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I give up...

Sam & Oliver

Sam & Oliver

I give up. Almost 3 months in and my pants are only 1" tall at best. Only about 3-4 of the 125+ plants seem to be growing at all since I transplanted. Problem here is it keeps snowing. I have no room for grow lamps at the moment. With no sun, they are probably all going to die. I'd say about 15 of them have actually died since transplanting from the pucks to the seed starter mix.

only 3 of my 20 chocolate habs even sprouted, and 2 have died since transplant. 1 is barely hanging on.

I'd probably kill a chia pet.
 
Don't despair, man! My first two attempts last year ended in a disaster of bug infestation bot times. Didn't help I was growing indoors either lol

But the above advice seems to do well. Use a heat mat for germination, and have them under lights 24/7. Also, if I may ask, what sort of medium are you using to try to germinate the seeds?
 
Bah humbug! If they are alive when Spring comes, they will grow!!
Shoot, I have a Carolina reaper with maybe 6 true leaves...and it is a whopping 2" tall...and it has to be 3 months old by now....lol

Never give up until they are truly dead!!
 
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Hm, how are you growing them without lights? Living in CT, you should maybe start seeds like right now or something if you don't have the space to grow indoors. If your plants die, grab some more seed quickly and start your season outdoors and you can easily still enjoy this growing season.
 
You can go to Walmart and spend $10 on a two foot "grow" light. Place it about eight inches above the plants and they'll grow just fine. $10 will provide enough light for 12-14 plants.
 
patrick said:
You can go to Walmart and spend $10 on a two foot "grow" light. Place it about eight inches above the plants and they'll grow just fine. $10 will provide enough light for 12-14 plants.
Click to expand...

What He said!

Geist said:
Hm, how are you growing them without lights? Living in CT, you should maybe start seeds like right now or something if you don't have the space to grow indoors. If your plants die, grab some more seed quickly and start your season outdoors and you can easily still enjoy this growing season.
Click to expand...

And what he said too :)
 
more lighting and that should be fine!

you can also check on craiglist for indoor greehouse or shop light fluo maybe you can make yourself a cheapsetup
 
I'm in N.E. Ohio, so have similar conditions. The other variable, besides light, is temperature. You should not be using a heat mat after all the plants have sprouted, as that will make them leggy and have less nodes. Since pods are only produced at the nodes, you want more, not less. Better to have short plants with more nodes. Don't worry about height - are they producing new leaves?

So how warm is the room? I rent an old house which is rather drafty and has crappy insulation. If you came to visit, you'd want to bring a heavy sweater or jacket to wear indoors, because I'm not paying out the wazzoo to heat this thing. But the room I start plants in has a space heater in it and windows on two sides, plus it gets light from a pass-through cut in a third wall from the room on the other side. The space heater is enough to keep that room cozy - at least 80F all the time.

And as you may have read elsewhere, in addition to ensuring you have enough light and heat, make sure you have a fan going. This both helps prevent damping off and should help reduce the hardening off period when you start to take them outside.

Don't give up. Although your plants may have a slow start, they'll take off once you bring them outdoors, if you harden them off properly.
 
I didn't mean that I was going to toss them out the window... I just was frustrated that nothing has really progressed, and since transplant they all kinda regressed.

I started by using what was near me: A jiffy 72-puck starting dome. Got sprouts from most all of them after 3 weeks and when the tallest one hit the roof I took the lid off.

It was on a Jiffy warming mat at the time in a room with medium amount of sunlight.

Once the lid came off I got a Leap Frog adjustable T5 Light that sat right over the tray, like you said, very low off the plants on a timer for 12/12 setting.

After some of the plants (which were double seeded) started to apparently run out of nutrients and one would clearly dominate the other, I decided to go get the jiffy 3" squares to transplant them in, individually. Jiffy Peat Pots. I also used miracle grow starter mix, not soil (read that here). I ended up with 4 trays of 32.

So my math was wrong before: it's 128 total plants. 3 of which were the 3/20 germ rate of the chocolate habaneros.

Overnight they all seemed to go from 2 leaves to 4 (2 in each direction). They were all upright and at attention. (he he)

They exist on a coffee table in the middle of a big room with a fan and heat (Coming in the form of a pellet stove) to keep the room temp up anyway. I monitor the soil as to not dry out too fast. When I water them, I give each about 1/4" deep of water in the pot and move on, which then soaks into the plant and use about 64oz across the entire tray of 32 peat pots.

The way it is this weekend, I'd say about 25% have died from that... or the stem is withered so much that they curled up around themselves and there seems to be no cell structure rigid enough to keep it from laying limp on the soil.

What I plan to do next is to cull the losses... (morale) and consolidate (team building exercise) and use positive encouragement when I pass by the plants. (you can do it! keep going!, etc.)

I believe I have 1/20 chocolate habs left, which is about 1/4" tall and microscopic leaves on it. It's clinging to dear life... poor little bugger.

I guess I'll have to buy someone else's chocolate hab plant this year.
 
Yep. Heat mat and lights. If ya don't have spring weather, don't tell the plants. Trick them into thinking you do!
 
i can go weeks without sun....like right now!

i use to have the same problem with habs due to lack of equipment, then one year i found a mini heated greenhouse(it is actually just a tray with clear plastic cover and heat pad). once i started using this i had improved growth but again once potted up and removed from the tray, growth stall occurred. tray was on clearance for $20.

....... then one day at a nursery, i found a larger clear plastic dome(7" clearance) that looked like it would fit my tray. now, after potting up my plants, they go back into the tray with the new dome, still on heat pad and every morning i put a cup of water into the tray. the extra humidity and length of time on the heat pad, gives me nice large plants and generally get removed from the tray at 4 - 5 inches or if the leaves are so large that there is no more room in the tray.

good luck with your growing endeavors, just a matter of getting the correct equipment, over time and all should be good - took me 20 years to get things almost correct, still have some glitches though.
 
I think peat pellets are great for germination, (I use them) but you said you used peat pots for transplanting.
Personally I think the pots are bad news, and probably causing at least.some of the problems!
I would go to the dollar store and get some plastic or styrofoam cups, (20 oz is what I like) and poke holes in the bottom.
Then use fresh soil, what you bought sounds nice. (i am using cheap potting mix for some, and MG garden soil for others)

Seriously, its those awful peat pots, they are harder to maintain the moisture properly. first too wet, then boom, all of a sudden they are too dry.... etc..etc...
 
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