Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Peppers Progress and Hardening off Plants

First I wanted to post an image for those of you who are curious about how the peppers are doing. It's been another 2 weeks since I last posted about my pepper seedlings that were turning yellow with purple spots.


I haven't done much of anything since transplanting the remaining peppers. I let the soil dry out before bottom watering with non-chlorinated water. I haven't fed them for 2 weeks, so today I gave them some liquid kelp before setting them out onto the porch to harden off.

As you can see they are growing nicely and have regained their leaves and green color! They're not as full as they normally would be but I'm very happy with the progress that they've made.


The plant on the bottom right in the above image is a pepper that was planted 3 weeks later and did not have any problems. You can see that it's fuller, darker green and almost the same size as the "problem" plants.

The 10 day weather forecast is looking great for planting with temperatures in the 70's during the day and 50's at night. But the peppers will not go in the ground for another couple of weeks. They'll spend their time on the front porch and sun porch hardening off until then. 

Today I also started to harden off some other plants. Here are the eggplants:


There are 7 total, the 4 smaller ones are toward the back, hidden by the larger ones.

Here are the amaranth, cucumbers and zinnias:


And some petunias and lettuce that are ready to be planted:


Moving all of these plants outside will make a lot more room under the grow lights. Still inside are squash, melons, sunflowers, more herbs, lettuce, zinnias and amaranth.

This weekend I'm hoping to plant the larger tomato plants, but it depends on the forecast. If the temperatures remain in the 50's at night I'll go for it. If after planting the temperature drops lower  I'll cover them with a row cover. Some of the plants are getting so big that they really need to be in the ground soon.



6 comments:

  1. Peppers look fabulous! And those egplants are really catching up on size too :)

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    1. Thanks Jenny, hopefully I can plant soon, my porch looks like a jungle ;)

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  2. Wow, your plants all look fantastic. I am having the same trouble with my pepper seedlings, but tomato and eggplant are not looking good either. I don't think I have done anything different from any other year but they just look horrible. I am going to repot and fertilize this weekend and see what happens. I sure hope mine can bounce back like yours did. Thanks for these great posts and info.

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    1. Good luck with your plants Bethany, I hope they recover! Don't give up if some of the leaves dry up and fall off at first, as long as you see new growth on top you should be okay.

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  3. Everything looks better than what I could buy at a greenhouse! Great job. The two cucumbers I bought from a greenhouse look nothing like your beautiful plants. I'm hoping they start looking better this week with the weather that has been forcasted.

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    1. Thanks! Everything seemed to go well this year except I likely will start seeds 2 weeks later next year. The plants are much easier to manage when they're small. best of luck with your seedlings :) There's still plenty of time for them to grow.

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