Hydroponic adventures with hot peppers
I'm fairly new to hydroponics, the learning curve for people who don't
grow pot is rather steep!
I live in eastern Ontario, Canada and frost is a nightly event now. But
let me go back to Spring.
According to my logs I started hot peppers from seed Apr 7 in the
"one-inch" cubes. May 30 I transplanted them to the greenhouse,
individually into 6 inch pots, filled with hydrocorn and ran drippers
into them.
As spring and summer progressed a number of them died off from the
heat. I added a fan to improve the air flow. The survivors remained
stunted. Then in September as the temperatures cooled they started to
grow quickly and fruit.
But no ripening.
I dawned on me a month ago that the hydroponic store sells two distinct
formulae, the Grow and the Bloom. On my last visit I finally asked and
discovered that I should have switched to Bloom once the blooms emerged
(no directions on the containers of course!).
But I'm growing a lot of herbs and lettuce from the same reservoir and
I don't want them to fruit, so I stuck with the Grow formula.
And the peppers continue to bloom and fruit and boy are they ever
green!
A few weeks ago I added a construction heater to keep everything alive.
And finally today one of the dozens of peppers is getting some colour.
I hope that I can keep the heat going long enough to get my crop
harvested.
Clearly I'm going to need an outdoor situation for them next year.
Plans afoot....
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