[QUOTE=Nematode;652779]Sooo got an "updated" report from my lab. They were having N reading problems over the weekend, and said mine is now normal, which based on what they were being fed is not the most likely result.
Lost confidence in them, will try another next time. Nice of them to get back, but 2 different results from 1 test = no confidence.[/QUOTE]

I cannot over state this. When you choose a new lab, make sure you have them forward your results to Mike Morton at HG, take advantage of his knowledge, we are infants in the tomato growing world compared to him.

plants
 

The Tomato fort is the pepper fort for this season

Holy smokes those are beautiful plants (as usual for you Mark) what varieties are they?
KarenO

Thanks Karen, Jalepenos are Jalafuego's, Bells are Big Bertha and I also grow Revolution. I have grown about 35-40 varieties of bells, most do okay, but these two out produce all others by quite a lot. I can get 50 peppers from a BB, some weigh close to a pound too. I wholesale them for 5.00 a pound, so they are a good market item with tomatoes and cucumbers, I also sell beans.

Really nice Mark.
Do the peppers get the same feed as the tomato?

I feed them the same, just a tad bit more CaNO3. They call for a bit more N., but the tomato formula is close, close enough for me to use the same mix. My biggest problem is the pepper branches breaking off.

Here comes the 100+ indexes. Next 3 days.
My plants already look like they are running out of gas. Main grow stem is thinner than a #2 pencil on most plants. Dry radial cracks are the norm at this point and look ugly. Wet splits are occurring on a few of the largest tomatoes.
Ricky, how do yours do through your heat with new growth and flower/fruit and cracking/splitting?
I'm done doing one long main season crop attempt. I am not fighting the weather anymore. There is a reason the hotter states are not growing one long crop through summer. While I am not one of those states per se, we catch just enough of these extremes to make me want to throw my hands up and say forget this.
Next year, gonna do a very early spring crop in late Feb with my new high tunnel that I will heat. Pick Mid-May to mid July when the heat rolls in.
Then plant a fall crop in late summer if I feel like messing with it.

The worst of it is over by August and that is when nearly everything I have ripens, so it didn't show up in obvious ways like splitting or cracking. However, uneven ripening and yellow shoulders were a problem on a lot of fruit in the hottest part of the garden near the patio.

During the hottest span there was/is elongation of the nodes, thinning of the stem, and significantly less fruit set. Last year the plants recovered to varying degrees in August and early September. I've kept the best of the best for this year in addition to trying a few more that had promising traits. Crnkovic powers through everything, but is a fright to look at. The lower leaves look stressed and dying within the first month and it moves up the plant just behind the ripening fruit like a curling wave of death. And still, it keeps making fruit and pushing out strong growth tips.

I find these chemical formulas to be quite obscure. There are tons of formulas here in Europe, some of them 'ready to use', but the proportions are not clear at all. For example Calcium nitrate probably isn't that, not even hydrated, it's calcium ammonium nitrate, npk 15-0-0+19, so calculating exact proportions of elemental oxides to compare premade formulas to custom ones is more difficult. Or in fact it could be without ammonia but usually it doesn't even say 'cause why bother.

I wanted to calculate complete Yara 11-11-24 +6+2 (available in Europe), and compare to the hydro gardens 8+8+4 oz from their site ([url]https://hydro-gardens.com/product/tomato-formula-25lbs-bag-4-18-38/[/url])

So Calcium 'nitrate' is 15-0-0+19 (assuming it's the hydrated ammonium nitrate, like the 'calcinit' from Yara).
Epsom salts is 0-0-0+16 (remember it's heptahydrated)

So the hydrogardens formula is 20 oz in 100 gallons (1.5 g/l) of 8 oz 4-18-38 + 8 oz calcium nitrate + 4 oz epsom, means 20 oz of 15-14-30 +15+3

Microelements are the same ones, proportions will differ a bit from company to company.
So if I normalize that formula to the yara complete using the nitrogen, I get 11-10.5-22 +11+2.2
So pretty much the same except much more calcium in the hydro gardens (almost double), but that seems too high considering that most waters I've seen here in Europe are rather hard, so probably quite a bit of Ca already there.

Just a bit of an example how one could calculate what can you buy to emulate the popular formula. There's quite a few of companies making more or less complete such fertilizers usually in big bags, like 20kg plus, but some can be found in places sold by the kilo, or in small packages (Ferticare also from yara is packaged in 2kg as well for example).


