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Two years ago I got a tiny decorative plant that had tabasco peppers on it as a gift. It grew in a small (like 1.5" diameter) pot and did very well for many months indoors. Inevitably, it died and I harvested the seeds. Last year, I sowed them in that same tiny pot, but like two weeks after germinating they all died. I may have overwatered them or the tiny pot was too crowded or something, I'm not sure. This year I found that I had two more seeds of it left and they seem to be doing well, each in a slightly larger (2.5") pot. What worries me a bit is that the seedlings are the same size my bell pepper seedlings are. I'm not sure what to expect. Will they grow to full size plants? Is the "dwarfism" a genetic trait or is it in function of the size of the pot or something else? Or does it require messing around with intense growing lamps and stuff? Is there something I can do to let this grow into an adult plant that is suitable for tabletop decoration?
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Apr 21, 2013 13:34
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Lead out in cuffs posted:They could also have been hybrids; seeds of hybrid plants are typically either sterile or produce very suboptimal plants (with weird combinations of undesirable traits from the parents used in the initial hybridisation). You can grow them and see, but I have a feeling you won't have much luck. If you want to grow really tiny dwarf peppers, you're probably best off buying the (almost certainly hybrid) seed from a reputable seed company.  But if I'm reading that right, you're suggesting that there's nothing I have control over that will keep these specific plants small. Either they are or they aren't because it's very likely a genetic trait and there's no way to know if that trait is inherited in the seedlings I currently have. That's totally okay with me, I'll just play it safe and transplant them into a larger pot when the time is right and see where they go. I don't care as much for the end result as just the fact that they won't die on me instantly out of the blue like last year, with the suspicion I smothered them. Freak fruit or even no fruit is not going to bother me for these specific plants. They're doing okay so far, I think; I didn't get to the point of a visible second set of leaves last year: 
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Apr 22, 2013 12:06
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Lead out in cuffs posted:That said, someone here said they'd had success with saving seeds from the things, so there's a good chance they're open pollinated (in which case the seed should work just fine). Lead out in cuffs posted:Probably what happened last time was some variant of damping off. You have to watch over-watering of new seedlings as it can promote fungal diseases. It can be good to sow 3-5 seeds per pot, and thin them out later on once they've gotten established. That way you have some backups. I only had two seeds left now, so there's little room for sowing backups and thinning out. I do have/have had some experience and success with regular bell peppers though, but I'd always transplant them to a giant pot on the balcony once they'd been established. That puts them farther out of range of my overbabying the things, I guess. So the logical conclusion is to just do the same thing with the tabascos. Downside is going to be that it won't be as convenient to take them inside at the end of september to squeeze another few months of life out of them as a decorative item, but, you know, one thing at a time. Thanks for the advice! I'll do a followup if the stuff is viable and especially if it'd turn out relatively tiny .
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Apr 22, 2013 20:45
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SniperWoreConverse posted:If a potato goes nuts making eyes into roots can I just throw it in some dirt?  that it worked at all. (In contrast, doing the same thing with an onion netted me a single, slighly smaller fresh onion after half a year, which hardly seems worth it)In other news, blackbirds kept digging the earth in my pots and almost destroying some seedlings, so I spent a few hours yesterday birdproofing them with whatever I found in the basement.   (Pictured left to right: 1) Cherry tomatoes, (storebought) basil, half a shampoo bottle with more basil experiments, more cherry tomatoes (that haven't germinated yet), tabasco peppers, bell peppers; 2)Zucchini, cucumbers. Not pictured: attempted carrots and even more cherry tomato attempts) Seems to work well, so far. Thanks to whoever mentioned skewers to keep cats out a few pages back. With sufficient density they keep the birds away from my basil as well. Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Apr 26, 2013 |
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Apr 26, 2013 11:48
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Some mulch will also help moderate temperatures and retain moisture. Bark, shredded paper (not crosscut), round stones, etc.  How would that do for that purpose? And would mixing some of that with the potting soil help retain moisture? Or have any effect at all, for that matter? Because I held on to that after my mice died and it would be great if I could repurpose it in a horticultural context.
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May 8, 2013 18:59
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Those closer they get to sawdust the more they will matte up and the faster they break down, tying up nitrogen in the process. Mixing into the soil would be a bad idea for that reason. If they don't work for mulch then they would be fine for mixing in with food scraps in a compost pile. I guess my next project is going to be a compost bucket or something.
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May 8, 2013 20:50
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redreader posted:We planted cucumbers a month or two ago and they died Because in that case I'm hosed for cucumbers in a pot as well. Oh well. More space for the crazy amounts of cherry tomato and bell pepper starters I have left, I guess.
