Im fairly new to growing peppers and am wondering what I am doing wrong to cause my seedlings to fall over like this and curl?
I’ve looked through previous posts and see this could be caused by too much light or too much/too little water.
I water once everyday with a spray bottle to keep the soil most. Is this enough for should I do more? My light is also on for about ~12-14 hours.
In this instance, what do you believe the issue could be and how do I recover before I kill all of them lol?
by Zphere_
15 Comments
Thoroughly soak them with water then let dry a bit before doing it again
In this stage they need more than just moist soil. Are you sure there is water underground? It looks dry.
That soil looks *awfully* dry for plants that age.
The soil looks super dry. You may need more frequency of watering if they are in a low-humidity environment.
There is a tray under them, correct? That is to put water in, allow them to soak up what they need for about an hour or two. Them let the soil get mostly dry (not completely), then bottom water again.
Most of the mature ones look really good.
What’s happening with the little ones?
Spray bottle watering only makes sense during germination, before you see any leaves. Once they pop up, switch to bottom watering.
If you are not bottom watering – start today. If you are bottom watering already, check for foul smells in the water tray.
I appreciate all the comments. I will try bottom watering as a few of you have suggested. Thank you
Bottom watering, remove the heat mat.. You are frying the roots, start with a ventilation fan.
Bottom water from here on out. Once these plants have sprouted no need to spray tops. Only spray the tops of tray cells that have not germinated / sprouted. But once they do. Bottom water is needed to train the roots to grow deep towards the moisture. Stronger , healthier roots. Start with an oscillating fan on low to give them stems some movement to build up strength in the stems. Good luck.
They look really good!! Just need to water 😊
Spray bottle just mostly gets the top moist but you need the area where the roots are to be moist. Unless you ober spray by a lot.
Bottomwatering at this stage is the thing.. Using a spraybottle only increase the humidity, and can result in stuff like damping off. Let the roots dig for the water and nutrients from now on.
They’re not bad. Peppers can take a few weeks to put out true leaves after cotty’s.
Mulch the top layer of your seedlings next time with course vermiculite helps with dampening off. Issues.
why do you think you’re doing something wrong. peppers are very slow growers. after 2 months they’ll start growing really fast as their DNA develops