Dawn's Kinderpeppergarten Rainforest **REPURPOSED 10/14

And speaking of making things difficult:

I am such a klutz.

Went to prune some of the big leaves off my Kung Pao Pepper plant (right rear), because they were blocking the light to neighboring plants.  Ended up breaking the main trunk about halfway up the plant.

The bad news is that I've severely crippled it.  The good news is that it's no longer blocking the neighboring plants.

I just transplanted a freshly sprouted Hinkelhatz to this garden yesterday, and as of this morning, it still hasn't died.  Which was an issue a few days ago when I tried to transplant a Lemon Drop plant which immediately died.

Still to come are Bhut Jolokia and Carolina Reaper, both of which have just about got to the "4 true leaves" stage in their germination.

I just did what should be the weekly dump & refill on this, except I got tired last week and skipped this one.  So, it's a two week dump & refill.

Doing D&Rs on two of these thirteen gallon buckets every weekend, I've been learning some techniques to streamline it.

The first is, get three five gallon buckets and mix all 13 gallons of nutes at once.

The second is getting some support to elevate the bucket above the bucket when I'm siphoning the new nutes in.  In this case, the shortie step ladder I got to install the ceiling hooks for the lighting

My next trick is that I just ordered 25' of 1/2" tubing, so I can run it from the bucket to the bathtub and directly siphon from there.

Lesser tricks: I'm using (at a minimum) the three part "Flora" series of nutes plus hydrogen peroxide plus CaliMagic.  Cross-contamination is an issue because at the concentrations that can come out of the bottles, you can end up precipitating the minerals out into your measuring devices, which in my case are pipettes.  I've actually clogged pipettes doing that by accident.  So, I've bought separate pipettes for each bottle that stay rubber-banded with the bottle.

And, I've done so much accidental damage to the plants in my Pepper Pot because all six sections are populated, I've intentionally left one hexagonal section in this one unplanted so I can easily remove it when it comes time to siphon nutes in or out.  In fact, when I refill my Pepper Pot now, I'll remove the section with the scotch bonnets in it and move it to the blank section in this pot.  Much less damage now.

The Carolina Reaper sprout in Frankenstein has enough of a root system to be properly called a plant now, so I just transplanted it to the Kinderpeppergarten.

The way the rest of the plants in there are growing, I'm thinking they're going to be needing a new home PDQ, but I figure I've got at least a month before the newer seedlings will be a problem.

Lots of nice pictures!

The Aji Pineapple plant (left rear in the group photos, and clearly the tallest plant in there ever since I removed the Sapporo) is just getting too big for the space provided.

I have two Bounties that I keep meaning to recycle, the one with the Tomato Plant That Ate My Dining Room, and the nearly year-old Jalapeno plant, but both keep giving me fruit, so I never have the courage to break it down.

So, I ordered another Powergrower Drip/DWC bucket that should arrive tomorrow.  My current plan is to transplant the Aji Pineapple to it.

I guess I shouldn't feel in a rush, because it's quite healthy, and so far, all I really have to do is keep pruning it back so the neighboring plants get some light, but you know what happens when you prune a nightshade...

I just found a new forever home for my Aji Pineapple and Kung Pao plants, so they've just been removed from the kinderpeppergarten and transplanted into my new PowerGrower.

As expense and frustration would have it, I have another PowerGrower waiting for me at the rental office, so I can probably take two more plants out of this pot and have enough room left over to fully grow the remaining plants.

Working from home today, so maybe after work, I'll have the time to wander over to the rental office and pick up the long-delayed PowerGrower.  If so, I might be able to transplant a couple more members of this thing.  My goal is to get this thing reduced to seedlings and five plants.  It has enough space for six full grown plants (like the pepper pot), and I've been leaving one slot open to ease dump & refills.

And I know I keep saying I have two Bounties that will free up soon, but the definition of "soon" keeps getting extended as both persist in yielding fruit from plants that I should have terminated long ago.