Now the question is how exactly you guys use this mix. 1.5 g/l of that stuff is quite high. Do you water as much as plants need, so very little runoff, and hope all is right and everything gets absorbed by plants, or do you give them a lot more, and continually 'wash' the mix. I ask this considering you guys are using peat mixes not completely inert stuff like rockwool or perlite where I understand the second method it the one used.

[QUOTE=zipcode;656715]I find these chemical formulas to be quite obscure. There are tons of formulas here in Europe, some of them 'ready to use', but the proportions are not clear at all. For example Calcium nitrate probably isn't that, not even hydrated, it's calcium ammonium nitrate, npk 15-0-0+19, so calculating exact proportions of elemental oxides to compare premade formulas to custom ones is more difficult. Or in fact it could be without ammonia but usually it doesn't even say 'cause why bother.

I wanted to calculate complete Yara 11-11-24 +6+2 (available in Europe), and compare to the hydro gardens 8+8+4 oz from their site ([url]https://hydro-gardens.com/product/tomato-formula-25lbs-bag-4-18-38/[/url])

So Calcium 'nitrate' is 15-0-0+19 (assuming it's the hydrated ammonium nitrate, like the 'calcinit' from Yara).
Epsom salts is 0-0-0+16 (remember it's heptahydrated)

So the hydrogardens formula is 20 oz in 100 gallons (1.5 g/l) of 8 oz 4-18-38 + 8 oz calcium nitrate + 4 oz epsom, means 20 oz of 15-14-30 +15+3

Microelements are the same ones, proportions will differ a bit from company to company.
So if I normalize that formula to the yara complete using the nitrogen, I get 11-10.5-22 +11+2.2
So pretty much the same except much more calcium in the hydro gardens (almost double), but that seems too high considering that most waters I've seen here in Europe are rather hard, so probably quite a bit of Ca already there.

Just a bit of an example how one could calculate what can you buy to emulate the popular formula. There's quite a few of companies making more or less complete such fertilizers usually in big bags, like 20kg plus, but some can be found in places sold by the kilo, or in small packages (Ferticare also from yara is packaged in 2kg as well for example).


Now the question is how exactly you guys use this mix. 1.5 g/l of that stuff is quite high. Do you water as much as plants need, so very little runoff, and hope all is right and everything gets absorbed by plants, or do you give them a lot more, and continually 'wash' the mix. I ask this considering you guys are using peat mixes not completely inert stuff like rockwool or perlite where I understand the second method it the one used.[/QUOTE]

I am not quite sure where you going with this, but if your asking how much water per plant? I try to get about 10 percent runoff, this keeps salts from building up in the media. To save yourself a lot of figuring, try your formula for a couple of weeks then send in a leaf sample, it will show you what you need to do.

peppers
 

Next year I am going to up my Calcium a little before the plants set fruit. I still get a little BER on the first few peppers that come off the plants even though watering has been good. On the flip side the pepper plants are loaded, I mean crushed with peppers, big ones too.
I am going to start pruning my peppers too, the branches need to be stronger or manageable to string up. Super fun plants to grow.

Zip,
Hydrobuddy will help if you want to roll your own mix, or tweak one, or nust learn about it.
Best to start with a commercial mix if you can.
Ph buffer is important and built into some but not all commercial mix.

[url]http://scienceinhydroponics.com/2016/03/the-first-free-hydroponic-nutrient-calculator-program-o.html[/url]

You can enter commercial mix % into hydrobuddy, and it will give ppm. Very straighforward.

Great peppers Mark, but you already knew.....

[QUOTE=AKmark;653352]Thanks Karen, Jalepenos are Jalafuego's, [/QUOTE]

As soon as I saw those pics I thought - those are jalafuegos. I'm growing them for the first time this year, and mine look just like that. What a huge difference in size and production versus "early jalapeno" seeds I've tried before. Plus, these were very early on their own. They sure have a lot of heat for a jalapeno, as well.

zip. I've felt the ChemGro as mixed with Cal and Mag is essentially a 1-1-2 nutrient, thanks for breaking that down.

With new mix and only a 90-120 day cycle, I'm betting salt and fertilizer build-up is much less a problem than I had first considered last year, even considering my excessive evaporation. Hand-mixed and watered once daily, and fed constantly but at a slightly reduced rate. I'm running an EC 1.8 mmhos from the recommended 2.0

With me it's all visual, and I lean heavily on trial and error. Mileage may vary.