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Are they supposed to grow this slowly

RocketMan

RocketMan

I have 2 plants that I started late int the season and have been this size for almost a month now. I thought that they would be taller and have sprouted more leaves than this by now. Is there anything i can do that will get them to start growing?

This is the Red Caribbean Habanero. The Aji Lemon pic came out blury but is a little smaller than this.
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Edit: I had them in the garage with the lights on 24/7 till a week ago when I moved the 2 of them that are still growing out to the back pourch where they get morning sun though only direct for a couple of hours when it first comes up then indirect light for the rest of the day. I water daily and have holes in the bottom of the cups so that the excess water drains. Thanks
 
They grow painfully slow, I have plants that are 2+ years old. Being non hybrid tropical/subtropical plants they don't grow as fast as say a plant that would originate from a temperate zone. Winter would kill em before they went to seed if they didn't grow fast enough. Thats my guess =)
 
edgie, i know your stuff will take off once the roots start stretching for the nuts.

rocket, if you think they are growing too slow, you may wish to look at start feeding the seedlings, not with fertilizer but perhaps a mild tea or if you drink coffee, dilute it and give it an occasional drink. sounds like the miracle gro did its job - started the seed as stated. the thing that always gets me thinking with seed started mixes, is, how does one know when the plant is getting any food, via roots? when, i used seed starter mixes, i always suffered from what i called stunted seedling growth, didn't matter chinense or annumms. since, i have started using my own brews and so far only get the occasional stunt but looking at 2 of the same variety side by side, 1 small, 1 in growth spurt, i put it off to the seed quality.

oh, i also cover my soiled chinenses with a water bottle, just cut out the bottom and put it over the plant, i then, take a deep breath, hold it as long as i can and blow into the bottle and seal the lid. my wife thinks i'm a kook. i had good success with some fatalii plants and now have some really nice pods just starting to ripen.

good luck.
 
Those seedlings are done, sorry. If they haven't grown any in a month then something went wrong somewhere. It happens to me every season. For reason's I don't know I always get a couple that never grow true leaves and end up dying.
 
Don't listen to the nay sayers! Your plants are fine! Yes caribbean reds take that long, I grew them this season and they took almost 2 months until you get a solid amount of leafs on them. You DO NOT need to feed them until they get 4-6 true leaves on them and by that time they should be 4 times that size as well have a thick stem. You WILL kill your plants if you overdue it with the ferts from not having patience.

Soon you will see the first set of true leaves come in and then you will see more action. You have plenty of soil in that cup for that seedling to grow so the best thing you can do is wait.

If its not dead you are doing a GREAT job!

Also next time use Miracle Grow (flowers and vegetables) stuff is cheap and works great!
 
for what its worth, i grew 2 butch T seedlings in miracle grow organic choice for 3 months with little to no growth, they just sprouted their first true leaves and stalled.

I was too scared to burn them with ferts, so i changed them out to pro-mix HP and they have since taken off

I have no scientific explanation for why my seedlings prefer the pro-mix, all I know is that they hated Miracle grow, and i will never use the stuff again. All the seeds I planted in MG sprouted, grew a set of true leaves and either died or stalled until i changed growing mediums.
 
Burning Colon said:
oh, i also cover my soiled chinenses with a water bottle, just cut out the bottom and put it over the plant, i then, take a deep breath, hold it as long as i can and blow into the bottle and seal the lid. my wife thinks i'm a kook. i had good success with some fatalii plants and now have some really nice pods just starting to ripen.

good luck.
Click to expand...

Yeast + sugar + water = CO2 (and what an alcoholic might call a beer :P )
Need more CO2, add more sugar (add lots of sugar, I dare you muhahaha)

Might reduce the risk of you stroking out ;)
 
I had a purple jalapeno, a tricolor variegata and a scotch bonnet seedling in a seed tray that looked like they were never going to grow at all. They were just stems with cotyledons for weeks, months, so eventually I stopped watering them. I don't know how it happened, but about 6 weeks after that I went back to the seed tray and they had all started growing again - don't know where they got the water from. The jalapeno and the tricolor are now flowering. The moral of my story? Don't give up on your seedlings until they turn brown and die.
 
@RocketMan:

It's possible that the seedlings are damaged - but if there's any sign of life between the cotyledons (the first pair of leaves), I wouldn't give up. I've only had it happen once (sample of a couple hundred plants) that one of the seedlings simply wouldn't grow any true leaves - but the cotyledons got really meaty (like 2mm thick) and dark green. I have no idea why it happened, maybe damaged growing tip, maybe some funky seed - anyway, apart from not having any true leaves, it didn't really look like yours - yours look normal.

If you look closely at the space between the two leaves, is there any sign of little green thingies? If there are, they're probably just taking their sweet time and as long as you've got time/space, keep doing what you're doing (light, water, ventiation).
 
I was lookin at some of mine, and some planted the same time in coco, look like yours, but the others are up to 10 leaves or so and looking great. Try again in a different mix... goot luck.
 
Seems like the mix was too wet and the roots died. If you havent, pull some up and see if there is much root structure in there. Every year I have the issue of overwatering because of my cold grow space.
 
I started out with 16 cups 8 were Caribbean Reds and 8 were Aji Lemon. out of those 7 of the Caribbean Reds sprouted and 1 Aji. I'm now down to 1 Caribbean and the 1 Aji. The only moving I've done is, now that it's cooled off some, moved them out to my porch where they get a couple of hours direct sun in the morning and indirect sun the rest of the day. I'm now watering them every other day too.
I'll see how they're doing in the morning when I water them again and if I remember I'll take some new pics. I may see if I can dig around a little bit and see what the roots are looking like. If they look ok I think I might try moving them to a different soil. If I do that should I try to keep what soil is around the roots or go to completely new soil?

Thanks for all the assistance1
RM
 
Every other day seems like too much watering. The soil needs to get almost completely dry between waterings for smaller plants. That helps the roots spread out quickly and then BAM, sudden huge growth.
 
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