DWC Habanaros, soil transplant, LED +Heizenberg Tea

Hello,

I recently developed a taste for Habanaros. They are still a bit spicy for me (I avoid the seeds), but there is something about the complex flavor and aroma that I have become dareisay, addicted to. It's almost as if my head is hit by the floral impact before the spiciness kicks in. I've grown some other hot peppers that are pretty spicey (unknown hybrid), and for some reason I have an easier time eating habanaros, it doesn't hit me as fast and I am able to bear the heat, even though it is overall hotter.

Enough silly intro, time to talk methods.

My outside garden was kinda eaten up by Irene and grow season is almost over so I decided to grow Habs indoors using DWC.

I've never grown any food crops under artificial lighting, but I have EXTENSIVE experience growing corals in SW aquariums using every type of DIY lighting imaginable. You name it I've done it. Even have a true apogee quantum PAR meter

So I built myself a ~100w LED fixture using Cree LEDs. It's mostly LEDs I had left over from aquarium builds, so I ended up with some XPG R2s, warm white XML's, XRE's in white and royal blue and some XPEs and Rebels in Red/FarRed/Amber. 6 of the XPGs are on a non-dimmable Xitanium driver @ 700ma.

The rest of the LEDs are split in half, each half on its own dimmable Meanwell 60-48D, wired to a 5k linear Pot for manual dimming control. The cool-white XREs and Royal Blues are on one, while the Warm Whites and Reds are on the other. So I can basically fine tune both intensity and color spectrum from anything from over 10k to ~3k!! (yes it gets very blue to very warm if I go to extremes).


I am growing these in a cabinet (better temp control and light retention) with about a 1.5ft x 2ft x 4ft tall space (including space for the reservoir). I installed the LEDs with a pulley system so I can have the lights start lower and raise with the plants, but there is only about 1foot of travel on the lights.

I experimented with all different size optics for the LEDs. Initially I mixed half tight optics with half medium optics (tight is ~10-15degrees FWHM, medium is 15-25). I found that the tight optics are useless unless the lights will be several feet away, since you will get hotspots that are brighter than the sun and could potentially burn leaves.

I ended up swapping most of the optics to Wide Frosted style to get the best diffusion, with only a few medium optics spaced on the outer edges.

PAR Results:

With the Medium and Tight optics, my LED fixture was measuring well over 2000 PAR (or ppfd, measured in umoles per m2 per second), but the readings were uneven (ie, one measurement is 1500, and one inch to the left is 2500). FYI, natural sunlight peaks around 2100-2200 PAR according to my own measurements in NC, and in the shade measured ~200-300 PAR (about the output of a single T5 lamp a few inches away without refletors).


When I switched to the Wide optics, it did reduce the peak intensity quite a bit, but I am still able to get readings around 2000 PAR up to 12" below the lights.

The IDEAL setup would be to use only the Tight optics and have them several feet away, such as on the ceiling. Then you could use a wider spacing between the LEDs and get nice smooth coverage and waste VERY little light. I actually built an aquarium like this once where you couldn't even locate the light fixture (hidden in ceiling alcove), yet inside the tank was the equivalent of sunlight. Maybe next time


Ok, I wrote WAY more than I planned to about the LEDs. As you can see I know a lot about LEDs and other lighting sources (and no, it is NOT as simple as saying LEDs or MH are better, it really depends on so many factors like size of the grow, scalability etc. MH will waste more light emitting sideways away from plants, but for a large style grow this won't matter, since plants will likely be on all sides). I just think LEDs are particularly well suited to a small grow because of the control you get. Sure a few CFLs also work in a small grow but you end up waste alot more light.


I will post another followup post with pictures tonight.

Next year I will probably grow new plants from seeds, but I got impatient and ordered some plants from amazon.

Got my plants about 10 days ago, in little 2.5" square pots. I transplanted into DWC about 7 days ago. The info said they had germinated approx 95 days ago, much older than I thought they would be. Both plants already 6" tall and there are a few young green peppers already.

They were insanely root bound, with outer roots circling the plant several times (yikes). I was more or less able to untangle and get them into 4" net pots with hydroton and into the Res.


They are currently sharing a 6gal res.
Running Lucas Formula GH Micro+Bloom. I started at 2/3 strength and recently topped up with a bit higher which brought EC to 1.6 range.

The existing roots on both plants have not grown much, but I see new roots shooting out the bottom and sides, and these new roots are very fuzzy and wide at the base, pointy at the end.

I have been keeping the water level down about an inch below the net pots, and they get plenty of water (it spills out if you remove a net pot).

Keeping pH at 5.75, and it has been VERY VERY stable, I think because of the Myco+EWC tea. Every 2 days the ph will rise by 0.05 or so, which is the most stable pH I've ever seen (this is my first hydro grow, but I ran a few "trial run" with no plants and no tea, just resevoir with air bubbles and nutes, and before the tea, my ph would rise WAY faster!).



So after the first 3-4 days of transplanting, both plants lost the bottom 4 largest leaves (turned pale yellow and drooped away). This seems to have stopped (around the time I increased EC from 1.4 to 1.6), and the plants are greening back up, but there is still an overall slightly pale color.


