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Old January 7, 2012   #31
rnewste
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Excellent Naysen - - the plants look great!

I have only been running my HPS light for 3 hours per day, and set on the lowest (250 Watt) setting. Unfortunately, the Mt. Princess and Victorian Dwarf plants are so tall that they are preventing the Rosella Purple and Iditarod Red plants from getting any sunshine during the day. I am going to add an hour and run it from 5:00pm to 9:00pm starting tonight.

You might want to get a pack of of the 5 Sticky Traps at your local Hydroponics Shop, as once white flies nest and multiply - - it is tough getting rid of them. Prevention at the outset is very important.

Raybo
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Old January 7, 2012   #32
z_willus_d
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Hi Ray, thanks for complementing the plants. I'll take your advice and order some traps and try and get ahead of the malady with the little buggers. I'm sure your short dwarfs will appreciate the extra hour of artificial light.

This is a little off subject, but I'll ask regardless. Can you recommend a good source for Goose Creek. I'd like to try a pair in one of the EarthTainers next season.

Thanks,
Naysen
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Old January 7, 2012   #33
rnewste
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Quote:
Originally Posted by z_willus_d View Post

This is a little off subject, but I'll ask regardless. Can you recommend a good source for Goose Creek. I'd like to try a pair in one of the EarthTainers next season.

Thanks,
Naysen
PM me your address and I will get some Goose Creek seeds in the mail to you Monday morning (Anything for a fellow InnTainer user).

Raybo
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Old January 7, 2012   #34
z_willus_d
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Ray, I had a feeling you were going to go and get generous on me. I have a lot of stamps on hand. Let me dig up your old address and send a SASE. Yep, I have your address of the nationalparks.org sticker from the Brandywine from Croatia offer you put up a while back.

I can't wait to get this next season started -- new beds, so much more sun exposure, more room, and all these tantalizing new varieties to try out. I'm going to have tomato sauce coming out of my ears.

Thanks for coming through.
-naysen
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Old January 7, 2012   #35
rnewste
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Hey Naysen,

Is that you in your Photo #9, in the dark blue shirt holding a camera? Looks very much like my Canon SX210 IS model too. How close was I???

I've been watching too much of that CBS show on Thursday evening called "Person of Interest".

Raybo
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Old January 7, 2012   #36
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Ha- you know, I thought about omitting that pic. I noticed that blurred reflection of myself there after upload. Good job. You were probably also good with those multiphase pictures from the 90's that hid secret 3D wonders to the eye awry. Those never worked for me.

As for the camera, nope. I'm just using my android cell. I don't have a digital camera. I'm still struggling with the pain of the diminution of analog film photography. I was very into my hasselblads and darkroom a time ago, several hobbies back. I tried to jump on the digital bandwagon, but it all seemed so pointless, or perhaps just artless, without having to do more than point and squeeze and print. And those prints never showed the dimension that the chemically processed prints did of old.

The SASE will go out Monday.

Thanks again.
-naysen
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Old January 14, 2012   #37
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Well, it seems to be about that time for the weekly update - Jan 14. All has been progressing well with the Mt. Princess adding another 7 inches of growth over the past 7 days:



This plant has reached the top hoop of the inverted cage system, so it looks like I will have to start topping it within the next week or so:



I made a "Command Decision" (actually 3 of them) this past week. One was to snip off the top 65% of the Pepper plants:



These guys were really getting leggy, and while I wanted to let the blossoms flower, my long term objective is to have these plants with a hardy root system and main stem to transplant out in April, so they hit the ground running fast.

The next "Decision" was to take my back-up Rosella Purple seedling which had grown to 13 inches, and rather than dumping it into the trashcan, I yanked the Extreme Bush and replaced it with this Rosella Purple plant:



And then, the third Decision was to move the InnTainers around so that maximum natural sunlight would fall on the key plants from the Dwarf Project. So, I had to do the "Tainer-Tango" on 4 of the InnTainers. But wouldn't you know it - - I had earlier that morning just topped all of the water reservoirs with fresh water. So lugging the fully loaded InnTainers off the racks, and moving them into their new positions was really a back-breaking chore.



Now, I've got them arranged so that the maximum amount of sunlight hits the main tomato plants.

Mano continues to be the fruitset leader with 21 tomatoes having set:



Looking up into the plant:



I am truly amazed that every single blossom has set fruit - not a single dud!

Demidov is developing multiple clusters of round fruit:



Sophie's Choice continues as the smallest plant, but with heavy fruitset:



And Mt. Princess looks like a Redwood tree with its girth:



The Rosella Purple has added 5.5 inches, while the Iditarod Red has grown an additional 6 inches over the past 7 days. Running the HPS light now set to 4 hours, as well as relocating this InnTainer to the window location has had an impact for sure.



All in all, about 35 fruitset as of this week.

Time for some rest right now - - my back is aching!!

