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health What am I doing wrong?

W

WolframMalukker

Ok, so some of my plants this year were bought from the Home Despot-least expensive Bonnie dealer out there. It's been 25 days since they hit the dirt, and the same flats of plants I bought from (date codes are the same as mine) that are still in their 4" bonnie cups at Home Despot, being innundated with water some weeks and bone dry the others, are almost double the size of the plants I've had in the ground here.
 
So, seeing as the home despot employees are doing FAR better growth-wise than I am, I went through and composted the garden, and ordered some Foliage Pro to start a weekly fertilizing program with. HOPEFULLY, this gets my peppers to catch up to the tomatos!
 
Also-it's been 25 days since my datil seeds germinated. They were sown into 4" pots and have been about 2" tall. All of them have two sets of true leaves, one of them has three sets of true leaves, but they are still tiny. They get full sun and bumped up a tiny bit when I dosed them with liquid fish two weeks ago, but then kinda stalled out again.
 
I just feel like my plants are seriously lagging, but I have no idea what to do about it.
 
I have some photos, just need to get them uploaded. Work keeps me busy during the day and today I filleted my hand on a ring gear, so typing has taken some time.

These are my annuums, Chinese giant bells. They are 40ish days from germination.

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These are the Datils in the red pots. 27 days since first hooks up.

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Close up of the biggest Datil:

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We will see how things go with the dyna-gro foliage pro, hopefully it will help.
 
Just a few things to think about, when you transplant plants they usually go into shock for awhile and don't grow much, especially if they're a bit root bound.  Also, the plants at home depot may be getting a lot more sun than yours, a plant getting 10 hours is going to grow a lot more than one getting 6 hours even though both are in "full sun".
 
Nah, 9 inch is a toy compared to the ring for a boom truck-its a crane base. About 75lbs of steel.

Good guess though, I have a stack of 8.8 and 9" axles out back for stock. I run a hot rod shop and work with a local diesel shop.
 
When I say full sun, they are in shade for zero part of the day. From sunrise till sundown, as they're pretty much in the middle of a big field unless severe weather is coming, then anything not in the ground comes up to the porch for wind protection. If these plants were not so tiny I'd not worry much about them, but the stems on the datils are toothpick size, and the stems on the mutants and chinese giants are matchstick sized. The tequila sunrise are in between those two. I would say we're looking at 12 hours of solid full sun, every day.
 
The ones in the initial post here, all bonnie plants, all with the same date codes on the cups, signifying they were started at the same time-within days-and the ones that I put into the ground are roughly half the size of the ones that were left in the 4" cups-the ones in the cups are almost 18" tall, and have two forks. The ones in the ground are 10" tall and have three forks. Maybe I'm just all in a whirl over nothing.
 
I can tell you from my experience that you have to be patient with Datils.  I've got 3 plants I grew from seed and they're lagging behind my Superhot varieties.  I noticed pods setting for the first time this morning.  Datils are very late season peppers but they're worth it.  Come September or so, I'll be making a batch of Datil sauce which is a time-honored tradition here in Florida.
 
I've noticed this at a local grocery store that gets pepper and tomato plants in the spring. I bought a "fooled you" heatless jalapeño from them, and it's grown about an inch vertically. The ones there now (they only get one shipment in the spring afaik) have grown 3-4 inches if not more. I'm guessing they get so root bound that they give up on roots and start putting energy into growth up top. I've seen it less with chinense but I'm sure it's the same thing if that's what's happening
 
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