Day 21 & 22
I purchased some heating pads for the seedlings and my peppers are starting to sprout while a lot of the tomatoes are ready for transplanting.
I got a first good till on the outdoor garden yesterday and cleaned up the asparagus patch. Asparagus is already popping up.
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| Asparagus |
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| Tilling the garden |
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| lots of sprouts |
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| finally getting pepper to sprout |
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| some ready for transplant |
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| a few tomatoes transplanted |
Day 57
Another week and the tomato on the right, yellow pear, is still going crazy and needs pruned again. The pepper plant, jalapeno, and tomato on the left, red cherry, have been growing a little slower. I'm not sure that growing the pepper with the tomatoes was the best thing but I wanted to experiment. The jalapeno and yellow pear have about an 80 day cycle to harvest, while the cherry tomato should only be 50 to 65 days to harvest. As you can see, none of them are flowering yet.
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| Day 57 - Yellow pear tomato has grown up to the light again |
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| Day 57 - Jalapeno is taking longer to recover from pruning |
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| Day 57 - red cherry should be starting to flower |
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| day 58 - Another pruning on the yellow pear |
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| Day 58 - jalapeno is getting more light now |
Day 50
I am experimenting a little more with aggressive pruning. They seem to recover so fast with new sprouts. I should have taken some before pictures but I got ahead of myself before I thought of it. The tomato plants had grown 6 inches above the light in a week.
I pruned nearly all of the leaves off the pepper plant two days ago and new sprouts are already coming back.
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| after pruning yesterday |
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| after pruning yesterday |
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| 2 days after pruning |
Day 14
Still not much progress with the pepper plant seedlings. A few have germinated and I can see several others ready to pop up. I backed off on the watering and that seemed to help. I am noting that next season I will put peppers and tomatoes in separate containers. The tomatoes seem to like the water a bit more.
I sewed the seeds into the pods last weekend and so far about 30% have sprouted. I was hoping for a little better than 30%, but I will give the other pods a few more days. Some of my pepper seeds were from last year, so I am wondering about that and if the seeds may not have been good.
I experimented with soaking some of the seeds first before sewing them into the pods. As far as I can tell, it really hasn't been much of a difference in germination time.
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| 144 pods about 30% have sprouted |
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| It seems to be all tomatoes that sprouted not a single pepper plant yet |
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| The lighting is critical at this stage |
Day 44
The plants have all been pruned and are beginning to be closer in size. I have noticed that less aggressive pruning seems to be better. I began pruning a lot, once per week, but now I am pruning a lot less a few times per week to give the plant more ability to recover. For the entire 44 days the light cycle has been at 16 hours. 8:30am to 12:30am (roughly)
The hydroponics unit I purchased has a set lighting schedule, so I purchased a separate smart plug that I can control light times with. I plan to begin bringing the lighting time down a little at a time until I am at 12 hours per day. It should help the plants go into harvest mode and begin flowering.
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| The light has been raised as far as it can be |
Sitting here during a July 4th rain storm. The garden is doing well. Putting down a weed barrier was well worth the cost. I have already ha...
