Growth cycle question....

[rhm3769]

Been here for a week or so, been reading through and asking questions.... Not sure if I'm searching for the right stuff or it hasn't been asked, which seems odd....

Haven't grown any kind of plant before but started about 2 months ago and just jumped in with a few different types of peppers.... Pictures can be found in my grow log....

I have a plant at work that is about 5" tall in a pot too small for it right now. It's had alot of damage from bugs and the elements, but nothing that would set it back. It has alot of growth starting where the true leaves are but no signs of a main branching. Is this normal in the grow cycle or should it branch first? Vertical growth is stunted from the size of the pot, I assume and I'm ok with it as this is my first grow and was intending to turn a plant or two into a bonchi. A smaller plant seems to me to be more suited to it as the shock of moving to a smaller pot and pruning should be less, I would think.

Also, at it's current size, could it produce peppers anytime soon and if I keep it in the small pot, should I try to promote branching or see if it will on it's own? It is supposedly a Peruvian white habanero, it hasn't received as much attention as mine at home and apart from it being shorter, currently it seems to be in better shape.

 

[Dave2000]

It is normal for a 5" tall plant to have not branched out yet, especially if it is not receiving a lot of light. If you want a plant for decorative reasons then yes, a small pot suited to the space available will work, but I wonder why you are growing a pepper plant then as it will be a small fraction of its potential size because of too small a pot, and far fewer pods.

It could produce buds at any time but at 5" tall I would pick them off to promote stem and leaf growth, especially if you are going to prune it for a certain shape. I am getting the impression you are giving the plant too much attention and should leave it alone. A white hab at this stage in growth will look very much like any other hab but in a month or so it will take on its shorter, bushier shape. It will branch on its own quite a lot when large enough.

The following, first picture is similar to the shape mine have had without any pruning, though it is of someone else's plant, mine had substantially more leaves than pictured. (time lapse...) I have found a picture of one I grew, the second pic. It is early in the season for it, the beginning of June 2010. At that point, the seed for it was sewn 3 months prior and it had been outside for 1.5 months. The second picture is as erect a shape as it ever had, soon after that point the amount of pods makes them start to droop more as in the first picture.

 

[Wulf]

at it's current size, could it produce peppers anytime soon

I've got a tiny fluorescent purple pepper plant (no clue how closely related it is to any of the more common peppers, not even sure if it has a name other than 'fluorescent purple') that I left in a styrofoam cup for far too long and was stunted. A week after I put it in the ground, this little 4" thing started putting out flower buds.

It's too late in the season to do anything except watch it, but it'll be neat to see this thing try to grow multiple peppers that weigh as much as the entire plant.... So I would say your plant 'could' put out peppers, but it's probably not in the long-term interest of the plant to let it.

 

[rhm3769]

 

[Wulf]

What's the twist-tie for? Seems too low to be structural.

 

[Dave2000]

Yes it is time to repot in a larger pot and it looks like it could use more light, like it is getting leggy and would have otherwise had larger leaf to height ratio. If it is not going to get more light then it may get fairly tall before branching. With white habs it is more important than with other types to give them a lot of light at first to develop a short thick stem because as you see from the first picture, the fruit can put a lot of strain on the limbs and bend, even break them.

Right now I am growing a white hab - red hab hybrid and it also has this problem because it inherited most of the same growth structure tendencies as the white hab. If I don't pick a lot of the peppers on it soon then some limbs will break off the next time it's windy. I would take a picture but it is outside in stormy weather, may have already suffered some wind damage today.

 

[rhm3769]

It isn't exactly clear in the picture, but there is a pretty significant bend in the stem right at the soil surface from being left alone outside during alot of wind over a long weekend.... I have it low when there isn't much wind as it can mostly stand on its own, as I rotate it and stronger winds come, I move the stake as needed and raise the tie a bit to keep it somewhat straight....

I wouldn't say it has been getting too much, too little is more like it.... It really only gets watered when it rains, it's only gotten miracle gro once and it only gets moved inside over the weekend if a storm is coming.... If it got the same over attention my plants at home get, it'd be in a much bigger pot already....

I've just been lazy with it, too much work to bring a bigger pot and dirt from home in to work to repot it, and don't feel like bringing it home to repot it there and bring it back down to work.... I've been using it more as a guide for veryone at work so I'm not constantly taking pictures and showing how my plants are doing....

