I have a community pot of cayenne type peppers that I'll need to prick out soon and plant into grow pots. When is the best time to do it? With the seed leaves,or after the first real leaves form?
May want to change the title to "pick"
With that many I'd do it right now, leave a few where they are to then slay all but the strongest. If you leave them too long, their roots will mingle and make the process more difficult and trying on the seedlings.
Seedlings that have just started tend to have a longer single root that is easy to transplant, while disturbing it can encourage more side roots to grow.
I have a community pot of cayenne type peppers that I'll need to prick out soon and plant into grow pots. When is the best time to do it? With the seed leaves,or after the first real leaves form?
^ Growing too many plants in a pot means they compete for nutrients and sun, so it takes each longer to reach maturity and you end up with less fruit.
^^ In the wild one doesn't have maximum fruit production. We don't actually want to do what mother nature does in the wild, that would include disease, damaging wind, drought, being eaten by animals or insects, etc. If the wild worked we'd just direct seed in the dirt and forget about them for a few months. I suppose my point is these peppers would already be growing wild everywhere as a dominant indigenous species and would not need started by humans if it weren't for factors in the particular environment that are sub-optimal.
There's a reason people don't grow a large # of plants in a small pot, it doesn't work as well except where the yield is the leaves themselves as with herbs or similar. It may not seem to make a large difference at first but as they grow larger and larger it matters more and more.
It's not just about nutrient feeding, they will have overlapping leaves and all grow slower, putting energy into leaves that don't receive as much sun since they overlap, and wasting more energy on tall stems trying to complete with the other plants around them for more sun, ultimately setting out fewer blooms later and splitting nodes for new pepper sites slower.
I guess that's really over time what I ended up doing....
Here are some pics of .... "lets see what happens if you plant a bunch of seeds in the ground"
Top view of one area of the garden:
Here's a cayenne waiting to turn
Now I didn't do this will all,just this area,like I said just to see what happens LOL
Crappy quality,not enough detail,but you get the point
Me being new,I usually like to see,hold,touch,and experience whatever it is. Yes I can read all day,and night.For me personally it's the hands on approach that helps me retain,and maintain.
Keep us updated how it works out greenie!!!