Tonight they are due for a full reservoir change. Should I go full strength on the Lucas, which I think will get me an EC of around 1.8 or 2? I'm thinking this because the plants are a bit pale and are pretty old, and now that there are some fresh roots maybe the plants can handle it?


Thanks of reading my longwinded post!

Hey Farkface!! I'm a fan of the old Scotch Bonnet's myself. Just saw a cooking show and they were using Hab's for cooking. They put them in whole as they are easier to control the heat that way (or so they said). Sounded intresting

Meant to snap pics, but I ended up taking too long changing the res since I wrapped the res in mylar (previoulsy used some landscape fabric that turned out to not block much light).

I also broke my pH meter probe last night, which sucks since I JUST got the new probe for the ph monitor I've been using for years for fishtanks.


One of the plants peppers has turned orange almost overnight. Last night when I started the res change it was green with a dot of orange at the base and tip, and this morning that same pepper was 90% orange. Fast!

I assume its a good sign if they are coloring up quickly??


I also might try feeding the plant liquid light and saturator by DM to help it handle the light... but I think that's just because in my head I am imagining a different breed of plant

PS, NC residents, I've been writing my reps like mad in favor of 577, you should too!! If that passes, it's on like donkey kong.

Here they are!




These pics are from last night. I picked and ate the red hab a few hours after snapping pics. It was HOT! but very small and not many seeds. It was tasty but not as good as the organic habs I get from whole foods. I am really shocked that pepper turned red so fast. When I was reading about it, alot of folks complain their peppers take forever to turn red.

I am thinking the stress of the transplant accelerated the pepper maturing? anyone?



most of the roots are healthy new growth. the one on the left had some pretty long roots in the soil, those are the darker thick ones grouped in the center.



Here's the res, air pump and what used to be the ph probe



My assortment of LEDs





Pulley system, middle chain is safety harness incase pulleys fail or rope unties during maintenance or just to help make it easier to unhook. Black box on the left contains all power accessories and dimming potentiometers (front right long knobs).

As you can see, the larger leaves still look pretty curled and stressed, but its an improvement on how they looked coming out of the box they shipped in. They were all super curled up when I unpacked them (jammed into small box and stuffed with packing foam, seemed like a crap job). The yellow tint didnt come until after the soil to DWC transplant, but I think it is starting to fade. Smaller leaves and new growth are dark green and not as curly.


What do you guys think?

such small plants to produce that size veggies. awesome.

Well I've only had them about 2 weeks and they've only been in DWC for 11 days now. When they arrived, they were listed as being 95 days post germination; they were incredibly rootbound in 2" pots. I cant say there has been much new growth yet but the pepper did grow some in dwc, maybe 15%.

The plant on the left has 2 peppers, but those peppers are starting to develop these tiny lines of almost black scarring. It's feint, could it be nute burn, pests??


Forgot to mention they also came with a few aphids and whiteflys, and a single slug Last time I order a full plant on amazon that's for sure. the patience of seed pays off. Today I found another single fly chowing on a leaf and I'm not sure if I smashed it or not... arg!

But the bright side is the same plant with the fly has a huge root that branched in like 10 spots simultaneously... wow!

Some of the topmost new growth leaves look like they have burned to a crisp. But lots of healthy new growth down below.

Funny because I have only been running the LEDs at around 800 PAR, which is only about 33% of sun intensity. I suppose the narrow spectrum of the white LEDs could be burning the plants with too much usable light for now (considering transplant stress, and that they probably didn't get that much average intensity for 16hrs in previous location).

I started around 400 PAR and increased slowly over a week but maybe went too far. I'm going to pull it back to 500 PAR by mostly pulling back the cool whites/blues and see if the new growth up top improves.

check out 4 days of root growth.



leaves are darkening up and lots of new growth





Flower growing near where I clipped and ate the big pepper:

Here are the plants after about a week since the last update:



The plant is almost growing like plants do in vertical grows. there are 'sideways tops' and upside down leaves angling for maximum light.



At first I thought some of these leaves were drooping, but there's 0 drooping going on, just turning to face the light. The PAR of the 'shaded' leaves actually goes up another 50-100 wen closing the closer door which explains why those leaves get so big there.




In the below pic, circled in red is an area that had nute burn last week from too high of EC (2.2). It's now around 1.6ish, and you can tell the leaves have recovered nicely, but they never fully lose the old burn scars.



You can make out the original leaves that were on the plant before hydro since they have an ugly grey finish and slight yellow edge. They healed mostly but then just kind of stopped, while the plant focused growth everywhere else.



Some areas of the right plant, near the top, are all dying back where new leaves start. They get maybe 1/4" or less then turn a dark color before crisping and dying. Could this be light burn possibly??? or maybe just the plant letting us know it doesn't need leaves up there? not able to get nutes up there?



The spot by the crisp leaves gets around 1100 par, or half sun.

Overall I am really happy with the growth so far. Lots of flower buds and most are healthy. Some do have a tiny bit of black lines on the stem to the bud. Does that mean those flowers will likely drop?


Thanks for checking out my thread!

I've been removing one of the old leaves every few days. Not for any reason other than they are ugly and blocking light from tons of new leaves underneath. In some spots there are 2 leaves stacked so close on top of eachother it looks like 1 leaf!

is it a bad idea to thin it out like this? i think these are growing extra dense from the transplant shock and from the intense light.