First time poster here and pretty new to the hydroponics/indoor gardening thing. Heck...fairly new to gardening in general. Can't really explain what sparked the interest, but a friend of mine at work and myself got interested in growing some hot pepper plants and ended up ordering some various
seeds from the internet. Without going into too much back story, seeds arrived and were planted. Actually started the seeds out in regular soil and little jiffy strips. Started doing some internet research and ended up getting turned onto the hydroponic "stuff". We were both instantly hooked on the idea. We like challenges and we decided to try out hand at some "home grown hydroponics" so to speak. We both ended up trying our hand at a DIY
aeroponic/dwc hybrid type system (rubbermaid tote with about 5 gallons of solution in the bottom, spray bar with little spray heads sprinkling
nutrient solution on the roots with air stone hooked to
pump sitting in the solution).
I've had my sprouts in this system now for just a tad over 1 week now and I haven't managed to kill anything just yet. So I guess I'm at least headed in the right direction, but I honestly don't really know what to look for. A lot of the information I was able to find online about the various types of peppers I am growing indicate "maturity" times of 60-80 days (some simply listed as >80 days), but I don't know what this means in context. That's 80 days from what?? The time the seed is sown? Seems awfully fast to me, especially based on what I've seen thus far. However, I'm fairly un-educated in this area hence why I am turning to the community here in hopes that some of the more experienced growers out there can maybe tell me if I'm going down the right road.
I'll attach some pics here (or at least try) for reference. If I'm doing this correctly, the first image should just be a general overall shot of the system. That pic was taken the first day after the system was set up and the seedlings transplanted from their jiffy strips. At that stage in the game I am right at 21 days from when the seeds were initially sown. The next picture is taken after the seedlings had been in the system for about 3 days. I decided to start taking more "up close" photos to sort of catalog the process (as indicated in the picture we are now at 24 days from when seeds were sown). And the last picture was from the set taken last night. As seen in the picture we are now at 29 days from when seeds were planted. As you can see, there seems to be some fairly substantial growth in that 5 day period...but is this expected progress? Am I doing better than would be expected at essentially 30 days from planting the seeds...or is my plant development lagging behind? Any insights on that aspect? The plants appear to be health and growing, but I don't know well enough where I should be to know if I need to be looking at changing something. And sorry for the long winded post.