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Persistence and success story! [ plus some help needed :) ]

Hello fellows. First of all this is probably not considered a succesful pepper story by many of you. I consider it a success because I was so close to giving up, so many times, that having this results seems like a lot already.

Last October I asked for some help here with my young pepper plants, right here: http://thehotpepper....d-young-plants/. I had succesfully germinated around 50 pepper seeds, 12 varieties from different sources, including THSC. But they were not getting anywere, the reasons still unknown to me.

I tried different soils, levels of light, both inside AND outside. Different water levels, with and without nutes, with and without epsom salts, different pots... but they were not taking off. Some lasted quite a while with only a couple of small true leaves, but nothing more than that. I ended up losing almost all my babies by December, so I went and bought some plants to keep me busy.

A couple of mine refused to die, and kept slowly growing new leaves -but still losing the older leaves, so they ended up almost the same. I made the commitment to keep trying and never lose my hope even though they were seemingly doomed.

Summer came and they started showing some signs of growth, not as fast as many of you are used to but still enough to convince me they had a chance! So, here I am, seven months after my last thread in this forum, with the first tiny peppers produced by one of my own plants!

Below are the pictures. I'll explain a bit, because I would also appreciate your help with some of my bigger (bought) plants.

Pic 1: Purple Thai Dragon. This one is mine, gonna try those tiny peppers tomorrow!
Pics 2 & 3: Butch T's. Also mine, you can see all the leaves it lost in the lower part of the stem. It probably lost 8 o 10 couple of leaves! The darker dots below the leaves are not bugs, they are soil (it rained some days ago)
Pics number 4, 5 & 6: Some leaves that show some signs of unhappiness. Any idea what could it be? Pic 6 is from the same Purple Thai Dragon from pic 1.
Pic 7: The whole family. All the bigger ones have already flowered and gave me peppers, but I harvested recently.

This thread is in part to thank you all for your support and to show that persistence is needed when things seem to go wrong. I know my peppers have grown almost nothing compared to some of yours, specially considering they are 8 or 9 months old! But boy I'm glad they've made it this far, when they seemed at many times so close to dying!

Thank you guys again, and of course any help is deeply appreciated.
Cristian.

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You are definitely on your way to being a successful chili grower.
There is no substitute for experience and the journey can be painful at times.
Keep up the good work and never give up!!
 
Thanks for sharing a great success story ! You stuck with it ! It looks like you are using the space you have available that is a huge passion ! You are on your way ! Have a great 2012 !
 
Very cool. On first glance it looks like your dirt is way too wet, and the yellow leaf discoloration makes me think they're overwatered, and not getting the sun they need. Are the pots draining out the bottom like they should be? Try just sticking them in some miracle grow potting soil with proper drainage next time, and keep them watered maybe once every other day. As long as you live in warm climate with lots of sun (about 30 degrees C) you should be good.
 
Good work man especially by the looks of it not much space to work with. And good to see the persistence and patience (I think I'm going to need a bit of that come winter :P).
 
Very cool. On first glance it looks like your dirt is way too wet, and the yellow leaf discoloration makes me think they're overwatered, and not getting the sun they need. Are the pots draining out the bottom like they should be? Try just sticking them in some miracle grow potting soil with proper drainage next time, and keep them watered maybe once every other day. As long as you live in warm climate with lots of sun (about 30 degrees C) you should be good.

Thanks for the reply! I watered them right before taking the pictures ;). I had already overwatered some of the small plants, and now I am quite careful not to overdo it. I always wait till the top is dry, and check though the bottom holes to see if it's not logged. You may have a point about the sun though, I had them on 2 or 3 hours of direct sunlight during the summer (temps reach around 36°C here) and moved them to where they are now barely a couple of weeks ago, so now they're getting about 9 hours of autumn sun.

Good work man especially by the looks of it not much space to work with. And good to see the persistence and patience (I think I'm going to need a bit of that come winter :P).

Thank you! Actually that's a second floor terrace, I had them in the garden before, just below some bushes. Good luck with the winter, we're gonna have to hold through!
 
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