• Do you need help identifying a 🌶?
    Is your plant suffering from an unknown issue? 🤧
    Then ask in Identification and Diagnosis.

sun Newbie . Seedlings 3 weeks sprouted but not looking great? Advice?

Scorpion peppers. They've hardly grown and leaves have been darkish. I try and let the soil get dryish before watering from the bottom. It did down pour rain 2 weeks ago during the night. I don't have much knowledge on growing plants. Anything look wrong?

South Florida. 80s during the day. I used some top soil (from home depot)mixed with backyard dirt. Sorry total newbie
 

Attachments

  • 20240414_115123.jpg
    20240414_115123.jpg
    94.6 KB · Views: 122
  • 20240414_115114.jpg
    20240414_115114.jpg
    128.2 KB · Views: 84
Last edited:
Hey Saeroner. Your seedings still look okay, but that soil mix won't work for peppers and the issues will get worse over time. Topsoil isn't growing soil and backyard dirt in south Florida isn't likely to help any.

My recommendation is to buy a bag of quality "container" soil from somewhere other than Home Depot, preferably a local nursery, and confirm with them that it's suitable for container growing plants such as peppers and tomatoes. With the new soil, transplant them into containers roughly Solo cup sized. Those sprouting cubes they're in should pop out easily if they're not too wet or too dry, so I'd try to to catch them when they're very slightly moist and pop them into new homes without disturbing the root ball. If you end up disturbing them some it's probably no big deal, but less disturbing is generally better. Keep them out of the direct sun after transplant for a couple days.

After transplant, expect the existing leaves to look no better and likely worse. Some of the cotyledons may even drop, but hang with them. Expect a bit of a pause as they adjust and root in, but once the new growth starts coming in it should be greener and healthier and you'll see that they're back on track. After their roots fill out the new, slightly large containers, they should be ready for their final homes.

Good luck!
 
Agree with @alkhall about Happy Frog, it's a great medium. Just FYI this season I got a batch that I used and it had some stones and bigger particles in it than I would have liked for smaller plant tray cells. It wasn't many but if I had to do it over I might have opted to run it through a coarse screen. Of course this is personal preference and not completely necessary but wanted to throw it out there.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top