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Waking up a "frozen" transplant?

T

Takanotsume

I saw a rather pristine Kung Pao pepper plant at the local garden supply, so I figured I'd grab it since I didn't have any spicy annuum varieties.
 
I potted it up into a five gallon pot from its tiny 4 inch with a mixture of mostly unbuffered coco coir and perlite with a touch of a worm castings and compost, but it's been over a week now and the plant hasn't shown any signs of growth nor deterioration. Not even the small peppers that had been forming on the plant have grown any, though most of the young leaves fell off not long after transplant which I assume to have been from transplant shock.
 
It's rather odd since all of my other plants only got stalled for maybe a couple days tops before the growth of leaves and pods continued.
 
What’s the day/night temperature? Did you break up the roots a bit?

Could be too cool to trigger much growth. Likewise, it could still be root bound.


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I actually didn't remember to loosen the roots, so that is a likely possibility. Not sure if I should dig it up and try to loosen it after it's been sitting in the pot so long, though.
 
The nights have been going down to high 60s at the lowest over here in Hawaii while the days top off at the low 90s, so I don't think that's an issue, especially since the latest seedlings are thriving.
 
This plant was already fruiting quite heavily when I got it, too, so I suppose that could be a factor, too.
 
Though I'm starting to think there might also be something wrong with the soil as some amaranth seedlings I have in the stuff aren't growing despite those normally shooting up like weeds.
 
I see this a lot when I transplant to a much larger container or into the ground. Likely what DontPanic mentioned with root growth. Could be a good idea to pinch off the peppers and buds already on the plant so it can focus its energy on vegetative growth. 
 
Whenever I transplant from small containers to both larger containers and into the ground, the ones in the container always grow much faster at first however by fruiting time the ground plants are much much larger. 
 
I decided to dig up the plant today, and as some suspected it looked rather rootbound and almost no root growth had taken place after about two weeks.
 
I hosed away most of the soil, untangled the roots, then planted it back in the pot so hopefully it picks up from here.
 
Idk how much compostand worm poop you used, but give it some nutes maybe? Fish fertilizer should get it going
 
Well, it's been over a month now, and the plant's health has only degraded since then, as it still hasn't put out any new foliage and is now dropping leaves. The peppers took forever to ripen to red, but now I've harvested them all.
 
I put a good amount of worm castings and compost into the mixture (About 10% of the total mixture each), so I'm unsure of why it\s not doing well.
 
Was considering giving it some CNS Grow fertilizer, as that previously "woke up" some coco coir plants that had been stuck and were refusing to grow.
 
Ah man, that's a shame. Hopefully at this point you're not overfeeding it... I assume you're using a soil mix you've used before, so you know it drains well enough for peppers?
 
It tends to need water at least once a week (Weather has been insanely variable lately with cloudy, rainy, and sunny days scattered about) and I've only been watering when it visibly starts drooping as I suspect I've been overwatering most of my plants by following the "Water when the top two inches are dry" rule.
 
One of my aji panca plants died off recently and when I checked its roots while some green remained on it, the entire system was brown and spindly with not a white, fuzzy root to be around anywhere, so I suspect that overwatering was the cause.
 
Most recent update: Plant looks dumpier then ever, but it finally started to put out new foliage after I watered it with worm tea, so it seems like the soil was just lacking in...something it needed to get going.
 
Hopefully it can still recover...though the mites are likely to going try to stop that as per usual.
 
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