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Plants growing 'one-sided'....

Wulf

Wulf

When I started growing them in front of a window, I was rotating my cups daily so that the plants would stretch for sunlight to all sides evenly. I more or less stopped doing that due to laziness, and now a few of my plants have all of their leaves facing one direction.

Should I start rotating them again, or will that just damage / slow them because they've spent so much energy growing the way they have? None of them have more than 5 sets of leaves yet, so I guess now's the time to do anything if I'm going to. Or should I just ignore it because it doesn't matter, and they'll all be fine once I get around to hardening them off?
 
Plants will tend to follow the sun. If you have a plant on one side of the house then most likely your plant will turn towards the window. It's not a problem early on but when they get bigger and have no support it can be with all the weight. I always stake close to my peppers to prevent this.

I actually have a plant this year that started growing sideways.... not sure if it was the wind or what but I try to hold it up and it just wants to fall over to the side. It's healthy so I'm just going to leave it. Often times you will do more harm trying to stand it up.
 
"Or should I just ignore it because it doesn't matter, and they'll all be fine once I get around to hardening them off?"

This late in the season you'd better make sure your peppers are covered from the sun when you harden them off. Use a sunscreen fabric on cages or keep them in the shade for at least a week. Just get going and get them used to the heat/weather.
 
Prehensile said:
Your running out of time to put em out aint yah?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I definitely am. Between work and having a 2 year old son though, I haven't had the time to properly harden them off.

Would you guys say it's better to just throw them outside and let nature take its course, or will that cause an unacceptable number of casualties?

http://winnipegweather.com/

It's not quite the worst of summer yet, but I imagine that forecast will still be pretty harsh on plants without hardening them....

Assuming the pots have holes for drainage, is there much risk in overwatering once they're outside? If I'm not covering them in tiny sun-magnifying droplets to fry the crap out of them, is soaking their dirt with water the nicest way to counter the heat?
 
Some of my plants turn their leaves twice every day to follow the sun, it's good to rotate to get the stems to grow straight so do that and leave in the same position till the stem is straight.

I like to harden plants but sometimes I don't and they seemed to do ok, keep an eye on them or have someone else do that and if they start to look like they can't handle the heat, move them to a shaded area if in pots.

Overwatering risk depends largely on how well the soil drains. If you can watch them, wait till the first wilts to establish a watering schedule and amount, otherwise give them a 1/4" of water and see if it comes out the bottom of the pot and adjust accordingly.

When my plants were young outside I worried about water droplets being sun magnifiers but once they were big enough that their leaves covered the area where I'd pour water into the pot, I just ignored that factor and have not had any visible leaf damage as a result, although I have had a few pepper fruit damaged by sun scald that never got wet as they were too high up on the plant.

30C temperature is not very hot for peppers, they'll love the temperature increase.
 
when i get seedlings like that, i just bury them deeper when potting up to straighten it out... but normally, it will straighten itself out fine as it matures...
 
Well, I decided to just "trial by fire" the motherpeppers. At least, 6 of the biggest ones are now in pots on my front step. I'm gambling that too much sun is better for them than not enough sun. I may just be on crack but they already look bigger, aside from the one that lost a leaf in a toddler-related incident on the way to the porch.

I've still got a bunch peppers in cups in the kitchen so I'll probably just put them straight in the ground this weekend.

If I decide to overwinter a plant that's in the ground, is there any trick to digging it up without destroying its roots? Or are they hardy enough to survive, as long as you leave some?
 
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