April 4, 2013:
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Caelian

Eeeeek! Bummer Caelian! What happened? Did you put the plants out in the sun without hardening them off? it looks like you have plenty of other ones to keep you going though. What is in the medium on top in the last picture? it looks like red gravel? im just curious. those plants look nice. Is that a HID light?

Littlepb, thank you for the questions. It was happened in the process of hardened off. I did not know, how many minutes should I put the plants outside on the first day in the shaded area and then next day, next day!

The medium is 35% Sphagnum, 35% tree fiber, 30% composted plants. The red one is cat litter I used it as mulch, it prevents fungus gnats I think.

The lights are not HID, they are 36W x 2 FSL K6400.

Caelian

Sun shouldn't even touch the plants on the first few days unless it's semi-shade. Getting them used to the wind is enough stress on the leaves and water movement through them.

I harden off at 3 sets of leaves in a small 4x or 6x starter cell, but even then they don't see more than an hour the first day (unless they seem to be handling it well) and 2-3 hours for a couple days afterwards.

Once they get a bit of natural protection on the leaves, then they can taste some unfiltered sun under a "check every half hour" watch.

After 6-7 days of this (the first 3 being no or filtered sun) then they're generally good to go.

Don't give up on them! They may bounce back. If the temps are favorable, I'd leave them out and see if they regrow leaves. If they're already out when they grow back, they're already hardened off.

nc-cm thank you for the info. That is exactly what I was looking for! Temps here are already getting very nice so next weekend will be planting day and hope they survive!

Hillseeker, your planting in zone 3b next weekend. I am in 6a Hamilton ON, and prob not going to plant until late may. The other day I put 4 plants outside in the low 50s for a few hours to see how they would react and lost quite a few leaves to the cold temp.

Thank you all for the suggestions and opinions. I left some of the seedlings (already wounded and damaged by the wind and sunlight) outside under the horticulture fleece the whole day and night. They started adaptation the new environment. For further more experiment today I re-potted another batch outside for experiment, now they do not have the fleece.
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The sunburned Ghost got the new leaves and the scorpion has sign of shoots.

I sincerely appreciate all of your efforts to help me.

Caelian

Hey Caelian! I'm sorry your plants got sunburned, such a bummer after so much effort. Last year i overwintered a beautiful large habanero, that had an amazing amount of flowers from christmas till spring. Then i forgot it ouside one cold night in march and it froze. Argh i wanted to kill something :))
Hey i see you're using a more traditional medium now, did you have problems with bark based or?

Oh poor habanero, sorry to know your lost habanero.

Umm how about to find some aphids to kill for your own satisfaction :).

Now I do not use pure 5:1:1 because I got some good potting soil alternative from Germany. So I have tried this new soil.

Pine bark is very expensive right now.

1. 70 liters pine bark fine is now about $25

2. 40 liters potting soil (from Germany) cost about $3. This soil has a lot of fiber, well drain and rich nutrients. I like this soil: Sphagnum 35%, wood fibers 35%, composted plants 30%, liming agent 2.0kg/mó, pH 6.2 to 7.0 and nutrients added. I think for one season this soil won't be compacting that's more than enough for me.

3. 20 liters potting soil also cost about $3 but it is peat based soil, I do not like it.

Still I am looking for the cost effective good potting soil.

Yesterday's transplanted seedling are well adapted to the new environment so I added another raw of bags today.

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I hope no one mind the flag. Skewers are more expensive than the flags, I saved about $1 for every 10 pieces.

Caelian

This post was edited by chilliwin on Sun, Apr 28, 13 at 9:41