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Healthy Plant Dropping Flowers

Greetings,

I have a very healthy plant. She's been babied since day one. It turns out, it produces long peppers. Very cool looking. Everything is perfect with this plant; however, every day she'll drops flowers. Not just the pedals when it's producing fruit but the whole flower and stem.

I wish I knew the strain of this plant but I don't know if that will help in this case.

I grow it indoors for the most part and put her outside for 3 or so hours in the afternoon to catch the setting sun. The lights she sits under are two CFLs. 1 6500K and 1 2500K (for my reds and blues). I'll turn it on at 5:30am and turn it off around 10pm.

I feed her tap water that has been sitting for a day. I will nute up the water about once a week with miracle grow for tomatoes (works fantastic with every other plant I am growing) and I use that sparingly (about a 3/4 dose of recommended).

The plant just started doing this. Mind you about a month ago is when she started producing flowers.

Any ideas?
 
Temperature can affect the pollen. If the pollen is infertile(? not sure if that is the word) the flower won't pollenate and then the plant will eventually drop it. I have hundreds do it every year.
 
That's just it. It's so middle of the road, I can't figure out what it is. The temp is constant within 10*, I never over water and I don't let the plant go dry. The nutes are what I use on everything. The plant is very happy otherwise.

Some flowers don't even open all the way before they are dropped (don't quote me on that, now that I think of it, perhaps I am wrong)
 
It's a thought. The plant sits in a 3 gallon pot and is about 1-1.5 feet tall. If it's root bound, I wouldn't think it's too crowded.

Typically, I'll find a problem, either fix it or don't and move on. The problem is, I can't find a problem.
 
I would say lay off the miracle grow for a while. 3/4 a dose is still a pretty high dose of nitrogen on a weekly baises. Just water with out it when needed an try hand pollinating or put a fan on them since they're mainly indoors.
 
I can lay off the nutes but I think when I said once a week, I was being generous.

I'll sometimes pollinate with a small paint brush and it'll work fine but from what I am told, peppers are self pollinating (generally)

Thanks for the posts everyone. I'll give everything a shot.

If you have any more ideas, fire 'em my way
 
Spending that much time indoors, they may not be getting sufficient opportunity for pollination. My hab acted like that earlier in the season. I had to hand pollinate at first to get it jump started until the bees found it. Now I've got more than i can handle.

Edit: Boost beat me to it while I was typing. Stealth posting while I work is slowing down here at THP.
 
My guess is also to back off on the nutes, give nature MUCH more opportunity to polinate. I have spiders, ladybugs, assassin beetles, yellow jackets and mini wasps as well as humming birds on my peppers but still had blossom drop during our assault of record high temperatures last month.
 
Flower drop probable causes:

1. Day temp too high >95F
2. Night temp too low <65F
3. Too much nitrogen fertilizer
4. Too much water
5. Low light levels (reduces fertility).
6. Very low humidity (reduces fertility)
7. Poor air circulation (air circulation contributes to pollination).
8. Lack of pollinating insects.
9. Size of pot
10. Too much mineral in feedwater.
11. Too much grower attention/anxiety.
 
The Willard List waiting until post #16? Willard seems to be having a busy weekend while the rest of us are getting lazy with our copy and paste. :D
 
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