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May 23, 2013 20:32
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Since we've had no spring to speak of here and I grew tired of having to move my plants around the kitchen all the time, I built myself a shelf for the only other south facing window I have. Then I found some desklamps in the attic, so in a complete grower cargocult move, I put them on there with a couple of Ikea Sparsam 20W/2100 Lumen/2700K CFL bulbs. I put a timer on them that turns them on roughly two hours before sundown and off around midnight. Since I know nothing about growing stuff under lamps, I can only wonder: is this going to make any difference at all? Any suggestions to improve on it, apart from buying actual grow lamps? Any (more) benefit in having the lamps on 24/7? 
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May 29, 2013 19:28
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SpannerX posted:I'd go with a higher number K cfl 6500 or so. That is closer to daylight. 
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May 29, 2013 21:10
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Yes, it's going to make a difference even with less than ideal bulbs. You've got them at about the right distance but I wouldn't move them any farther away. In general plants need both light and dark. What I remember reading said that the leaves grow in the light (day time) and the roots grow in the dark (night time), so if you have too much of one or the other it will make for an unhealthy plant. Many specific types of plant will respond to certain conditions of light too. For example, spinach will start bolting when the days get longer. I'll think a bit more about how to program the timer exactly. Due to the position of the surrounding buildings and the orientation of the window, the hours of direct sunlight through it are fairly constant throughout the year (about six hours a day), so if I can supplement that to approaching 12 hours, that seems about right to me. Good point about the fan, I'm sure I have enough crap lying around to whip something up. Thanks, that was enlightening. agarjogger posted:You don't need to buy sodium lamps or real grow stuff, you can just get some natural-range aquarium fluorescents. At the Home Depot or whatever, you should be able to pick up a 4' housing and two bulbs for $30. I grew tomatoes under one in the winter. They flowered in about double the normal time and the fruits were tiny, but they were otherwise healthy. Fluorescents should be able to handle herbs and other greenery fine. I assume you can get a compact bulb that puts out the correct levels of blue and red light, I think that would make a difference. I love tiny tomatoes though  so maybe I should shell out for this.
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May 29, 2013 23:21
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I didn't expect it so soon in this climate, but my cucumber and zucchini plants started flowering. I'm half in a state of panic, because I've never grown them before and I'm not sure what to do next. Each of the plants has about ten flowers and I'm basically unsure whether it's customary to pinch some of them off like you would with tomatoes or bell peppers or what? And for those who remember my cfl desklamp setup, that seems to be a great success. My tabasco pepper starters have quintupled in size. I'm tempted to say that's not just because they were also behind a south facing window, because the stuff that wasn't directly under the lamps has merely doubled in size.
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Jun 12, 2013 18:27
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Squash will have both male and female flowers.  Cpt.Wacky posted:For zucchini I don't think hand pollination is necessary unless you are getting any fruit set. I mean, it's fantastic that I don't have to deal with pests, but still...
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Jun 12, 2013 20:00
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Goddamn wind  snapped one of my tomato plants in two.Bottom half has a few leaves left. Top half I put in a bottle of water and while it turned limp first, seems to have recovered. Is this all a waste of time, or will either the bottom half potentially still bloom, or will the top half perhaps grow roots (like you can do with basilicum cuttings EDIT cursory googling suggests it might! Yay!)? Would be great if all was not lost for my favorite vine cherry tomato plant. I've also got an issue with the cucumber plants. The female flowers already started rotting while the male flowers are still green and haven't opened yet. That's a bit dissapointing. Carrots are doing great though. They're still young and tiny, but there's little as satisfying (and delicious) as pulling one out and eating it. Last time I tried them, they got eaten by some maggots. It seems I escaped that this year. Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jun 16, 2013 |
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Jun 16, 2013 00:28
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Quote not being edit and all. Sorry about that.
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Jun 16, 2013 00:31
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Kilersquirrel posted:Tomatoes will sprout roots wherever a stem touches persistent dampness, so you could probably just plunk the broken end into some water with flower food in it and place in a sunny location until the roots start to sprout. cowofwar posted:If it's indeterminate it will create new stems at every branch so as long as the break happened after the first branch you'll be fine. I'm also not sure what qualifies as a branch in the case of a tomato plant. Here's what it looks like right now:  I guess those are branches because they have more than one leaf on them?
