New grower question..

[chefben4]

So last night I decided to take a ride up to the local "parking lot" nursery to check out their clearance sale and to see if they had any interesting peppers for the taking...

After looking a the pepper plants I started getting worried, it seemed most of the ones there had peppers on the already yet all mine at home just are starting to bloom or are in bloom. The plants at the nursery looked terrible (very yellow), some 6in with full size peppers on them.. Am I missing something? Should mine have actual peppers right now like the nurserys?

 

[crazy8]

Well im not a wizard like a lot of the people here but I do believe the yellowing could be from lack of water or even magnesium or maybe other nutrients. As for the peppers being on their plants and not yours, this is likely because they start off earlier. I also think that some nurseries have their plants shipped in from other places so it is possible you could be getting a plant that came from an area where the season starts earlier. These are shots in the dark but all seem like possibilities to me. If anyone has any other info I to would be interested in how these things work.

 

[POTAWIE]

I don't buy chile or tomato plants anymore but if I did I would definitely pick off all fruit and if they're really small pick off buds/flowers too. Small rootbound plants will be forced into fruiting early. I always laugh when I see buyers excited about small plants already fruiting. Sure you may get a few small early fruit but usually at a major sacrifice of overall size/production

 

[mega]

Rule # 1 for gardening mental health: Don't compare your plants to store plants.

Garden stores know that people want to buy big, robust plants. So the not-so-great shops start the plants too early, so they'll be really big and impressive by the time you show up. All it really speaks to is the respective ages of the plants, yours vesus theirs. There is no advantage to an older plant over a plant that is the age it is supposed to be - 8 to 10 weeks old at the transplant date.

As to small yellow plants with one big pod, needless to say, that is not a sign of health. Peppers like everything else in nature are designed to reproduce. In really adverse circumstances they may attempt to pump out one pod because they know they have to do that to continue the family line, so to speak. So they gather up all their forces, put all their energy into making a pod (or 2), and to do that they curtail efforts in other areas such as growing strong stems or adding foliage. You are much better off with your plants growing at the right pace, typically to around 18-22" before you really start to see pods showing up. Not that you won't get a few at the 12" stage, but it's actually preferable for pods to show up at the right time and not too early - for the same reason it's better for women to have kids at 20 or 25 instead of 13, that is, maturity to deal with the stress and sufficient resources to support the growth of the offspring (except that with peppers we want them to have like 40 or 50 offspring!)

 

[chefben4]

Thanks Potawie and crazy 8. I've relaxed a bit now, lol. Mine are about 50/50, some store bought and some seed grown. I'll sit back and relax and watch my peppers do their thing!

 

[ditter]

Crazy, potawie and mega are all right. There are lots of commercial growers here in south and central Florida that grow year round and ship up to the northern parts of the US. I represented a commercial grower down here that grew annuals and flowering shrubs and shipped them directly to Illinois and Indiana for Home Depot, so I got to learn a little about the business. Their profit margin is slim, so it's all about shipping and transportation costs. The key for the growers was to get them flowering quick and keep them small. Flowering plants are more pleasing to the eye for a customer. The smaller the plant, the more that fit on the truck for that shipment. They also know that there is a certain price point at which your average Home Depot shopper is going to pay for a plant. If someone is only going to pay 5 bucks for a pepper plant, then you would rather have it be spent on a 8 week old plant with a pepper hanging on it then a 12 week old plant with just a few flowers. If growers could get multiple peppers on a plant in four weeks, they'd do it in a second even though the plant is not really growing correctly. And the big growers are not growing under 24 hour lights, so I can only assume that they accelerate flowering by manipulating nutrients.

 

[The Medicinal Pepper]

Crazy, potawie and mega are all right. There are lots of commercial growers here in south and central Florida that grow year round and ship up to the northern parts of the US. I represented a commercial grower down here that grew annuals and flowering shrubs and shipped them directly to Illinois and Indiana for Home Depot, so I got to learn a little about the business. Their profit margin is slim, so it's all about shipping and transportation costs. The key for the growers was to get them flowering quick and keep them small. Flowering plants are more pleasing to the eye for a customer. The smaller the plant, the more that fit on the truck for that shipment. They also know that there is a certain price point at which your average Home Depot shopper is going to pay for a plant. If someone is only going to pay 5 bucks for a pepper plant, then you would rather have it be spent on a 8 week old plant with a pepper hanging on it then a 12 week old plant with just a few flowers. If growers could get multiple peppers on a plant in four weeks, they'd do it in a second even though the plant is not really growing correctly. And the big growers are not growing under 24 hour lights, so I can only assume that they accelerate flowering by manipulating nutrients.

I believe that flowering in peppers is triggered by ambient temperature rather than nutritional triggers. Certainly the plants described were suffering from some kind of nutritional deficit.

 

[chefben4]

Yeah they looked terrible but the few peppers they were growing looked TASTY! I didn't purchase any though, I figured it was best to wait and see my plants produce. It will deffinitely be more satisfying when I see my hard work start producing peppers of all varieties. I am new to this and thanks to this forum I have been able to gain some confidence and knowledge to try things out.