light from both sides?


• How much longer until I should think about repotting into individual pots?

[Fatalii]

You can turn the box around once in a while, not too often.

You can repot them soon to individual pots, just be vary careful with the seedlings.
Unnecessary handling of the seedlings can easily affect the future growth of the plant.

[Trizza]

Getting some really big fat juicy leaves on some of them now, they're doing great Luiza Yellow Pumpkin and Naga Morich are definitely the fast growers of this batch. Is that a normal thing, Fatalii, or would it be more to do with the luck of the draw? How good the seeds were etc etc?
I realized I forgot to plant Lemon Drop, so I dropped a few seeds for that guy into some of the cells that didn't germinate.

I bought a stack of pots from Plantagen ready to start repotting as soon as they get big enough, but my next worry: the cat! I'm sure older plants can handle a nibble here or there but I imagine it'd be a disaster if it eats all their leaves as soon as they get out from under the greenhouse. I'm thinking of cutting a few plastic bottles to use them over the pots like greenhouses to protect them. Any other ideas?

[Fatalii]

Sounds like a good idea.

Otherwise, looking at your plants, you worry way too much, they look just fine so far!

Carry on!

[Trizza]

Hehe - not so much worried Fatalii as curious

[Trizza]

Repotted the two biggest ones:

Luiza Yellow Pumpkin looks great:


Closer view, showing off its third real leaf:


And Naga Morich is looking good, too:


The cat doesn't seem interested in them with their protective soda bottle covers, so it seems to be working

[Fatalii]

Looks good and they are definitely safe!

Good that you took care of the ventilation too!