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Should I repot these or just let them grow?

rooze

rooze

Hi, just a quick newbie grower question.
I have several yellow hab plants growing in pots, one of which is growing two plants. I must have carelessly dropped in two seeds. The two plants are very close together and I'm sure the roots are very intertwined at this point, they probably started out at around 2 inches apart. The two plants are just a little bit behind the rest in terms of progress, they're at around 6 inches, without any signs of flowering/pods.

Should I just leave them be, or should I try to separate them and repot? It's peak growing season here in WI right now, very hot (90's), humid and sunny. There's probably only around 5-6 more peak Summer weeks left, in fact my main concern is running put of season before the plants bear ripe fruit, as happened last year.

Cheers folks

Rooze
 
Leave them. In my experience two plant in a pot givs about as much (or little) fruit as one plant in the same pot. Plus they support eachother so you might not need any extra support for them.

YMMV.
 
Unfortunately if your plants are only 6 inches tall now it may be too late to get much of a harvest. I'm in MN and I started mine at the beginning of March and they just now are getting fruits.
 
I agree with MrAboc. As long as the pots are big enough to support 2 plants I can't see any problems. Here's a link on growing more than on plant per container.

http://www.thehotpepper.com/topic/19917-clumping-growing-technique/page__p__418209__hl__clumping__fromsearch__1#entry418209
 
Leave them. Don't try to separate and repot, roots will be damaged and it may take a while for either to recover, if they both recover at all that is.
You pretty much have to let both grow together, or sacrifice one when it's young next time instead to avoid this situation. Separating later has never gone well for me, one has to die (or takes months to recover), and the other less damaged one doesn't do so well in the short term.
 
I would leave them, I have a buddy in Ohio that had two plants in one pot and he twisted the stems together(gently of course) so they could fuse together. I have seen pics of this from other members on here and it turns out pretty cool. You could always overwinter them and harvest them next year.
 
Ah thanks guys, that's great news. I didn't want to have to mess with the roots at this late stage of the season. Growth has been good over the past 7-10 days so I'm hoping they'll keep on at the same rate, if they do I'm hoping for fruit right around the end of next month.

Ezzer - thanks for that link. "Clumping" - I would never have thought to search for that. Great information.

Cheers!
 
Well I took a bit of a gamble, went off down the local nursery and bought a bigger pot, then transferred the two plants into the new pot (about double the volume) without disturbing the roots....so I'll see how that pans out.

An odd thing happened whilst at the nursery. They just happened to have about a hundred or so mixed chili plants, left over from what the woman described as a pretty slow season. The majority of these plants are bearing fruit, some quite close to ripening. There's a mix of sweet peppers along with a few hots like Thai chile, Kung Pao, cayenne etc (no super hots). There's a few labeled "Hotties" ! They have fruit in the shape of a habenero though with small cones at the bottom, like mini bhuts.
Anyway, the crazy thing was that these are between two and 3 feet tall, are in very good health, bearing quite a lot of fruit, and..........THEY'RE ALL STILL IN THEIR LITTLE PLASTIC 3" SEED TRAYS!

I couldn't believe it. The woman said they just get watered every two days, and once a week with a mild nutrient mix that they give to all the plants. They're all on sale for $0.50 each!! I grabbed the best looking ones, 12 of them, some pots, some potting mix and soil and made off like a bandit for under $30.00

:woohoo:
 
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