Hot Peppers

We're starting up a new project in our Nyack store, a hydroponic Ebb & Flow display of hot peppers.  We're starting our seeds today and we always start way more than we end up needing, so if you'd like some free seedlings from some great natural, non-GMO, heirloom seeds, stop by in about 2-3 weeks!  If you'd like some and you're a customer at our Queens store, just give us a call ahead of time and we'll bring some over.  What we'll be growing (all from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds):

- Purple Jalapeño - A large spicy jalapeño pepper that turns a deep purple before maturing to red.

- Black Night (sorry no link, these were from last year's batch) - A chili pepper that starts out black and ripens to bright red.  Produces very pretty purple flowers.

- Chocolate Habanero Pepper - A lantern-shaped habanero chili that starts out as green and ripens to chocolate-brown.  They're pretty hot, coming in at about 300,000 on the Scoville scale.

- Chinese 5 Color Pepper - Screaming hot little peppers turn a rainbow of vibrant colors; from purple, cream, yellow, orange to red as they ripen, so all 5 colors can be on the plant at once.

New Product: Phresh In-line Carbon Filters

The traditional carbon filters that we've all been using for years had one main limitation: you couldn't run them in-line.  This was especially a disadvantage when running air-cooled lights.  The proper way to air-cool your lights is to Blow air through them with an in-line fan and ducting, rather than Sucking air through them.  This is to protect the motors of your in-line fans and also to limit the amount of negative pressure in your ductwork so you're not drawing air out of the growing environment through your lights.  That way, you're not losing much Co2 if you are enriching your environment with it, and also so that the air leaving your lights is clean and free of odors/particulates from your growing environment.  Unfortunately, air-cooled lights are only sealed SO well.  Even if you are blowing, not sucking, and you tape the edges around the glass and where the ducting and flanges meet with duct/aluminum tape, you will still pick up some air from the room anyway.  In the past, your options were to exhaust your lights into another space/box and filter that air, or to use Ozone Generators which have their own risks and downsides (the biggest one being the main purpose of the unit: to transform oxygen into ozone, something that we and the plants shouldn't breathe).

We first saw Phresh Filters' In-Line Carbon Filter at the Colorado Maximum Yield trade show in April, 2011, so we've been waiting patiently (or not-so-patiently) for over a year for these to finally hit the market.  Now that they're available and we have them and have tried them ourselves, our two main questions have been answered:

- They can be run either way, by blowing or sucking the air through them.

- The flange on one side is slightly smaller than the other side to accomodate ducting (the larger side was designed for the fan) but you can use it however you want.

We received our first shipment of them last week and we're currently stocking the 6" and 8" sizes at both stores (the 10" and 12" are available for special order) but, depending on the demand, we might begin stocking all sizes.