Raybo
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Old January 14, 2012   #38
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Ray, been there done that -- too often -- with that Tainer Tango. It's a dance my back and neck-veins can do without. I think you made the right choice with the RP sub. I think it will grow more compact, and I want to believe results will be more interesting. Also, I bet you'll get the tomatoes harvesting in a more spread out fashion, which can't hurt. I still haven't got a single new fruit set since the original bunch of them showed a couple weeks back. Just dropping "duds." 35 is substantial. Congrats.
-naysen
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Old January 14, 2012   #39
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Naysen,

Something funky must be going on if you haven't had a new fruitset in 2 weeks. Are you measuring any vertical growth in the plants week to week?

I've gone back and looked at my fully dropped blossom tally, and one came off of the Sophie's Choice, and the other one severed itself from the Stakeless plant. That is all I've lost - and I look really hard at the aluminum foil to try to find any dropped blossoms daily.

Our setups aren't really much different in terms of our Grow Media, Actinovate / myco treatment, etc. I am not (yet) adding any Grow Big or Tiger Bloom, as the plants seem to be developing fine without an additional fertilizer boost.

My "hunch" is that your excessive blossom drop could be due to some over-fertilization - but that is highly speculative on my part. It will be interesting when my Rosella Purple plants start to flower, then we will have identical plants to compare fruitset, etc.

Raybo
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Old January 14, 2012   #40
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Hi Ray, I'm seeing very nice growth, both vertically as well as horizontally. I'd say, a good 6-10" on the bigger plants and 3-5" on the smaller ones.

I've quit with the half-strength application of TigerBloom, and I had a water fill-up a couple days ago, so the Tainers are now mostly full of non-fertilized water.

There's a couple things I'm considering now:
- The cold (down to 53F temps at deep nighttime (get about 2-4 hours like that). I'm thinking of setting up a 2nd timer that will turn on a space heater for the hours when it's most cold.
- I have these bushes on the back hill in my yard that are now flowing like crazy. They put out these small dandelion like silky wind-floater flowers. The other day it was really windy, but also quite warm and sunny, so I opened the garage door to give the plants some natural sun. These floating flowers got all over the place, and I've slowly been picking them off the plants since. Perhaps they're having some negative effect? I know, long short.
- I purchased a batch of pH down (general Hydroponics), and I'm planning to start lowering the pH of my tap water when I water the SWCs. I know the medium is neutral as is my slightly alkaline tap water. That should be a good thing, right? Getting the solution pH down to ~6.3-6.5 should be goodness, right? Have you ever considered doing this?

You're right that in most other ways, our setups are identical. I'd say the major difference is our lighting and the fact that my plants are housed in a semi-insulated garage, so the colder temps at night.

-naysen
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Old January 14, 2012   #41
rnewste
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Naysen,

Nightime temps of 53 should not cause massive blossom drop. Do you have a good pH Meter to test the Grow Media? I am told (Feldon30) that the optimal pH for tomatoes is in the vicinity of 6.45, as I recall. You can send him a PM to confirm. I'm not sure I would go to the expense of adjusting the pH of the tap water - - I think what is really important is the actual residual pH of the Grow Media which the roots are in.

Raybo
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Old January 15, 2012   #42
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Ray-

Yes, oh yes, I have a good pH meter. I dropped over three-hundred on one last year. It's by Hana instruments, and it can get withing some crazy amount of precision with low tolerance for error. Anyway, I thought the same thing about pH as you, but this evening after explaining the basic wicking mechanics of your SWC to the head guy at the hydro store, he told me you want to keep the grow medium close to neutral and focus on adjusting the pH of the feed fluid. That was news to me, but I bought it. I bought the pH down product, at least. I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable adding things like soil sulfur to the grow medium now that plants are down. I'm not sure I'd want to mess with it much before planting either, not like I do in the in-ground beds.

I'll keep searching for the solution. The plants are just so beautiful, I hate to see them go barren.
Thanks,
-naysen
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Old January 15, 2012   #43
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Naysen,

As an immediate first step, I would put that pH meter probe into the Grow Media tomorrow morning, and let us know what reading you got. Then, test a sample of your tap water for reference. These will be good data-points to log.

Raybo
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Old January 15, 2012   #44
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Sure, I'll take the measurements. I planned on it as a standard process for each watering now that I'll be adjusting. I've measured both before. I get slightly above neutral for the tap and about neutral for the soil medium. I'll double check it. It's probably something else.

Something I noticed the other day after pulling all the mylar off half my InnTainers in order to install cages that was interesting... One of my larger plants that has a few flowers, none of which have set fruit, had a ton of nice white roots pushing up through the "soil" surface below the plant. Is it possible, the plants could be over-excited busy putting out roots and have somehow forgotten to do what they supposed to, make fruit?

Mahalo!
-naysen
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Old January 15, 2012   #45
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Naysen,

If you have doused the plants with too much fertilizer, then they could be stressing. Think of that Cialis commercial - "If it lasts for more than 4 hours, call your doctor".

Poor analogy, but I think you get the point.

Raybo
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