health What am I doing wrong

jimbo53 · Feb 4, 2015

Hey all, I was wondering what I could be doing wrong? All my plants are growing but they seem to only be getting taller, they don't look like other plants on the forum. Looking at other growers like Peppernovice, they have shorter, fuller plants with leaves the size of my hand.

I have them basically touching the lights (T8 6500k) for 16 hours a day, as the pics bellow will show.
I am fertilizing them every every other watering with a weak 1/4 strength master blend and cal/mag.

The two outer plants are Purple Jalapenos, inner left is Jimmy Nardello, an inner right is a Large Red Cayenne.

Piment d'Espelette

Left to right; Ancient Sweet, Peter Red, and Aleppo

Yellow Moruga

Any Ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

juanitos · Feb 4, 2015

they look fine to me. annums look different than the big beautiful chinense with fat leaves.

Noah Yates · Feb 4, 2015

Yeah, I agree with juanitos. They are just behaving like anuums. In my experience anuums grow much faster and generally appear to be more healthy when they are younger.

Also, when you shut the lights off, the plant will grow more during the dark period. I leave my lights on 24/7 within 4 inches of the tops of the plants (chinenses) and they stay really short and compact. Anuums, however, will tend to continue growing into the lights. So usually I just continue to raise the lights, but this year I plant to top my anumms once they develop 3 sets of true leaves.

John1234 · Feb 4, 2015

Some of the ones in the back look overwatered.

Suezotiger · Feb 4, 2015

Yeah as far as height goes, I have Aleppo peppers in seedling trays that have grown so tall the leaves are discoloring due to the heat from the light. I had to move them under the higher lights that I'm using for the plants in solo cups.

tsurrie · Feb 4, 2015

yup, there is a huge difference in how the annums and chinenses grow.. don't worry, your plants are ok.... but as miguelovic said.. try not to overwater

Lovepeppers · Feb 4, 2015

They will grow faster too, if there not being overwatered.

jimbo53 · Feb 4, 2015

juanitos said:
they look fine to me. annums look different than the big beautiful chinense with fat leaves.

juanitos, thanks for the reply and the great database http://juanitospeppers.com/wiki/Main_Page now I am only 1 click away from finding out if I am growing a annum, chinense, etc....

Noah Yates said:
Yeah, I agree with juanitos. They are just behaving like anuums. In my experience anuums grow much faster and generally appear to be more healthy when they are younger.

Also, when you shut the lights off, the plant will grow more during the dark period. I leave my lights on 24/7 within 4 inches of the tops of the plants (chinenses) and they stay really short and compact. Anuums, however, will tend to continue growing into the lights. So usually I just continue to raise the lights, but this year I plant to top my anumms once they develop 3 sets of true leaves.

Noah, thanks for the info., i thought I was starting to lose it, when I would check the plants after the lights would come I swear they had grown in the dark.

miguelovic said:
Some of the ones in the back look overwatered.

miguelovic, thanks for the heads up on the over watering; in the begging I was mistaking over watered for needing water. Trying to do better now, just seems like its taking a while for some of those abused plants to come around; I'm thinking of removing some of those bottom curled leaves. My thought is that it might help the plants put more energy in growing new leaves instead of trying to repair damaged ones. Any thoughts on the matter?

Suezotiger said:
Yeah as far as height goes, I have Aleppo peppers in seedling trays that have grown so tall the leaves are discoloring due to the heat from the light. I had to move them under the higher lights that I'm using for the plants in solo cups.

Suezotiger, thanks for the reply; I'm have to adjust the heights of the plants on the grow shelf almost daily.

This is my first time growing the Aleppo, how do you like them.

tsurrie said:
yup, there is a huge difference in how the annums and chinenses grow.. don't worry, your plants are ok.... but as miguelovic said.. try not to overwater

tsurrie, thanks for the reply, I'm trying to be more careful about the watering. Trying bottom watering currently, using the two cup method; then removing the second cup once the plants sucked up the water. My thinking is that leaving that second cup on is keeping the soil to moist and not letting then dry out.

Lovepeppers said:
They will grow faster too, if there not being overwatered.

Lovepeppers, I am noticing that all the plants from my latest grow are growing much faster than the ones from my first grow that I over watered.

Noah Yates · Feb 4, 2015

jimbo53 said:
Noah, thanks for the info., i thought I was starting to lose it, when I would check the plants after the lights would come I swear they had grown in the dark.

