Have an interesting comparison between two Fresno plants started from seed at the exact same time! I potted most of my peppers outside about 6 weeks ago. Normally I would expect us to be well into the 60s regularly by that point, but we ended up having lots more low 50 evenings. I would have loved to wait longer to pot, but I felt that I had waited long enough and needed to get the plants out of their 4" pots.
* Plant 1 (left) is part of the group that was potted 6 weeks ago. It was exposed to low 50s quite a few times and was brought inside in the 40s. I covered when I could. These plants have not grown or produced flowers for the past 6 weeks despite growing very fast before that point.
* Plant 2 (right) was one of my leftovers that I just recently decided to keep. It was potted outside about a week ago, at which point it looked the same as plant 1. It remained in its 4" pot throughout the previous 6 weeks and was brought inside every time the temps were below 60. It has grown significantly in the past week and now looks very different from the group that was potted earlier!
So in this very small sample size, my experience was that it was more important to avoid the sub-60 temps than it was to get the plants into bigger pots, despite starting to get fairly rootbound. The larger moral of the story, however, is that I really didn't need to start seeds 6 weeks before last frost lol. Next year I'll wait longer and will hopefully be able to avoid slowing down growth so much! First year starting seedlings, lots to learn.
by violaturtle
1 Comment
Nice. Thank you for sharing.