So I have this pls t for a bit over two months now and in the beginning it really grew fast. However now it has been stagnated and all the new flowers die. I water it once a day and try to keep it in the sun as much as possible.
What do I need to do?
by bgillis13
8 Comments
It looks healthy so maybe just let it do its thing,
That’s a pretty decent size for 2 months the only thing I’d say is it might not appreciate daily waterings.
It’s focusing its energy on growing the peppers right now. If you want it to grow bigger, you need to trim off the fruits and flowers and give the foliage a chance to grow more. Or, you can just let it continue being this size and producing the fruit. It seems happy enough, you just won’t get a gigantic yield like you would with a larger pepper plant.
Daily watering is almost certainly too much. Every 2-3 days is better. Wait for the soil to be dry. It’s producing fruit so it will focus most energy on fruit, not leaves/vegetation growth.
Looks fine. Flowers falling is normal.
Do you see the gap between the soil and the pot. That means there is a preferential pathway for the water to flow out of the pot so your soil isn’t getting completely saturated. Take a trowel and chop up the edges of soil along the edge of the pot and mash it down good to shut down the short circuit. Then saturate the soil and press it down again to make sure. This should make a big difference but I would give a good feeding because that has also not been making it to the plant.
The first few months I pluck off the flowers as I see them forming to allow the plant to direct all of its energy into growing larger. Once it begins fruiting all nutrients are then directed to them preventing it from getting larger.
Edit: to add – cut back on the water until it literally starts drooping. You almost want to abuse pepper plants with water. Doing this produces a better yield and much hotter peppers
Cut off those big peppers, and pour a little cal/mag/nitro combo on it. That’s what I do when I have a pepper stall