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Jun 16, 2013 17:05
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Now I'm no expert on zucchini, but this doesn't look right to me: Is this what happens when pollination failed? I haven't had male and female flowers open at the same time, frustratingly. Or is it some disease? Should I cut them off?
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Jun 24, 2013 21:06
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zeroprime posted:It's a fungus or something causing it to rot. It can happen even on a big healthy plant, but usually just a few while you still get plenty of healthy zucchini from the plant (from what I've seen). cowofwar posted:Could be blossom end rot or just some sort of infection. Errant Gin Monks posted:This is what happened to every plant I had recently, they would all do this so I ripped all the squash out and added 2 types of peppers and some japanese eggplants. I've cut off all the rotting bits I saw and I guess I'll give it the time my backup tomato or pepper plants need to outgrow their pots. If poo poo doesn't progress favorably, more place for them. (Yes, I basically keep every starter that seems to go anywhere 'as backup', I just can't kill a viable plant. And hell, with the wind and the aggressive pigeons here, it turns out that sometimes that's the right thing to do.)
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Jun 25, 2013 21:11
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dwoloz posted:Not pollinated Coincidentally I've just come back from grinding both the zucchini and the cucumber plants to mulch. I don't need no half rotting plants in my house while I'm running out of space on the balcony for plants I care about. And if they even can't manage to get their blooming timing right, maybe they should gently caress right off and stop hogging precious resources. 
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Jun 27, 2013 18:02
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Allaniis posted:My mom thought my soil for my container tomatoes need to be aerated, so she decided to use a trowel and "aerate" them. She ended digging a quarter to an half an inch deep and managed to dig up a bunch of roots up without noticing. On the other hand, I don't know if this goes for all sorts of tomato plants, but I've had quite a few branches that broke off due to the wind and I've put them in some water with the tiniest bit of fertilizer and they grew enough roots in a week or two-three to replant them. I don't know if this works with entire plants, but it's potentially worth a shot to hedge your bets and take some ~1' cuttings from one or two of the most damaged ones.
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Jul 11, 2013 00:56
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Both last year and this year I put a single potato in a garbage bag with dirt. It's a learning experience more than anything else. You'll find out about its space, water and fertilizer requirements, what potatoes taste like really young or old or at least when they're very fresh. Yeah, I'm not saving money. But I gain knowledge and skills at practically no cost. It has no practical application, unless society should collapse or whatever, but it counts as personal enrichment to me. It's also simply more interesting to grow a variety of stuff.
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Jul 22, 2013 15:06
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Cpt.Wacky posted:I'm still learning to grow peppers well. I put mine out too early this year and their growth was stunted. Since I'm growing them in pots, I could move them back inside, but the one I left outside the longest during this lovely spring still hasn't caught up with the rest of them and probably never will. Two years ago I tried a makeshift greenhouse with some scraps of wood and some transparent plastic foil and that definitely made a difference. Maybe something to look into when the weather turns crap after you planted them.
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Aug 2, 2013 00:02
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I'm having friends over next week to get them to stuff their faces with my bell peppers. Most of the peppers seem ready for picking now. Should I store them in the refrigerator or leave them on the plants? I'm asking because one of them went from being all yellow to getting a dark brown tinge that I'm not familiar with. The pepper still feels taut, not mushy.  Is it rotting from the inside? I tried to google what happens with peppers if you leave them on for too long, but I only get results about people who want to pick them early.
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Sep 24, 2013 14:40
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Grand Fromage posted:That's what I thought but I only watered when the leaves started to get droopy from dehydration, I don't know how they could be overwatered. The baskets had drain holes too. I've got a 5 liter pot with a bunch of basil and I give it a small splash of water (like a small drinking glass) once every two weeks or so. I'd probably have to increase that frequency if it got really hot, but currently it's constantly between 15°C-22°C where the pot is. I've only had the basil rot at the stems once and that's when I was babying (so, overwatering) it at the start. Basil also works fine with ambient light (as opposed to direct sunlight or grow lamps), if the room is otherwise light enough and the temperature is fairly stable above 15°C. It won't grow as fast, but I noticed the plants being less spindly than when they do get only a few hours of direct sunlight. Could be dependent on other circumstances though, I'm not a botanist.
