Started this pepper plant from seeds, grew slow at first then picked up some. With the hot humid summer weather, it has slowed so much I was afraid it was rootbound. But when I went to inspect the roots, the soil was just about perfect, not compacted, warm and moust but not wet. No visible critters in it, and no visible fungus or mold. However, I had a layer of pearlite on the bottom that was rather wet. So since I had d UK mped everything out anyways, I trimmed some of the roots, mixed the soil up again and planted it back in the pot. I was hoping to see it perk back up. I gave it about a week to see how it would react, It had about a dozen pods forming and some maturing. It started dropping leaves like crazy and turning yellow, so I cut off all the pods to help it put it's energy back to the leaves. That did not help. I was worried about losing this plant since it is the only one out of 10 seeds that actually sprouted. It was kind of a father son project with my 12yr old. So after a week and a half of not showing any positive signs, I dumped the pot again, pulled the plant, soaked the hole plant in soapy water, then washed off the leaves, roots and clipped the worst looking leaves off to thin it out. I trimmed a few of the branches in hopes of inspiring it to grow again. Then I set up a hydro bucket system. I have it in a net pot lid in a 5 gallon bucket with a water pump shooting water directly at the roots. I threw in a little nutrients to help things along. I set it up and went in for the night. When I woke up this morning, it was looking much better. The leaves although still pale and yellow, looked much happier. I am still learning about PH and whatnots, I bought a little digital ph and TDS meter to check my water, but not sure of its accuracy yet. Right out of the box it was reading my tap water at 7.5 or so. After looking up some natural ways to ph balance the water, I am going to try to use some lime juice to adjust closer to 6.0 in hopes that will help things pick up.
More to follow.
More to follow.