It happens because new growth in the apically dominant node has elongated cells in response to a lack of light (etiolation.) Your dark period is pretty long. The plant goes searching for light and end up growing taller by instinct. By applying stonger lights for a longer period of time, you can shorten your internode distance.

The down sides to keeping the lights on 24 hours a day are that you have to water twice as often and of course you use more power.

Suezotiger · Feb 4, 2015

This is actually my first year growing the Aleppo as well, but I've heard they're one of the most flavorful peppers, especially when made into powder.

reader · Feb 4, 2015

I've never grown them but I've purchased aleppo pepper power (from Penzey's) in years past. Very nice pepper flakes, not as hot as "red pepper" flakes but with good depth of flavor. Never even thought about planting them!

chocolatescotchbonnet · Feb 4, 2015

they look great!

jimbo53 · Feb 5, 2015

Noah Yates said:
It happens because new growth in the apically dominant node has elongated cells in response to a lack of light (etiolation.) Your dark period is pretty long. The plant goes searching for light and end up growing taller by instinct. By applying stonger lights for a longer period of time, you can shorten your internode distance.

The down sides to keeping the lights on 24 hours a day are that you have to water twice as often and of course you use more power.

Noah, thanks for all the info. behind the dark period growth. I am thinking of a way to re-do my bottom growth shelf to maybe place all the anuums and quicker growing plants down there while keeping the slower growing ones up top.

Suezotiger said:
This is actually my first year growing the Aleppo as well, but I've heard they're one of the most flavorful peppers, especially when made into powder.

Suezotiger, thats what I'm going for, that flavorful tasting powder.

reader said:
I've never grown them but I've purchased aleppo pepper power (from Penzey's) in years past. Very nice pepper flakes, not as hot as "red pepper" flakes but with good depth of flavor. Never even thought about planting them!

reader, thanks for the reply. I hoping to combine these with some other types of peppers to create a wonderful smoke tasting powder for seasoning.

chocolatescotchbonnet said:
they look great!

Chocolatescotchbonnet, thanks for the encouraging reply.

Valleyman · Feb 5, 2015

tsurrie said:
yup, there is a huge difference in how the annums and chinenses grow.. don't worry, your plants are ok.... but as miguelovic said.. try not to overwater

They look good. Why not top and strip a couple? You'll be glad you did. I did it last year and was overwhelmed come harvest time.

photo.php

jimbo53 · Feb 5, 2015

Valleyman said:
They look good. Why not top and strip a couple? You'll be glad you did. I did it last year and was overwhelmed come harvest time.

photo.php

Valleyman, I tried topping for the first time a couple weeks back and the growth was tremendous; as shown in the following pics. The plant forked where I topped it and put out two shoots in about 3 weeks that were lager than the top I removed, which should theoretically give me about twice as many pods.

I am not familiar with stripping though, does that entail removing some or all the leaves?

1/15/2015

2/4/15

chocolatescotchbonnet · Feb 5, 2015

yeah if i start my annums too early, they getting topped at least once, maybe twice!

Ozzy2001 · Feb 5, 2015

chocolatescotchbonnet said:
yeah if i start my annums too early, they getting topped at least once, maybe twice!

Yeah I know I started early this year but I fogured I would just top anything that gets too unruly. I built my shelves in my grow shelf at different heights for that reason though, so it will take a big boy to get whacked.

chocolatescotchbonnet · Feb 5, 2015

Ozzy2001 said:
Yeah I know I started early this year but I fogured I would just top anything that gets too unruly. I built my shelves in my grow shelf at different heights for that reason though, so it will take a big boy to get whacked.

i learned better to start too early than too late leads to good yeilds!

jimbo53 · Feb 5, 2015

chocolatescotchbonnet said:
yeah if i start my annums too early, they getting topped at least once, maybe twice!

Ozzy2001 said:
Yeah I know I started early this year but I fogured I would just top anything that gets too unruly. I built my shelves in my grow shelf at different heights for that reason though, so it will take a big boy to get whacked.

I will definitely have to top some of these before I will be able to put them outside.

When topping a second time, how far down ya'll top them; bellow or above the Y?

chocolatescotchbonnet · Feb 5, 2015

jimbo53 said:
I will definitely have to top some of these before I will be able to put them outside.

When topping a second time, how far down ya'll top them; bellow or above the Y?

if there's one top then one top, two similar height tops then top two, if one is higher than the other top just one........and so on