I frequently visit the nursery to see what seedlings they have, and if something catches my eye I buy one or two. (Like you say . . . better than buying 100's of seeds)

At home, I soak them for a while and then gently shake out the dirt. Then into a netpot with some pea sized gravel, and into the hydro.
Never ever lost a seedling this way.

What kind of hydro system do you use? and have you tried said system with peppers? Just trying to see if the systems I am looking at will eventually cause the plant to die or become stunted.

I run three systems:
An NFT for my strawberries
A DWC for my spinach (chard)
A passive wick system for my herbs.
I don't grow peppers, but my son grows them in an ebb&flow system. The plants sit in river sand mixed with about 25% perlite.

I was actually more reacting to your problem of getting single seedlings. I hardly ever grow from seed. It can be very frustrating. Rather buy an established seedling.

I'm actually growing a Bhut Jolokia in a hydroponic system i built with plain pea gravel for the medium. I bought a packet of 10 seeds from NMSU, planted them in the ground and transplanted one into hydroponics. I will eventually have seeds but right now, I only have green peppers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hydroponic system

Cool, thanks for the information guys! I decided not to use the DWC system for the peppers since they do not like it as well as other plants. Still looking for seeds though, but I am in no hurry at the moment.

Downwiththepc27, how does your Bhut do in your system and what kind of system is it? Ebb and flow?

It's pretty much a modified drip system. Nutrient is pumped up from the bottom bucket to a thin pipe above the top bucket with holes in it. The nutrient flows into the medium and drips through the roots and back down to the reservoir. (This gives the roots lots of air and nutrients)

Right now, I am having a little trouble with the plant. It was transplanted from the ground into the hydroponics a few weeks ago, and it has grown explosively the past week. But the flowers are dropping off too early. I either need to switch nutrients or adjust the EC of my nutrient. But besides the flower drop, the bhut has flourished.

Sounds nice, good to know that works well incase my system fails, on that note I wouldnt mind seeing a picture of the setup or plant itself just for my reference.

On a side note might want to get a lower N content for your mix tho if the flowers are dropping and the plant is rapidly growing like that.

I have been growing chiles in aeroponics successfully for years.

It is common knowledge that hydro is better/faster than soil growing chiles.

Hi Willard-
Can you please let us know what type of hydro system you use and the lighting to go w/?

I'm considering the TurboGarden Hydroponic system. It's an 8 or 6 drip set up that sits on a resevoir. I'm looking to do something similar if not this and would really like to find and/or build a reall nice looking set up to have these plants ecompassed in my office w/ a HID or flourescent light setup.

Any suggestions/advice/tips you can provide is appreciated.

Oh... the hotter the pepper type the better, so I'm going for scotch bonnets, orange, savina, bulgarian rainbow, thai hot, etc... all plants will be less than 4 feet tall and I plan to keep them short and bushy if at all posssible.

pyrocreation, sorry to bombard into your thread =]

Thanks!

The hydro system doesn't matter much, but I use an aero of my own design. Turbogarden will work.

Chiles need about 3000 lumens at the plant canopy to thrive.

I think it's important for any gardener, hydroponic or otherwise, to be comfortable with growing from seed or clone. I dislike buying previously started plants simply because there's no way to know how much stress they may have been put through or anything like that about these plants.

I've always found that I get better results from seeds or my own clones than I ever do from purchased plants.

I bought a bunch of seed packets this year for my hydroponics, including several packets of lettuce specifically. Those packs have a couple hundred seeds in them, easily. I think I've used a couple dozen, tops. Honestly I should've used 2-3 times that number, but I tend to under-germinate and just "hope" I'll get good results (which I haven't in my latest batch).

Left-over seeds aren't wasted. You spend a couple bucks on the packet and get as many plants as you could possibly want. Or you spend several bucks on seedlings someone else grew and may or may not be all that healthy. If you throw away most of the seeds you still come out ahead.

Plus, seeds are just a nice clean slate. If you clean all your equipment properly you can be virtually assured that you're not bringing any pests or pathogens from prior crops into your growing room.

Starter plants are bulk produced. Some are just better than others and you can't always tell which are which by looking.

On the subject of growing from seed or from starts:

In my way of thinking, the only reason to use starts is to save time. It's merely a matter of convenience.

I use heirloom seeds and grow everything from seed first. I have discovered a way to make seeds germinate in about 2 hours to start and full germination in 12 hours with the first dicotyledons by the second day.

When I get a really remarkable plant, I clone new ones, but EVERYBODY starts out as a seed.

The reasons: Seeds are really cheap and I can sew a bunch of them, then pick out the best plants to continue growing.

If I were to buy starts from the nursery, I run the risk of introducing bugs and diseases into my growing system. When you count the cost of bugs and diseases against the convenience of using starts, it's a no-brainer: Seeds are your best bet.

I'd much rather spend my time working with plants instead of working with H202 and disinfectants; scrubbing away my mistakes!

God bless.

:O)

I can understand where you are coming from on that, I often struggle with fungus or mold in my growing conditions. Anyway, back to the hydroponic aspect of all this...

What NPK ratio of grow/bloom formula should i use for peppers in a aeroponics/water culture system? I was thinking about purchasing some of the concentrated Ionic Gro or Ionic Bloom for my system but wasnt sure if that mix was Idea or not so if anyone knows the npk ratio to use for hot peppers or even a brand they have had good success using by itself that would be very helpful!

You might want to start out with a regular grow formula, but you won't want to use it for long. From my experience most peppers simply won't set fruit at all if you're giving them any Nitrogen.

Your bloom nutrients will have low enough N concentrations to let them develop fully.

I didn't have anything good enough when I had my sweet peppers in hydroponics and had to end up putting it into a soil pot outside that had been all but drained of nutrients by a pumpkin plant earlier. No sooner than it recovered from the transplant every flower left on it turned into a pepper and started growing like mad.