Beginner Questions

S

sdp07d

Hi, I'm new to the forum and growing things. I've read through many things on the forum about soil and planting peppers and still have questions. I have purchased a fatali, a trinidad moruga scorpion and a yellow trinidad scorpion. I am living in Northern Utah in an apartment with a west facing balcony on which I plan to grow them.
 
Since I am in an apartment so mixing soil is out of the question and for my first time I would rather stick with something easy. Pro mix BX seems to be a common bagged soil recommened so I was planning to use that.
 
They are currently in 4 inch pots and are around 12 inches tall. When do I transfer them to 5 gallon pots?
Can I use Smart Pots or 5 gallon buckets?
Will smart pots be acceptable with the dry and hot climate here in the summer?
Can it be too hot for my pepper plants? It was 100 degrees today.
Do I need any fertilizer(s)? If so, which types would be inexpensive or minimize the amount of things I need to take care of? I don't care if it's organic or not, just that I get an ok yield of peppers.
 
Thank you for your help.
 
sdp07d said:
Hi, I'm new to the forum and growing things. I've read through many things on the forum about soil and planting peppers and still have questions. I have purchased a fatali, a trinidad moruga scorpion and a yellow trinidad scorpion. I am living in Northern Utah in an apartment with a west facing balcony on which I plan to grow them.
 
Since I am in an apartment so mixing soil is out of the question and for my first time I would rather stick with something easy. Pro mix BX seems to be a common bagged soil recommened so I was planning to use that.
 
They are currently in 4 inch pots and are around 12 inches tall. When do I transfer them to 5 gallon pots?
Can I use Smart Pots or 5 gallon buckets?
Will smart pots be acceptable with the dry and hot climate here in the summer?
Can it be too hot for my pepper plants? It was 100 degrees today.
Do I need any fertilizer(s)? If so, which types would be inexpensive or minimize the amount of things I need to take care of? I don't care if it's organic or not, just that I get an ok yield of peppers.
 
Thank you for your help.
Click to expand...
Sounds like our setups will be pretty similar.
 
I'm using promix bx in 5 gallon buckets & smart pots with good luck so far. It is hot & dry here too, 106F today. The smart pots actually keep the roots cooler than the 5 gallon buckets according to my IR thermometer. If it gets too hot sometimes peppers have trouble setting fruit & flowers will fall off til it gets cooler. Some of mine produce right through the heat. I'm having good luck with Maxibloom from general hydroponics, it's super easy & I don't even have to pH it since it ends up spot on when I mix it 1 tsp per gallon of water. It's pretty cheap too, $15 for 2.2 lb which makes like 180 gallons of solution at 1tsp/gallon.
 
One thing to keep in mind if using promix & feeding liquid ferts is you want to have a good bit of runoff when you water/feed, like 20% of the volume put in. 2 gallons going into a  5 gallon bucket is about right it seems for me. If you don't run enough through eventually you can get buildup, I just ran into this on one plant but flushing sorted it out.
 
Got any pics of the plants? They're probably big enough for transplanting if they're 12".
 
I purchased these pepper plants on Saturday afternoon and I appear to be killing them already. They were in a shaded area in the nursery. I placed them on my covered balcony that has a slatted wall and faces west. The leaves appear to be getting sunburned and falling off. It is only happening to the largest leaves. I attached some photos of the plants a few of the leaves that fell off. I have only watered the plants at this point because they were wilting yesterday.
 
Is there a recommended procedure to transplant the plants?
 
Here are some pictures of the plants
 
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Lastly, here are some of the leaves that have fallen off. The largest leaves are the ones that are falling off.
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Yeah that can happen but the beauty of peppers is how hardy they are. As far as procedure...put potting mix in bucket...dig hole...pull plant out of current pot soil and all...carefully break up the root-soil mix taking care not to damage the roots too much but giving them room to breathe...put plant in hole...cover with potting mix up to lowest set of leaves...water thoroughly...give a few days of shade to recover
 
Those are some nice looking plants !! im new to this also and here are some things ive learned the first couple of weeks .. first thing you need to do is get them into some bigger pots my plants were way smaller than yours in 3" pots and there roots had outgrown it quickly . Next harden them off a hour or 2 the first day in the shade then gradually increase it , then slowly giving them some sun the same way .

In that kind of heat your talking about you'd probably need to keep them shaded . I made rookie mistake of keeping some of my transplants in direct sun on a 90 degree day and they paid the price by getting some sun scorch .

As far as ferts You can go with neptunes harvest fish and seaweed or you say you don't care if it's organic miracle gro for tomatoes I've heard has worked for a lot of people here . I wish I could find pro mix as I've also read good things on here , but I had to go the miracle gro potting mix route and made rookie mistake of feeding extra fert to early after transplant ( the potting mix had ferts in it already ) and had a little bit of nute curl in there leaves . New growth is looking good so I didn't do to much damage lol .

Most everyone on here is very helpful and have helped me out greatly in my new hobby . Something that I'm learning real quick is that these plants really don't need us messing with them much . Give them water only when they need it , sun and shade when they need it and they'll pretty much do the rest ;) . Hoped that helped a little , good luck with your plants !! :)
 
Everyone, thank you for your responses. I purchased pro mix bx and maxibloom. I plan to transplant the plants tomorrow as soon as everything arrives in the mail. I also stopped by my nursery again to check out any other plants they had since the first time I went was about 30 minutes before closing and I just grabbed varieties I knew. This time I picked up a Yellow moroga and a hungarian black. They did not carry pro mix and only had potting soils with fertilizer (I have heard this is not ideal). I do however, have some more questions.
 
When transplanting them. Do I want to add any kind of fertilizer? A pack of matches in the hole(pepperjoe recommends this)?
Do I want a higher N fertilizer to promote growth for a bit before switching to the maxibloom?
Are my plants behind for the season?
As far as pH for watering, is this important? pH for fertilizer solution? Ideal pH? I own pH strips for brewing beer and wine but they only do acidic solutions.
 
As far as pro mix goes, I picked it up on amazon with free 2 day shipping.
http://www.amazon.com/Premier-10281RG-Loose-Mycorise-Cubic/dp/B008JSMNGE/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1372785196&sr=8-4&keywords=pro+mix+bx
 
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