Small pods on mature plants

[scotchnaga85]

My mature 2nd year Red Savina's seem to be having problems with producing decent sized pods and this has me wondering why.
 
I have 3 ideas as to why:
 
1) Foliage was to bushy (pictures show plants after pruning)??
 
2) When this first lot of pods where growing I was on holiday for 10 days and had left my plants in the care of family. When I returned the plants where healthy but the pots where somewhat light indicating to me that watering had been minimum. Maybe the shortage of water meant smaller pods??
 
3) The plants where re-potted this season so are spending more effort on growing rather then pod size?
 
What do you folk think could be the problem here??
 
It's to be expected that not every pod is going to be of good size but this is a joke, especially considering how healthy these plants are.
 



 
My biggest pod is not even cherry sized!!!
 

 
My 3rd over wintered Savina is still only in flower so i'm waiting to see how its pods develop.

 

[megahot]

Could be due to cooler temps, and not be watered or fed enough

 

[scotchnaga85]

Could be due to cooler temps, and not be watered or fed enough

 
I don't think the temperature is a problem. Day times over past 3 weeks have been between 70-82F (21-28C) in full shade, and nights no lower then 57F (14C) also these plants sit in full sun in grow houses...  90-95F (32-35C) easily inside them.
 
The soil is part peat and they where re-potted so there should really be plenty of nutrients in there, enough to last at least another year I would think, however I am still feeding them 'All purpose Miracle-Gro' plant feed once a week.
 
Should I increase the amount of plant feed??

 

[Trippa]

Too much nitrogen would be my pick especially considering the lush leaf growth. That miracle grow has a stupid amount of it if I recall correctly. Give it regular watering with no additives for a few weeks and a regular biweekly to weekly foliar spray of kelp/seaweed concentrate

 

[Nightshade]

It is stress causing them to force ripen I would assume. Probably the watering but I'm not positive

 

[Trippa]

What's your soil got in it??

 

[meinchoh]

Trippa, I'm with you on this one - maybe too much N. That fert has 12% N, if I'm not mistaken...

 

[scotchnaga85]

What's your soil got in it??

 
http://www.wilko.com/compost+composters/multi-purpose-compost-with-added-john-innes-20ltr/invt/0301379
 
I think its 30-33% peat if I remember... I use it every year for my plants without issue.
 
Yes the leafs are quite lush and before those pictures where taken I had just pruned about a 3rd of the leafs from each plant.
 
Yes miracle-gro has a lot of nitrogen in it. Do you think this could be my problem?

Too much nitrogen would be my pick especially considering the lush leaf growth. That miracle grow has a stupid amount of it if I recall correctly. Give it regular watering with no additives for a few weeks and a regular biweekly to weekly foliar spray of kelp/seaweed concentrate

 
 

What's your soil got in it??

 
http://www.wilko.com/compost+composters/multi-purpose-compost-with-added-john-innes-20ltr/invt/0301379
 
I think its 30-33% peat if I remember... I use it every year for my plants without issue.
 
Yes the leafs are quite lush and before those pictures where taken I had just pruned about a 3rd of the leafs from each plant.
 
Yes miracle-gro has a lot of nitrogen in it. Do you think this could be my problem?

 

[megahot]

Yeah, higher N is no good either!

 

[Trippa]

Too much Nitrogen and the plant just puts its energies into foliar growth its true with most/every plant

 

[scotchnaga85]

It is stress causing them to force ripen I would assume. Probably the watering but I'm not positive

 
could be the watering or at least part of the problem... i'm interested in learning more about the nitrogen effect too.
That's that then, for now I will cut back on the nutrients and see how it goes. 
 
thank you guys for your time and help...

 

[Jeff H]

Too much nitrogen would be my pick especially considering the lush leaf growth. That miracle grow has a stupid amount of it if I recall correctly. Give it regular watering with no additives for a few weeks and a regular biweekly to weekly foliar spray of kelp/seaweed concentrate

 
 
Yes. I zoomed in on pic two and the leaves are so dark green that I wouldn't be at all surprised if you started to see calcium deficiencies because of the excess nitrogen. When plants are getting a diet too rich in N, they tend to cut down on the amount of nutes and water they take in which could be causing the small pods as well as deficiencies in any of the immobile nutrients. . Give them plain water for a while, they will be fine.

i'm interested in learning more about the nitrogen effect too.
 

