I grow my chillis in soil in a greenhouse.  Could somebody explain which (organic) Biobizz fertilisers are recommended and when?

At the moment we're at the beginning of the flowering/ fruiting stage: should I use Topmax or Bio-Bloom or both?

Thanks,

Sally

Hi Sally!

Definitely both!

For that stage you can also use Alg-a-Mic, both in soil and with spraying!
You can give 5ml of topmax per each liter when the flowering should start massively.
If you got plenty of light and you have some nice varieties, they will "explode" and fill with flowers!

If you're using small(ish) pots, you should add some biogro two.
Just go very easy with biogrow especially when pods starts to form and ripen as the taste of the yield can be easily spoiled with too much nitrogen. Very common mistake.

Hope it helps!

Thanks!

Can ask one more question: is it true that Topmax is an additive whereas Bio-Bloom is the actual fertiliser?

Wise words From Fatalii and agree with everything..But be careful with algamic as it depends if your water is soft or hard..I use Grow,Bloom,Topmax and Maxicrop. 

TopMax fuels prolific blooming while enhancing the flavor of herbs and vegetables in your garden. TopMax is perfectly suited for soil but can be used in other growing media as well. Top Max has the threefold purpose of facilitating the uptake of nutrients within the plants, dramatically increasing the actual size and weight of floral clusters, and leaving a sweet smooth taste in the finished product. The extraordinary way Top Max assists in the flow of nutrients is made possible through the use of humic acids.

Humic acid is formed from soil and vegetable deposits that have formed over millions of years. The main source of Humic acid is drawn from a deposit called Leonardite which is the most highly concentrated organic material on the plane

Floral growth and health is assisted by the use of fulvic acid which plays an integral role in natural plant life. It is reclaimed from certain exceptionally rich sources of humate deposits from deep within the earth.

Fulvic acid has an electrically charged nature that attracts to itself plant nutrients and minerals from both the microbiological soil base and applied organic fertilizers such as Bio-Bloom. Being a naturally charged particle working in combination with humic acid it penetrates the flower cell walls where it recharges and energizes old and dying cells, whilst stimulating new cell life. Though the ability to convert decaying plant matter into new life it also protects against mould and rot on the surface of the flower heads.

That sales pitch mumbo jumbo sounds really fancy, but in reality it's nothing different from any other fertilizers.

You see, plants cannot absorb minerals directly from a piece of rock or a slab of iron, as those are not soluable in water. Instead, the minerals need to be in the form of a chelate, which is a soluable chemical compound consisting of a mineral and an acid. There are many acids that can be used for this purpose, for example citric acid (from lemons), oxalic acid (from rhubarb) or phosphoric acid (from Coca-Cola ). All these acids are "electrically charged".

So all liquid (or easily soluable) fertilizers contain minerals in the form of chelates. It might even say so on the package, "Copper (Cu) in the form of a chelate" or similar.

Agree totally Rince,Its just having the time to get all the right ingredients  together and doing your own..Plus your right there are cheaper alternatives and Epsom salts is one of the most useful items for a Gardner very chap and box can last for a very long time indeed.I Have just thrown a five year old box away lol 

There's definitely difference between different ferts. There are some bad ones, there are some good ones, and then there are the ones which make you help to gain a bumper crop when applied just right.

Especially the thing about enriching the bacterial activity in soil makes a great difference!
Bacterial powder works great with Biobizz, you just have to go very easy with biobizz when using them at the same time.

One thing that confirms it is that you can't use the same amount as without the bacterial powder. But when used together, the growth will be amazing!
Almost like hydro growth with soil.

Will do some experimenting with Topmax starting next week.

btw: what do you pay for 1 L of Topmax?.

Paying £12.99 litre Topmax,Grow £8.95,Bloom £.8.95 

Thanks for all the info everybody!

I too will be starting with Topmax (and the others recommended) next week - just ordered it all from ebay. 

Last year's chilli season - my first ever - wasn't bad, but I hardly at all fertilised so hopefully this year's crop will be ever so much better

Sally

Just be careful with the nitrogen... many beginners fertilize way too much at first and get very nice looking bushy plants and no yield or very small yield.

I'm sure you will do just fine!

I just wanted to let you all know how I've been getting on.  I bought some Topmax and BioBloom as soon as you advised, and within 2 weeks I noticed up to 30 new flower buds on each plant!  Whilst this is obviously not a properly designed experiment, I can definitely state that I am getting many more flowers, and much faster growing fruit, than I did last year when I used hardly any fertiliser for the whole season.  So I have a very happy greenhouse at the moment!

Thanks

VERY NICE!

As you can see, little things can help a lot.

Happy greenhouse usually means happy owner too!

I am using just BioBloom now but I am unsure about the dosage. The plants have nice green leaves and they have many flowers but when a flower fades and a tiny pod starts forming many of them drop off. As the plants look otherwise healthy I think it might be either some nutrient deficiency or slight overfertilization? Is that possible. Do you think using TopMax could help?

Thanks for any help.

Topmax will definitely help. But you also need to have plenty of light and decent temperatures.

For solving problems with dropping flowers, take a look at fatalii.net - how to grow chiles? section.

Hope it helps!

Hmm, temperatures should be OK, I think these days. We have at most 28C during the days and 14C during nights.  As well as lighting - they are on a balcony.

As for watering - I try to leave the soil to dry out on the top until next watering. The leaves do not look faded but maybe I should give them a bit more water?

Yeah, after they have started flowering, you can give a little more.

Also, keep in mind that it´s perfectly normal for chiles to drops ome flowers, at least the first ones.

I have currently two c. pubescens varieties - CAP 217 (Hyper Pube) and PI 585261 (Ultra Pube). I had always slight problems with getting pods on rocotos however the Ultra Pube is wonderful - I have dozens of tiny pods on it forming and only very few flowers drop off. On the other hand the Hyper Pube did not fully bloom yet at all and the flower buds drop off even before blooming. Both plants look healthy in other regards. I hope the Hyper Pube will have some pods sooner or later but the Ultra Pube looks like the best rocoto I've grown.

I have also many baccatums, all of them are quite good now except Aji Benito whose pods still drop off just after the flower fades. I'm really perplexed with that because I am growing Aji Benitos for fourth season and they never had this problem. Either the seeds are from a crosspolination or it might be a lower temperatures we have this year here as the plants are on a balcony. What do you think?

About the pubes:
That's a perfect example of how complex chiles can be... even withing the same species the differences can be just like that. One plant produces a huge crop and another.... nothing. I have learned that with pubes it's most often because of the temperatures.
Some plants are very strict about their envinroment and some just don't care.

About Aji Benito (great var btw!) It might be simply because of too much nitrogen. This actually might be also a problem for some pubes. Keep in mind that the plants are individuals, sometimes even the plants among the same species demand a different fertilizating for optimum results.

I obtained a question from a very famous swedish chili hobby grower Mats Pettersson about coffee ground+ baking powder how it
works as a fertilization method. According to his experience it worked well. I cant argue with that. But the partial
explanation why it works I wrote a small article about. It is not to be viewed as a scientific article and as such
references can not be made to be used in real litterature it is on  http://michaelsalemssonchili.blogspot.com/. The
article is in swedish. But people tell me google translate works well enough. What I calculated out is the fact
that it seems fertilization adding can sometimes be exaggerated. 100 gram coffee ground was enough ( if it has
decomposed to its simplest ionic forms) to produce the mass about 1,1 kilogram Cayenne fruit mass. Well you
can read the small article and let me know what u think.