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Big leaves: a good thing, or na?

Bicycle808

Bicycle808

I noticed that many of my chinense plants that I started from seeds have some Dookie-big leaves on them. Like, some are almost the size of my hand. I always thought that was rad and I noticed they are find more on my plants that are truly thriving (more vigorous growth, more leaves on risk in terms of both number and volume) but I think I recall reading, either here on THP or elsewhere on the workshop wide internetwebs, that this is actually a sign of some kind of deficiency-- either light or nutes or some specific wavelength of light.

The thing is, I cannot find the thread but I find this hard to believe based on my own observations with the plants i'm growing. But I noticed that the plants I for from the nursery tend to have smaller leaves than the ones I've started, so I figured I'd ask y'all...

Thanks!
 
Yeah I thought I was hardened off pretty good but I scorched quite a few leaves on my Bonnets right after I planted out. I was cussing myself out over it until I noticed they're already popping out a bunch of new leaves to compensate. I think it's all gonna be good in the end
 
They usually set on big like that in cooler temps with higher barometric pressure.  It does seem to be more of a "lush" growth, which settles down a lot when conditions normalize.  Have you ever noticed that it coincides with that early season explosive growth?
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I never get jealous "leaf envy" over other people's grows, because I know that 9/10 times, it has more to do with the conditions that are presented to the grower, than the actual grower. :D
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More often than not, a grower who has a great deal of success when he/she has the luxury of ideal conditions, will find him/herself at a loss when he/she ends up with less than ideal conditions.  It's why some are well-educated on plant science, while others can just throw it in the ground, and it grows. :)
 
My indoor plants start out with huge leaves, but as the plants get bigger the leaves get smaller and way more numerous. As the lower large leaves get shaded, they drop of the plants. Pretty normal for indoors under lights, its the plants morphogenesis to produce enough photosynthesis until more leaves can develop.
 
Yes the big leaves tend to show up in early growth on my chinense plants growing indoors under lights. (The annuums tend to have normal or even smallish leaves under the same circumstances.) If I recall from last season, yeah, later leaves are smaller and more numerous, or maybe they just appear smaller because the entire plant is bigger in relation to the larger leaves. Right now, I have a lot of short & bushy plants with some cartoonishly large leaves on them....

Solid7, this is only my second year growing, really, and while I know conditions in NJ are certainly conducive to growing great chiles, based on evidence I have seen on thp with other Jersey growers' plants, my inexperience and foolishness create some highly localized unfavorable growing conditions. I'm trying to learn the science behind all of this so I can become a better grower..
 
Bicycle808 said:
Solid7, this is only my second year growing, really, and while I know conditions in NJ are certainly conducive to growing great chiles, based on evidence I have seen on thp with other Jersey growers' plants, my inexperience and foolishness create some highly localized unfavorable growing conditions. I'm trying to learn the science behind all of this so I can become a better grower..
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Hope my statement didn't come out the wrong way!  :tear:
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I applaud anyone for wanting to learn more.  I was just kinda light-heartedly sayin' that too often, when people are interested in a subject, and work hard to understand, they get bashed on for overcomplicating by others who have the good fortune of ideal conditions on their side.  But all too often, we grow in vastly different environments, that dictate such radically different conditions, that what comes easy for one, will be a laborious task for another. (I've been in both spots)  If you never get those gigantic leaves, and somebody else does, I wouldn't worry too much.  I've yet to see anyone who can cohesively explain the phenomenon, much less replicate them continuously, under parameters that they have under their own control. 
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I have read alot of your posts, and wouldn't consider you foolish.   Honestly, I just hope you don't intend to grow those gigantic leaves, as a matter of principle.  They would probably be easy to grow in a hyperbaric chamber, but it's typically "just a phase" that the plant is going through. :D
 
I would actually liken big leaves to puberty.  We all know how that hits some harder than others, all at once.  Chalk it up to hormones. :D
 
solid7 said:
 
Hope my statement didn't come out the wrong way!  :tear:
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Oh no, I get it. And I understand that some folks truly have a "green thumb," whereas others simply live in a Gardener's paradise...I have a very nice climate, as far as I can tell, here in the Garden State, but despite my best efforts to conceal my folly here on THP, I do screw up a lot.

Lately, I have learned to be more responsive rather than reactive when my plants seen to be suffering. I've gotten further with "tough love" than I have with "miracle cures," for sure. And when I do need to take action, I feel better with simple solutions rather than complicated measures...

But I do feel like my plants are constantly "telling" me something, and it's up to me to figure out what their signals mean. I thought big leaves might have been some sort of message, but if it's just an awkward prepubescent phase, I'll just ride it out.

Last year, I thought it was evidence that I was already a Master Gardener lol. I'm more foolish than you might think.
 
big leaves like this?   from my experience it's a good thing.   the plant will be huge.  
 