 
 
This thread was calcium related, but the linked article talks about what happens if too much N is in the plants.
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/38782-interesting-calcium-article/

 

[scotchnaga85]

 
 
Yes. I zoomed in on pic two and the leaves are so dark green that I wouldn't be at all surprised if you started to see calcium deficiencies because of the excess nitrogen. When plants are getting a diet too rich in N, they tend to cut down on the amount of nutes and water they take in which could be causing the small pods as well as deficiencies in any of the immobile nutrients. . Give them plain water for a while, they will be fine.

 
 
This thread was calcium related, but the linked article talks about what happens if too much N is in the plants.
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/38782-interesting-calcium-article/
 
Thank you for the explanation... for the next few weeks they're on a water only diet now lol

 

[scotchnaga85]

I got a new fertiliser today, its a slow release one and unlike the last one its 7% Nitrate. My previous one was 24%.
this new one also has calcium, not something you normally get in fertiliser in shops over here. I don't think a lack of calcium is really and issue due to local tap water being very chalky .
 
One other thing I am noticing some of my leaves are paler and on my naga plants there are shades of light green patches on the leaves... I am thinking its nothing more then sunburn though due to the recent hot & very sunny weather.

 

[scotchnaga85]

Well I did an experiment with some interesting results.
 
I have 3 Savina plants and at the time of this thread  only 2 of them had pods. It was said I was giving them to much nitrate and this was why the pods where small. I stopped feeding all 3 plants.. and the pods where still small.
 
Out of the 2 plants that where originally podding , one them I thinned the leaves out more then the other, the 3rd plant that was only in flower and was never that bushy because it was slower then the others to come back into bud.
 
Results: The slow grower and the one i thinned the most leaves off have now all got numerous decent sized pods. My more bushy plant however is still struggling and only has one fair sized pod.
 
My conclusion is that the more leaves the plant has the smaller the pods will be.
 
I think the plant was putting energy and effort into maintaining excessive foliage and this resulted in less effort going into the pods resulting in smaller pods. The reason for the excessive foliage was most likely to the excessive nitrate (as mentioned by others).

 

[Trippa]

I am pretty sure a member here did an experiment on leaf trimming vs non a while back ... You might be able to find it in the search.

 

[scotchnaga85]

I am pretty sure a member here did an experiment on leaf trimming vs non a while back ... You might be able to find it in the search.

 
couldn't find it. Do you know what the results of the experiment where?

 

[Jamison]

To me it looks like they need some new shoes! They might just be rootbound.

 

[Dulac]

The first set of peppers are often screwy looking and stunted. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If there was too much nitrogen focusing on growth, I don't think you would get many pods. I could be wrong though.

 

To me it looks like they need some new shoes! They might just be rootbound.

That will definitely cause pods to be smaller. If you want smaller pods, you could force it by keeping them in a small container, heh.


Edit:

Very hot weather can also stunt growth.

 

[Dave2000]

What could have happened was by trimming leaves back you caused the plant to consume more nitrogen so the level it the soil sooner returned to a good ratio.  I haven't previously seen any correlation between a healthy overwintered plant with lots of leaves then having small pods due to it.
 
Foliage is where it gets the energy to grow stems, blooms, pods, and more leaves.  No energy is lost maintaining them, rather the only thing a lot of leaves will cost is water loss so a plant will droop, then completely drop leaves on its own if a persistent low soil moisture level is present.  Over a shorter term the underwatering while you were away could have been the cause if all these pods started during that period.
 
As for pods that started after they returned to a normal watering ration, if they were (would be) undersized (but how do you know until you wait longer to see how big they get?) that seems like it was a nutrient imbalance with too little of something besides nitrogen. 
 
Though they're repotted, those pots look a bit on the small side for a 2nd year plant.  What size are they?  I don't even try to grow chinense in less than 7 gallons of soil the first year and no less than 28 gallons the 2nd.  You can get OK results using less but then you have to watch the nute level and soil moisture more carefully and frequently.