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in-ground First time planting in the ground (2nd year growing) Issues

Helldozer

Helldozer

Hey all,

This is my first year growing in the ground, and my second year growing peppers. I just planted these guys out about 3 weeks ago. I was a little impatient and didn't completely harden them off first. So, they did get a little stressed and burned.

That said, I think I may be having other issues. Here are some photos:





And on this last one, you can see some brown areas. I'm seeing more of that on other plants too. I don't have a photo of the underside, but I have some very small bubbles around the main veins. My guess is edema. They started showing that when I had them indoors, about two weeks before I was able to get them planted outside.



My little farm feels like a mess right now. I've seen a couple of aphids on other plants, a couple of white flies, some holes chewed in the middle of leaves on a couple of plants, and some red looking little mites.....DOOOD! I'm just waiting for it to start raining frogs. None of these are in large amounts...just a couple have been seen.

With all of this said, at the base of most of my plants I'm seeing new branches and leaves coming in....looking pretty healthy. Go figure.

Another note: Ground was mainly clay and I amended it with yard compost from the city. Also, up to this point they have not been fertilized.
 
Yeah, the plants looked like they have been attacked by pests. Bummer!
Looks like this will be a great learning experience for you. I noted previous problems and or mistakes in my grow log book. So ut reminds me of what not to do or what to do! Have you treated the plants for pests yet?
You should try to lightly feed the plant that hasnt been fed. Good idea to add the compost!!!
 
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As megahot said it can be pests, but I never had pests so I can't tell.

But, I've only one experience in planting peppers in clay soil (my garden is composed of clay & sand) : it's bad ! Peppers seems to hate it !

I don't know for yours, but where I leave the soil is very wet and the clay keep the water. So basically my poor Chinense were growing in some clay, sandy, wet, no nutrient soil .... and they looked exactly like yours ...
 
I added about 4 cu. yds. of compost to my 25 ft x 35 ft yard. and tilled it in about 6 to 8 inches. Maybe the soil is just lacking nutrients? A couple of days ago, before these photos, I added a cup of undiluted compost/manure tea to each plant. Not sure if that will help, or if I need to add fertilizer, and/or do something about pests. Last year it seemed like I could get most of them off my plants by hosing the plants up top. They pretty much stayed away after that. However I was growing in containers on the patio.
 
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They look a whole lot like my super hots look right now, Rick, and my plants are fine.

Just about all of it I attribute to a whole lot of nutrients and a little sunburn. Don't add any more ferts...If you start to see some hard drooping you might want to flush the soil a little with fresh water, but honestly, I believe your plants are fine.

Gary Montcalm
 
Not really...It's hard to use too much compost, unless it's just pure raw manure...I would just watch for signs of your plants getting too "hot" with the nitrogen...I believe you mentioned in your FB thread that you had given them a pretty stout bump with compost tea only 2 or 3 days ago...Bear in mind that it can take up to two weeks before you see any effect at all from your fert additions...If you get impatient and add more before then it's real easy to burn them up.

I tell you this from brutal experience only last summer...
 
Okay, thanks. I made the compost/manure tea because they looked so sad. :) Before that, I had fed them with a diluted dose of ferts or "frets", when they were indoors well over a month ago.

Do you think the tea should be good food?

This is what I made my tea from:

10 cups of steer/compost manure (home depot)
4 cups of chicken (fully composted) (lowes)
2 cups of worm castings
molasses

I'll sit tight and see what happens.
 
Could you post a pic of your soil ? I mean take a spade, plow the soil a little and then take a pic. Looking at your first pics you soil look like mine (heavy clay, dense & wet).

Don't worry too much about over-fert. I'm a over-fert guy, my pepper don't like it too much (N makes my leaves too green and so on), but my peppers don't look like that.
 
sicman said:
broad mites
Click to expand...

That was my first thought as well, but a calcium deficiency seems to have a similar look to the leaves with all the bumps and leaf curl. I posted an article in a thread recently that suggested high amounts of other ferts slow down the plants consumption of water because there is such an overabundance of nitrogen and therefore they can't uptake the right amount of calcium. Seems to make sense, but I haven't seen an independent article backing it up.

Helldozer, I would think about spraying for broad mites, cutting down on the ferts and adding a little extra calcium to your water. Either buy Cal-mag or drop a couple Tums in your water.

Here is the link to the thread I started a couple of weeks ago.

http://thehotpepper.com/topic/38782-interesting-calcium-article/
 
Thanks Jeff. I do have some Cal-mag. I haven't given them any since they were indoors...and even then that was about 1 to 2 months ago. Could this also be from them being in clay? Maybe the soil isn't draining well enough. That said, they were hurting for water after a hot day or two...because they were wilted. Also, if I pour water on top of the soil, it drains really fast...soooo, maybe it isn't from the clay.
 
PHB said:
Could you post a pic of your soil ? I mean take a spade, plow the soil a little and then take a pic. Looking at your first pics you soil look like mine (heavy clay, dense & wet).

Don't worry too much about over-fert. I'm a over-fert guy, my pepper don't like it too much (N makes my leaves too green and so on), but my peppers don't look like that.
Click to expand...

Bonjour PHB! The native soil in my home garden is almost pure clay....Beginning in 2010, I built tall beds with the hard, sticky clay and plenty of hardwood chips, a method I learned from this excellent long-term study by a Laval University team:

https://dl.dropboxus...mieux_Paper.pdf

Here is a photo the plants growing last year in my clay-and-wood-chips beds:

Umba.jpg
 
Wow, nice looking plants there Gary. :) That's just with wood chips??? Dang. I'm sure you've seen the amount of compost I added to my yard in FB, so I should be fine then. I'm guessing it will take a few years to get some REALLY GOOD soil. I plan on planting a cover crop of legumes in the off-season and then till them in each year.
 
Thanks Rick! (By the way, that's a panorama shot I took with my iPhone.)Yes, just wood chips, and the native stiff, dark clay, almost like baker's chocolate. The only plants that seems to thrive in it are pecan trees and weeds. The first year I worked in about the same amount of hardwood chips as the clay, building up the beds about 12 inches or so. In the first year I also added some Osmocote 14-14-14 to counteract the nitrogen tie-up caused by the decaying wood. On top of the beds goes a 3-to-4 inch thick mulch layer of hardwood chips. Those beds, at the time the photo was snapped, were in their third year, so the soil was nice and mature, needing very little amendment.

Sorry to hijack your thread, but I thought you might want to see this little vid featuring the beds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0txakuCjGVg
 
Wow again! No worries, you aren't hijacking. Those plants are beautiful. Now, are those overwintered? They look pretty darn big and established. So, these plants looked the same as mine the first year?
 
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