 
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But lek, to be clear... there is no correlation between huge early leaves, and huge plants later on.  Some of the hugest plants that you'll ever see, started off with perfectly normal sized leaves.
 
My MOA reds and Dreadies both have really large leaves. Quite a bit of the newer leaves are not quite as large. My largest MOA though is still producing some whoppers. None of my other chinenses are even close and i have a fairly good variety of them from virtually heatless too a ghost. My Beni Highlands last year had really nice foliage and they never got much more than 2ft tall. Still produced a lot of pods.
 
The tallest middle plant is my MOA. The two on the left are Dreadies and the one in the yellow bucket is a ghost.
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solid7 said:
But lek, to be clear... there is no correlation between huge early leaves, and huge plants later on.  Some of the hugest plants that you'll ever see, started off with perfectly normal sized leaves.
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then you need a lot of normal leaves in order to grow huge.   when pepper plant is not mature. it doesn't have much leaves so huge leave will be a good sign.
 
lek said:
 
then you need a lot of normal leaves in order to grow huge.   when pepper plant is not mature. it doesn't have much leaves so huge leave will be a good sign.
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It's all relative to your conditions, at the time the huge leaves appear...  I start 2-3 batches of plants, every year.  The ones started in winter, when the weather is cooler, tend to have the biggest leaves.  The plants started later (mid-summer) have normal sized leaves.  Overall, neither of these sets of plants end up doing better or worse than the other.
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As best I can tell, huge leaves are always dependent on getting a good start, under specific conditions.  Which is why indoors plants almost always display huge leaves (at least in my experience) over outdoors plants.  If you live in a different part of the world than I do, huge early leaves may be the norm for you.
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Huge leaves may be a good indicator, under specific conditions, with smaller leaves being a total non-indicator, under other conditions.  Therefore, neither good nor bad, barring context.
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You think you ask a simple enough question, eh bicycle? :D
 
There could be something to leaf size size vs how they were started. The lemon drops i started inside from seeds (pods i grew the year before) were massive compared to seedlings i bought.  The plants (seedlings) i had before were from CCN and Lazy Ox Farms. Im pretty sure both of them use a greenhouse from the start. They were so much larger i thought i might have had a odd cross but they grew true. The pods produced from the huge leaf plants were your typical lemon drops so im fairly sure they were not crossed with something else.
 
All my seedlings i grew from seed inside this year had fairly big leaves except the Arnaucho which look pretty typical to me for a chinense. The chichimeca i get from a local grower also have huge leaves for a jalapeno. He starts them inside. The Fresno i started inside seemed large too but ive never grown them before.
 
Yeah the leaves on some of my plants are pretty much as big as the ones Lek posted. Mostly various Scotch Bonnets, but also the BOC and 7Pot Brainstrains. One Fatalii had pretty big leaves, to, but not too wire the same degree. And my JPGS plants have, like, long as hell leaves, but not so broad and, of course, crazy wavy.

It was comparing the plants to the ones I got from CCN that made me realize that, maybe this shit ain't normal? The CCN plants have leaves more like my annuums...
 
Yeah all my plants from CCN this year look pretty typical to me for the varieties. Mostly lots of average to smaller leaves. A couple seem to be growing slow and the rest seem normal. Aside from that they all look fine. I just wish my aji dulce would kick it in high gear. :D...The little guy looks good. He just needs to put on his "big boy" pants.
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The rest of the CCN crew are kickin it.
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The CCN was a good example. Every year, I end up buying a few plants from CCN that I can't find seeds for, in a timely fashion. Every year, their plants show up, in good health, but always on the spindly side. And yet, they always mature into textbook specimens. Just as good as my beautiful from birth Chinenses, that get a good priming in rich, well fed, microbe infested, hand-mixed grow media.
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There's a few plants whose late life vigor is determined in the opening 2-3 months of its life. However, to date, that hasn't been my experience with peppers. (pineapples and bananas, for sure...)
 
I pretty much got some ive never tried before. The aji dulce being the exception. Ive had them just never grown them. They all looked scrawny to me when they arrived. The local grower i get the chichimeca from is gunna pick up a few kinds of seeds from me. I really dont have a problem giving him $5 for a few huge seedlings. His plants look great and no bugs. Plus i can pick them out.
 
solid7 said:
Huge leaves may be a good indicator, under specific conditions, with smaller leaves being a total non-indicator, under other conditions.  Therefore, neither good nor bad, barring context.
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let me show you an example of my past experience with little basil with huge leaves when it was young.   
 
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several months later,  it turns out to be a huge basil tree.
 
 
 
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as for C.chinense pepper, i bet it will reach 2-3 meters tall quite easily. happy growing pepper tree.
 
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