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Oct 16, 2013 14:57
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Pardalis posted:Speaking of basil, does anyone else grow it inside this time of year? I can't resist having a little pot around because it is delicious. I eventually want a whole, self contained, indoor herb garden so that I can have them fresh year round. With basil you've got to think bigger though. How else are you going to make enough pesto for a four people dinner?  These were plucked virtually bald two weeks ago, so sorry for the paltry size of the leaves. Have been going strong for nine months, which I think is pretty cool. Had to cut their heads off because they became spindly in the few hours of sunlight they got in the last two months. Some of them tried to bolt, don't know if it's just the age or if that's due to the season as well. Anyway, pesto with lots of cashews is heavenly and so goddamn easy to make. Hold off on the cheese and it freezes pretty well in ice cube trays too. The poo poo they sell in stores here is salty beyond belief and absolutely inedible after tasting the homemade one.
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Jan 15, 2014 23:33
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PiratePing posted:I want to grow vegetables on our roof terrace this year. We have mild ocean climate (temperature will mostly hover around 70F, unlikely to exceed 86F) and the terrace is fairly shaded from the wind while still catching a lot of sun. In summer it can get really hot up there with all the surrounding bricks soaking up the heat. I'm worried that the roots of my plants will start cooking on hot days, should I be? The plants will mostly be in containers made from pallets and food-grade buckets since they don't weigh much and I can get them for free. Last summer had some extreme temperatures here in the city of Antwerp, with the surface of my balcony reaching temperatures of up to 60°C in the sun and it did nothing but good for my plants. A thermometer probe 5cm deep in a 5L bucket of soil, like the ones I grow most of my plants in, never went above 35°C and cooled down pretty quickly when the sun went down. Those food grade buckets are probably white, which only helps. The only cooked roots I ever had was in those same circumstances but inside, behind glass, in a tiny black pot no larger than a coffee mug. Admittedly, I have no experience with leafy stuff like lettuce and leeks, which I understand take to shady spots a bit better, but anything like bell peppers, tomatoes and beans, peas or carrots should thrive. They recommend not to water while the plants are in direct sunlight and I didn't even stick to that. No problem. This is not California. Anyway, that was my experience.
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Jan 30, 2014 20:04
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vulturesrow posted:Anything beyond that works well in containers? I also have had peas in those wide and narrow window-ledge-flower-containers, just for the fun of it. Got a handful of peas from that, nothing spectacular. But it worked well enough to give me hope that this is going to fare better:  Trying mange-tout this time. The package said the plants would grow up to 70cm, which is about as high as that stick sticks out. Zucchini and cucumbers have a taproot that makes a deeper pot preferable. I couldn't get them to work reliably, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. I'm going to guess beets are doable. Potatoes in a large garbage bag work as well. You roll the bag down at the start and you can keep topping up with soil along the way to milk the most out of the plant.
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Mar 17, 2014 16:06
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Breaky posted:What's an "inline fertilizer" ?
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Mar 22, 2014 01:22
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vonnegutt posted:I think grocery store onions are single bulbed annuals, so short of trying to get it to blossom to harvest seeds, I don't know what having the bulb in the ground would do. Supermarket potatoes may be treated with something that retards sprouting. Not sure if you can wash it off or something. I would not recommend trying with a potato you don't see the start of a single sprout on -it may just never happen. Had some reasonable success in getting more weight out than I put in and that was after harvesting way too soon after growing in a smallish bag of poor quality dirt and doing nothing to it than watering occasionally.
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Mar 26, 2014 13:46
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Breaky posted:Just curious because the peppers I germinated look alright but they are coming up sloooooooow and are tiny in comparison. I wasn't sweating it because the room / soil temp was pretty cold but I just want to see if our conditions are incredibly different. Mine grow fine in max 90F (day)/min 70F (night). Wouldn't expect anything from them if the temp at any time drops below 60F with any regularity.
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Apr 2, 2014 01:01
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I figure this thread can always use more pictures. The mangetout doing okay there. Carrots in the orange tub under glass, sprouting. Last year's basil still rocking; I'm hoping to get some seeds from that maybe. New basil has ben sown out in the wide container in the back, but I think the temperatures haven't been there yet.  Had an old frame for hanging up garbage bags in the basement. Bought a transparent vinyl tablecloth and duct taped the poo poo out of it for this makeshift greenhouse for my peppers. There's no access hatch or anything so it's going to be a pain in the rear end. I might be able to whip something up with velcro or something. Vine cherry tomatoes go in the black pots in the back you can't really see. That's what the ropes are for.  Here are this year's contenders. The cherry tomatoes in the middle are possibly getting slightly overwatered. The cherry tomatoes on the right accidentally grew outside for several weeks (somehow thought they were carrots for the longest time!). You can't see it in the picture, but they look a lot more robust and have a nice deep green color. Due to the temperature difference they're a lot smaller though. I've taken them inside because nighttime temperatures are dropping a bit here.  Bell peppers not doing stellarly. Some really pale yellow leaves here and there. Possibly overwatering is the problem here too.  Backup peppers.  Iceberg lettuce, which I've never tried before. Does it usually grow sideways? I'm thinking they're not getting enough direct sunlight and they're trying to grow towards it or something. Or could it be too hot for them? I put some plastic under them in the hope the leaves won't start to rot, but I don't know if that's a good idea. Also in the picture: a ziplock bag with seeds for spicy peppers, but they're not moving. Don't know if I'm doing that method right. I usually just put a bunch of seeds in a pot, like with the backup peppers. Anyway, if anyone's got the low down on what's up with that lettuce, let me know.
