Well, it's about time to get my overwintered plants used to the outdoors again. A Rocoto Red, Tabasco, and Vietnamese Multicolor. All three were put outside for the first time since last fall earlier today. But I have a few questions, this this is my first time overwintering. My plan is to do the following, in mostly this order:
-Get the plants used to the increased light by putting them outside on nice, sunny days but bringing them back in on cold nights or during strong thunderstorms. I will be spraying insecticidal soap also to get rid of any aphids (which I know there are a lot).
-Put the plants in larger pots, replacing all potting soil mix with fresh stuff, and fertilize with something higher in nitrogen to get them going.
-But before fertilizing... I'm planning on seriously pruning the plants due to all the aphids that have accumulated while indoors and curled leaves caused by the little assholes. By pruning, I mean all of the newer, thinner branches will be chopped off and virtually every leaf that remains will be pulled, before spraying the hell out of the remaining stems of the plant to get rid of as many bugs as possible. These plants will be nothing but thick stems. This is one of the parts I'm worried about, I figure the plant will be quick to grow new stems and leaves and continue, but I figure there may be a chance of them dying. Should it be safe to perform this extreme pruning in an attempt to annihilate all aphids, or should I prune less? Note that the Tabasco plant lost most of its leaves on its own after bring it indoors, and I regularly tore off heavily infested leaves while it was in the house. I don't know if doing that too much will have a negative effect (ie. robbing it of too much energy that it would obtain from light). To be safe though, I was probably going to let them grow some and absorb light for at least a week before doing this.
Does this plan sound like it would work alright, or does it sound flawed?
-Get the plants used to the increased light by putting them outside on nice, sunny days but bringing them back in on cold nights or during strong thunderstorms. I will be spraying insecticidal soap also to get rid of any aphids (which I know there are a lot).
-Put the plants in larger pots, replacing all potting soil mix with fresh stuff, and fertilize with something higher in nitrogen to get them going.
-But before fertilizing... I'm planning on seriously pruning the plants due to all the aphids that have accumulated while indoors and curled leaves caused by the little assholes. By pruning, I mean all of the newer, thinner branches will be chopped off and virtually every leaf that remains will be pulled, before spraying the hell out of the remaining stems of the plant to get rid of as many bugs as possible. These plants will be nothing but thick stems. This is one of the parts I'm worried about, I figure the plant will be quick to grow new stems and leaves and continue, but I figure there may be a chance of them dying. Should it be safe to perform this extreme pruning in an attempt to annihilate all aphids, or should I prune less? Note that the Tabasco plant lost most of its leaves on its own after bring it indoors, and I regularly tore off heavily infested leaves while it was in the house. I don't know if doing that too much will have a negative effect (ie. robbing it of too much energy that it would obtain from light). To be safe though, I was probably going to let them grow some and absorb light for at least a week before doing this.
Does this plan sound like it would work alright, or does it sound flawed?
