Harvest Vegetable Mix [COMPELTED - FAILED]

[belugaleuca]

Last week I started a set of veggies in the Harvest. The Lettuce, Kale, and Sweet Basil are from seed packets from Target (Burpee brand), and the left three are from a beautiful yellow pepper from the grocery store (quite sure it is bhut jolokia, but I can't be certain since it was a hot pepper mixed box). I was uncertain whether they would sprout so I planted 3 pods worth, but they've sprouted within the first week!

Method of extracting the yellow hot pepper seeds

I just cut open the pepper, scraped out some seeds and dried them on a paper towel. After sitting out for a few days I sprinkled them in the pods as normal.

[belugaleuca]

1 week mark:

[Sher]

It looks like such a neat, happy little garden!

[Shawn]

How are your gardens growing?

[belugaleuca]

Finally back to my updates! This garden failed, but I'll write about how it went. 'm not entirely sure what happened but I'll do my best to describe. 

So on July 5, the plants were doing reasonably well:

[belugaleuca]

Problems: Shortly after, though, I had a similar problem as before. The water was always warm to the touch. 
I put a thermometer in the water to track it, and it was ~25 C (77 F) during the nights and consistently climbing to 30 C (86 F) during the day. From what I know about temperature, this is generally too high for healthy plants, and causes both oxygen depletion and bacterial growth.

The symptom I noticed was that the leaves were a little yellowing, even though there was definitely enough fertilizer. I don't really know if this was a temperature problem or maybe a water problem.

Attempted solution: Since the temperature was so high, I tried what I read worked for some others, that is adding ice cubes to the water. One morning, I added 3 ice cubes to the water and it brought the temperature from 30 C down to 26 C.

Result: Unfortunately, the day after I added the ice cubes, the lettuce completely wilted. All the plants sort of stopped growing after that. I don't think I froze the roots, but maybe the sharp temperature change shocked the plants somehow?
Everything went downhill from here.

Attempted save: As a last-ditch effort, I transplanted the basil, kale, and two pepper plants outside.  Thankfully, after a week or so they recovered and are now growing happily. 
The lettuce was not salvageable, however.

[belugaleuca]

Here are the transplants: the kale and basil are in the big black pot (with the lemongrass) and the pepper plants are in the two yogurt cups.

Another fun thing is the lemongrass was from two stalks from the grocery store. I got their roots started in a cup of water next to the aerogarden, then transplanted it outside.

[belugaleuca]

One of the peppers is getting flower buds! Is it normal for peppers to be getting buds at this small size?

[maskedsonnet]

I think if a pepper plant's roots get too crowded they can start to bloom early. Until you're ready to transplant into bigger pots/the ground you may want to pinch the blooms off as they get bigger and easier to get to.

[belugaleuca]

Yeah it does seem a bit young to be having flowers... maybe it was due to the stress of temperature changes or watering. 
I picked off the buds, thanks for the suggestion!

[Sher]

Fun detail about the lemongrass. I bought seeds, but couldn't decide where to plant them.

I have a spot picked out for next year.

[Shawn]

When my peppers are that small, carefully snip those buds off to force the plant to grow.  The buds will take power from the plant.  So I would snip them off.  Can you get a side shot so we can see the height?

[belugaleuca]

This is the current height of the peppers! One is doing better than the other.

[Sher]

belugaleuca, it is fairly normal for peppers to be different sizes, and for one to be bigger and healthier. Don't give up on them yet.

Youur lemongress impresses me!

[Shawn]

They both look healthy!