I'm supposed to put these in the ground in three weeks or so. I seeded them about 4.5 weeks ago, I misread the situation and have had the grow light on too high.
I turned it way down but theyre so stunted. Will they recover? The purple leaves are scotch bonnet. The rest are annuum and a few baccatum. The last photo little yellow one on top is a red habanero
Worst case I go buy a bunch of starters at the nursery next month but i have some really great varieties i wanted to try here.
by davey__
9 Comments
If you perfect the environment now, they may be salvageable. What’s the temp? That’s been the biggest explosion of growth for me, moving them from Cool, to 80F and 70% humidity. They were just like yours when I moved them 3-4 weeks ago, I have some that could go out now if I wanted.
They’ll be okay if you correct them now
I have some extremely purple seedlings too for what it’s worth, it could be genetic. I’m literally in the same boat as you and decided to transplant them to see what happens and also to check their roots if they even had any.
Mine seem stalled out for some reason too. Hopefully this turns around for both of us, I’m not experienced enough to give advice yet.
What changes would you all make to improve conditions for these? In a similar boat.
I’d say, try to bring these plants along and know that you can purchase plants if you need to (hopefully ones you’d want). Maybe with care your seedlings will surprise you and end up as productive plants. Last year I got covid for the first time, followed by some chest thing, at exactly the time I should have been tending my many tomato and pepper seedlings. Between being sick and fatigued the pepper seedlings were neglected and puny as it got ever closer to their planting date. I lost some but had enough for myself and to give away, and got decent plants and harvests. I hope things work out for you, too.
Oh these absolutely can recover. You could up pot them into slightly bigger containers now, bottom water, and I bet they are back on track within a week or two
They look healthy, insofar as they don’t look dead or dying. But if this is how they look at 4.5 weeks then most likely they will not grow up to be large plants, they are probably permanently stunted to some degree. However I wouldn’t give up on them. They’ll still grow and produce.
I had this same thing happen with a bunch of pepper seedlings I started last year. And once I corrected the problem (in my case it was not enough light) they grew up to be perfectly healthy and productive (albeit small) plants. I ended up also going to the nursery and buying some various pepper seedlings to supplement my garden as well, which outgrew my homegrown seedlings by a long shot, but I was still glad I saved my seedlings.
Only 1 way to find out. Keep going, I bet you’ll see them surprise you
Looks good! Also good job germinating