[Failed/Harvest] Jamaican Bird Pepper (May 11, 2020)

[ERR0R1755]

After starting the seeds on April 24th, I finally got a Jamaican Bird Pepper seed to sprout.
I moved it into a Harvest today as the only plant:


I decided to try hacking my Harvest a bit - so I removed the drip pump, and instead I hooked up a 10-gallon Whisper air pump with a small air stone. I'm interested to see how it does!

I don't have any prior experience with these peppers, so unfortunately I don't have anything to compare it to, but I'm hoping for positive results.

The seeds in question came from peppergrower2013 on eBay. They were quite pricey ($2.40 for 14 seeds) so I'm definitely hoping to get some seeds from this in the long run.

[Shawn]

Following

[ERR0R1755]

Nothing notable in terms of growth so far, but something interesting I noticed - the vibrations from the air pump are causing the seedling to shake a little bit.

I'm curious to see if this will be equivalent to mimicking wind, and therefore result in a stronger stem.

[ERR0R1755]

The first true leaves are coming through!

[ERR0R1755]

And here comes the second set of true leaves!


The plant's growth is accelerating at a nice rate (especially after waiting a month for the seed to germinate...) and I'll probably add some General Hydroponics CALiMAGic (calcium and magnesium) soon.

I'm pretty sure most of the problems I've had with other plants are due to the lack of those two components, since I have to use distilled/RO water which is as pure as you can get, and I don't believe the Aerogarden nutrients contain those two things.

[ERR0R1755]

So far so good! I added one teaspoon of CALiMAGic and two caps of the AG nutrients, and I'm hoping that's not too much and that they don't cause a nutrient lockout, since you're normally supposed to use the cal-mag before you add nutrients.

The PPM is currently around 1300, which is on the low side for hot peppers according to what I can find online, but it's definitely the highest I've had in my Aerogarden yet...

[akivalocal]

This is all new to me! When you say your PPM is 1300, I assume you mean parts per million...but parts per million of what? Do you usually measure exact nutrient levels with peppers? Do you find that this gives you a better end result?


Fascinating!

[ERR0R1755]

May 25, 2020 22:51:27 GMT -5 akivalocal said:

This is all new to me! When you say your PPM is 1300, I assume you mean parts per million...but parts per million of what? Do you usually measure exact nutrient levels with peppers? Do you find that this gives you a better end result?

I normally don't measure PPM much, but I figured it would be a good idea to do it this time so I don't over or under dose my pepper with nutrients.

The PPM is indeed parts per million, but with a PPM tester, it just says "this much other stuff is in the water". I'm not sure what most chlorinated water comes to, but at least with reverse osmosis or distilled water, it's normally less than 20. You can use PPM as a rough guideline of "how much nutrients do I have to use for optimal growth".

If you're curious and want to get a rough idea of how it works, here's the chart I use with vegetables and requirements.
www.homehydrosystems.com/ph_tds_ppm/ph_vegetables_page.html

(you can ignore cF and EC, they're just different ways of measuring dissolved solids like PPM does)

[ERR0R1755]

It's growing well!


The leaves are starting to look a bit discolored and there's some dead edges. I looked in the tank and there's a bunch of white fuzzy (underwater) clumps, which I think is my fault from not mixing the nutrients well enough last time. I'll do a rinse and refill today.

[Shawn]

keep us posted

[ERR0R1755]

Definitely nutrient lock out. After the R&R, the PPM is now 1780.

I removed some of the dead leaves, removed some of the roots that had brown clumps in them (chunks of nutrient?), and topped the plant.

[ERR0R1755]

I decided to try something - I removed every single large leaf on the plant, leaving about a dozen small ones.



From what I've seen with other gardeners, the plant should easily recover from this, but I wanted to snip the bad leaves off (and maybe get a bushier growth as a bonus)

[ERR0R1755]

The nutrient lockout or whatever was in my AeroGarden definitely caused some damage, I should have done the R&R sooner...

I've been removing the old damaged leaves as they start to become more noticeable, but the new growth is looking good:

[Shawn]

At least you caught it before it did a lot of damage.  

[ERR0R1755]

Yes, it could have been worse. I almost wish I went with different nutrients instead of the AeroGarden, since it's hard to tell the difference between early root rot and stains from the nutrients >_>

[Shawn]

I know a lot of people use other nutes but I get so nervous about the mixing and what to use when so I have always used the AG ones.  One of our members wrote a Flora Series 101 "tutorial" for lack of a better word (int he Nutrient and Supplement section) however my brain still gets confused.  I should take another look someday.

[ERR0R1755]

If you pick up a cheap PPM meter ($10-$20), then you just add a small amount of nutrients to a gallon of water, mix, and repeat until you have the PPM you want. (this chart has the most common ones)

It's a bit different since you refill using your pre-mixed nutrient solution, instead of adding water to the AG as needed and then adding nutrients every two weeks. You won't have to worry about how much nutrients your plant uses, since the water you'd refill it with has your nutrients in it

(and even if you don't want to deal with other nutrients or a PPM meter, that chart is still useful because it gives you an idea of how much nutrients you should give each plant, to prevent things like lettuce getting nutrient burn.)

[ERR0R1755]

Seems like it has recovered nicely and is enjoying the increased PPM!

[Shawn]

It is looking good.

[ERR0R1755]

I've been carefully monitoring the nutrients/PPM and the water level. I removed some of the front leaves so I could get access to the water port more easily, but this is the most growth I've seen in a three day period:


The leaves are building up some condensation due to how many leaves the bush is getting, so hopefully that won't be an issue in the long run.