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Apr 15, 2014 18:33
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cowofwar posted:I start all my seeds in the same containers so I know how heavy a container is when dry. To check it they need water I pick up a couple and check their weight. Best way to avoid over watering.  You got me wondering whether watering automatically based on weight if feasible though. Mechanically or with some sort of arduino contraption. And leggy is the word that escaped me earlier. I guess I could find a better place for that lettuce somewhere.
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Apr 15, 2014 23:46
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sithwitch13 posted:I picked up a sun gold cherry tomato plant on impulse this past weekend. I think I may have already hosed up and accidentally pruned the main stem. Last year I had a plant snap in two due to wind and the top half in a bottle of water grew roots and the bottom half grew suckers that grew into the new stems.
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Apr 24, 2014 17:05
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Dilettante. posted:I'm gonna start moving them over to individual pots soon, and I'm wondering about the possibility of root damage when I start the transfer, will they just shrug it off, or is it going to have require almost surgical precision? Whatever you might damage beyond that isn't important to their survival yet. Just don't pull the stem or anything and you'll be fine.
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Apr 27, 2014 00:53
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appleskates posted:So my dog seems to have eaten the top part of the orange pepper plant - will it still grow, or should I replace it? All that's left is about 2" of stem sticking up out of the soil.
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Apr 28, 2014 20:42
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What the gently caress is up with loving pigeons eating the loving leaves off my loving pepper plants? For gently caress's sake, gently caress the gently caress off already, loving rats! gently caress! Plenty of leaves anywhere else, dipshits.
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May 16, 2014 20:15
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AlistairCookie posted:
SubG posted:I haven't had trouble with birds going after my peppers, but holy poo poo they love okra seedlings. Last year I lost a half dozen or so to birds just biting the stem off. And then leaving it. I built a chicken wire cage-thing to contain the seedlings while I was hardening them off, and ended up watching as a bird swooped down to poke its beak through the chicken wire to snap off one stem that was too close to the wire.  I actually have chicken wire cages but I put them in the basement already because this weren't seedlings that could be mistaken for worms or anything, but five to six inch plants.Well, they're caged now.
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May 16, 2014 23:50
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Pigeons do what?! Pigeons?
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Well poo poo. I should have been tipped off by the fact that I've had three thermometers (electronic & analog alike) just break trying keep track of how hot it was inside my homemade vinyl tablecloth mini greenhouse. I'm guessing this is what heat damage looks like, eh. I think they'll live, but still. Boiled them good.
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May 20, 2014 01:55
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I have a shitload of greenhouse whiteflies. I think they came in with some basil I bought labeled "Bio". Never going that road again. I killed all the basil. Then they killed my iceberg lettuce. Now they reside on my best cherry tomato plant, which I'm practically hosing down with water and linseed oil soap, mostly because that's what I've got available here, but I don't know if it's going to help anything, never mind that I don't even know if it's bad for the plants or anything. Google tells me using chemicals will just give me a master race of superwhiteflies. Bah.
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May 21, 2014 15:53
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mentalcontempt posted:I'm watering somewhere between every day and every other day, depending on how dry the soil appears. The weather has been weird here, from up to 100 to the 80s. As they grow more leaves, they'll get the surface to evaporate more water through, but currently you're probably drowning them. Wrinkling like in all but your last picture is pretty normal. And even that doesn't seem very problematic; it's just a symptom of stress; maybe the overwatering. The difference between the different pots may be due to how dense the soil in them is. Some might not allow water to seep through to the bottom as well/quickly as others.
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May 21, 2014 21:42
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TheToxicEuphoria posted:Just checking in again to vouch for the efficacy of using a dish soap and water spray solution to kill obvious and visible pests. Maybe three grape flea larvae survived my initial bombardment. Gonna keep doing this until I don't see a single one of them.
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May 22, 2014 16:51
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