Hello! I posted before that my peppers weren't doing sht and some kind soul pointed to my temperature as the issue, so I moved the tray to a warmer spot and put it back on the heat mat and for some reason my peppers still ain't doin sht!
Details:
-Planted on 1/17 in ocean forest potting soil
-Have them under a grow light. Lux reading was around 5000
-In the cooler room, temps were 64-68 F. Now for the past two weeks, a thermometer next to the tray reads ~70-75 F
– I water when the soil is dry
Some have started putting on first real leaves but they've remained tiny for weeks, barely growing if at all. I'm trying so hard and am at a loss here!
Anyone have any insight on why they are so stunted?
by Objective-Orchid-206
16 Comments
You could be over watering and/or giving them too much light? The cotyledons look like they are curling up.
Shoot for between 70 and 95F for faster germination. I set my heating mat for 82F. It usually adds a couple weeks behind the others if I don’t. YMMV. Good luck.
Other thing I can think of is too much water, looking at your soil. There needs to be a lot of oxygen for the maturing root system to uptake nutrients. Don’t suffocate them. A light mist, or bottom watering helps.
Il terreno sembra troppo compatto, forse troppa acqua, e dal colore delle foglie anche troppa luce. Gli sbalzi termici e di umidità sono pericolosi in questa fase. Ciao
Are any of them really spicy? The spicier they are the slower they grow ime. You could try adding a SUPER DILUTED amount of fertilizer for the next watering for the ones with little true leaves. Don’t fertilize ones with only seed leaves if you can help it.
The room temperature is okay. The
heat mat can dry the soil out at this stage so be careful.
How is your watering schedule? It should be regular and not a seat of the pants kind of thing. I use a seed tray with cells probably a little smaller than yours and I water every other to full saturation. If I leave it three days, the seedlings can dry out. You also have multiple seedlings per cell so they will need more water.
Lux is not used for plants. PPFD is. Use an online converter to get the PPFD value and see if it is too high. The leaves are curling which could be a sign the light is too bright.
When did they sprout sprout? A lot of people growing for the first time don’t truly understand how slow growing pepper plants are in their first few months. Of course, depending on your budget, light setup and other things, some that plunk that crazy money will definitely get waaay better results. Now with that being said, even with makeshift setups and low budget or cheaper grow lights and products, it may seem mediocre. Now you combine this with their true nature of growing slow the first 2-3 months, many become way too impatient and start messing with them way more than they should. THEN, this stunts them even more and will quicker result in the plants doing horrible and then you just kind of give up. Don’t overthink things and also gotta let things be when you know you are pretty much following certain guidelines to the best of your knowledge.
Your plants honestly don’t look horrible. They are green and praying like young seedlings usually do before their first three sets of true leaves. One big thing people forget entirely about sometimes is the flow of air indirectly and also I like to directly place small to medium airflow towards the plants as long as it doesn’t seem too aggressive but only do this for a couple hours and sometimes a bit more. Builds strong stems and also doesn’t let the plant sit too wet to where they’ll get root rot.
Hope this helps. Happy growing and I hope it gets better for you perspectively.
Hope to maybe see some updates as well.
What’s the drainage situation with those cells?
Crowed those little plants are mostly likely fighting for resources
Correct me if I am wrong, 5000 Lux is 115 umol/s/m2, I have experience with this setting and find it is slow (cannot get 3 pair of true leaf in a month) but generally do not cause leggy seedling. I use photone and PPFD as measurement for light, the optimal condition is around 250 umol/s/m2. 300 for those dark foliage to change colour. I cannot see anything wrong with your temperature, the change of soil as long it has nutrients it should speed up compared to an inert medium. I do noticed many of your cotyledons are pointing up as though the light intensity can be increased further. Can you shift your light lower, take the tallest plant as 250 umol/s/m2 (converter showed me 10870 lux)
The cotyledons should spread out like this in a day if your intensity is optimal.
https://preview.redd.it/69jc35k8xfme1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=81a00544264522b716176e2866984209f6153bae
Patience is your friend with pepper seedlings. The ocean forest should have plenty of food sources, so I wouldn’t be in any rush to feed. Keep an eye out for fungus gnats, use a small sticky trap or two near soil for monitoring. Those buggers can slow the process for smaller seedlings because their larve love to munch root hairs and newer developing roots. As far as adjusting the light, we’d need a measurement of par value rather than lux. Par is used to measure the amount of light available for photosynthesis while lux just measures how much light reaches a surface. With plants, the light color or wavelength and spectrum are more important than the amount of visible light. What type of light are you running?
i had planted 2 types of seeds, 1 set from wild(from a 1cm ripe fruit,not sure whats the variety) and another set I got from a chili farm (long chili). The seeds from the farm grows very fast now its 3inches tall in a month with a set of leaves,while the one from the wild still 1inch with only the cotyledons..all in same soil
They normally take that long imo
My best results with growing peppers was with a bag of potting mix thrown into a Rubbermaid container with a CFL bulb left on 24/7.
I suspect constant light and heat and raised humidity allowed them to grow as quickly as they did.
After a month my plants were around the size of the ones you get at Lowe’s.
I start my hot peppers earlier because they are so slow. They like it warmer too. I used to have a cooler area and when I got the air warmer it did help a lot. Still the slowest by far. I start them earlier than recommended due to my short growing season. I have to be super careful though with my plant babies. It takes so much patience to grow hot peppers. The hotter the slower. Makes you feel like you are doing something wrong. try growing a tomato they sprout like crazy and grow fast. Squash even faster.
Go watch this new video about “$30 vs $300 grow lights. He sets up a test with about 5 different options from a South facing window, to a $30 light, and on up through a $300 one. Yours will probably fit close to one of those options tested. The results are very illustrative. https://youtu.be/_0EFGE9ZljY?feature=shared
Patience is a virtue. Yours sprouted. Mine haven’t came up.
I think Ocean forest can be somewhat hot soil for seedlings. Patience. They’re growing. Slow and steady.