It wasn't intended as an experiment, but it seems to have turned into one, leaving it in a smaller pot, stunted height but more horizontal growth compared to those in bigger pots....

Main point of the questions was to see if keeping it in the current pot would sustain it and if moving to a bigger one would slow down the horizontal growth to grow taller, if it even allowed it to grow taller....

My other plant at work is in a deeper pot and hasn't shown much of an increase since repotting, although it is probably because it had more damage to the leaves from wind....

One thing I also noticed between the smaller pots and the bigger ones, the size I the leaves compare somewhat to the size of the pot.... Mine in 11" pots were potted in 7" pots earlier and have leaves measuring 3-4" while those still in the smaller pots have leaves no more than 2" long and a slightly lighter green.... If these seeds aren't the same seeds, what are the chances that the two picked for staying at home and those picked for staying at work are different?

I just sowed some white habanero seeds from pepper joes to hopefully compare....

Okinawa is a subtropical climate, winter isn't much of a winter here, there is only about a month or so where they would have to be kept inside, no dangers of frost really but I'm sure the cooler temperatures at night aren't good for them.... So I have a pretty long growing season.... Not entirely sure on the requirements for cherry blossoms, but the festivals for their blooming is late feb/early march and then the rainy season comes and then it's summer and we hav to worry about typhoons and typhoon season runs to nov/early December....

Dave, this plant stays outside with full sun, very little shade other than cloud cover.... It's only moved inside when the weather is bad.... It looks leggy because it lost a few of the lower leaves.... When I do get around to repotting it, it will be put in deeper to cover the bend and remove the need for the twist tie....

In other news, pest problem....

I saw one yesterday and just this morning as well.... Much too small to get a picture with my phone.... Really small worm/caterpillar structure, whitish/translucent almost with a black head.... Trying to knock it off or brush it away indicates it can attach itself to the plant with webbing.... Found both underneath leaves....

 

[Dave2000]

It needs a larger pot for best growth. You can leave it in that pot and it will get larger but overall, much smaller than it would be in a larger pot. I recommend putting it in the largest pot the available space will allow, now, and since this type of pepper is prone to droop, I'd pick a pot with more height than width so the branches aren't dragging the ground once there are a lot of pods on it.

 

[rhm3769]

Space isn't much of an issue for the plants at work.... It will be repotted, the question is when I get around to it.... Would a 3-4-4 fertilizer give it a jump after repotting or would it start catching up on its own?

 

[Dave2000]

I cannot answer that, it depends on the initial soil quality and that of the soil you add. Generally speaking I do mix in a small amount of 10-10-10 fertilizer among other compost when repotting, but more soil will help regardless of whether you do that. I would give it a little fertilizer but then wait to see how it responds, not adding much since it now has a larger water reservoir relative to the root size until it gets larger. The larger the plant gets, the higher the dose of fertilizer it can benefit from. Generally speaking, it's best to fertilize less often than you're inclined to until the plant is larger.

 

[Dave2000]

Here's one of my white-red hybrid hab plants. It has the same shape as an untrimmed pure white hab plant, meaning it forks like crazy and droops from the weight of the pods though it's hard to tell in this pic that the pods are roughly triple the volume of the white ones. I keep it on a bench because it's a pain to pick peppers if it isn't elevated.

 

[ZenPepper]

Here's one of my white-red hybrid hab plants. It has the same shape as an untrimmed pure white hab plant, meaning it forks like crazy and droops from the weight of the pods though it's hard to tell in this pic that the pods are roughly triple the volume of the white ones. I keep it on a bench because it's a pain to pick peppers if it isn't elevated.

Wow, nice! does it taste like white hab? What did you feed that monster?

 

[Dave2000]

It tastes mostly like red hab, since it gets red ripe it is sweeter than a white hab but perhaps a hint of white hab's citrus taste. I consider it interchangeable with red habs in cooking. It's not all that big though, just really dense.

I don't feed it anything fancy, it's in soil that's a mix of clay dirt from a compost pen and potting soil plus decomposed mulch and peat, last years' pepper root hairs, with some coffee grounds and other various things mixed in like egg shells, then fertilized over the season with 10-10-10 and occasionally epsom salt. That's a guess, I vary my soil recipe based on what I have lying around then amend and reuse the same soil year after year.

 

[Dave2000]

When I mentioned that plant has the typical shape of a white hab, I forgot to add that it is only as upright as it is because earlier in the season I staked and tied it with twine.