Why Are My Plants Not Growing? Stunted Pepper Plants - Pepper Geek

hey there welcome back to pepper geek in today's video i'll be discussing stunted pepper plants so everything was going well and all of a sudden your plants don't seem to be growing as quickly as they were or they otherwise seem to be stunted so what could be going on well there are a lot of possible reasons and i'll be going through many of them today but first check out our other channel geeky greenhouse we just posted our first video in a while and it's all about keeping rabbits and deer and rodents out of your garden space so if you have an outdoor space it's a really informative video and you can expect a lot more from geeky greenhouse this year so go subscribe and watch that video in the description below okay so back to stunted peppers the first thing i want to discuss is that peppers grow very slowly especially early in their life so after your seedling sprout the first two or three weeks are very uneventful and it's easy to start thinking that your plants aren't growing just because they grow so slowly now after two or three weeks they should be transplanted and they will really accelerate growth and start growing a lot more quickly once they have a more established root system and more soil space and more foliage to photosynthesize and create energy for growth but aside from the fact that peppers grow slowly there are some things that could go wrong that might cause stunting and the first i want to talk about is lighting we always recommend using grow lights while your plants are indoors but if you don't have grow lights and you're relying on the sun through a sunny window a south facing window then your plants are going to grow even slower early on and that might make it seem like they're stunted so our recommendation is to definitely use a grow light if you're growing peppers from seed indoors your plants will be much more sturdy your leaves will be more hardy when it comes time to move outside next up is fertilizer we typically recommend starting your seeds in a seed starter mix which does not have any nutrients so you'll have to use some form of fertilizer so if you're using a seed starter mix but you haven't fertilized that could definitely be the reason that your plants are stunted they'll just sort of get to a certain size and then stop growing because there aren't any nutrients left for the plant to grow you could definitely just use a normal potting mix that does have nutrients mixed in so you don't have to think about fertilizing you can just use your normal potting soil and the plants will have the nutrients from the very start the only reason we like to use a seed starter mix is because it's very fluffy there are very few large particles and it offers the perfect environment not only for the seed to sprout but also for the early root system to get established another common reason for stunted pepper plants is cold temperatures peppers really don't like cold temperatures they are not native to a place where winter happens so they can't withstand freezing temperatures and here's a good example we brought this jalapeno plant outside and transplanted it into our garden much too early probably a month month and a half too early for our location temperatures are still getting into the 30s fahrenheit and it's very tempting to bring your plants out when you have 70 degree weather outside but you really need to look at the nighttime temperatures and how low they're dipping overnight we usually wait until the temperature is around 55 degrees fahrenheit consistently which is after the last frost date so one or two weeks after the last frost date is usually when we'll bring our plants outside put them into the ground permanently cold weather will cause stunted plants it will eventually cause leaves to turn yellow and start falling off and sort of putting the plant into hibernation mode and if your plant happens to experience a frost it can kill the plant and next up is the container size or the need to transplant your seedlings and these are very badly in need of transplanting and we just haven't gotten around to it but of course eventually your seedlings are going to have to move out of these tiny little cells and into a larger pot like this three and a half inch pot here and then eventually out of this again into a final container like this five gallon grow bag or into the ground now if you wait too long this is the perfect example of what can happen these are the same plant variety planted on the same day and this one has yet to been transplanted and this one was transplanted about a week ago so just a week's worth of growth and you can see a major difference here this plant is continuing to make progress and this one is stunted the reason for this should be obvious but the root system has nowhere else to grow this plant is in the process of becoming root bound the roots are just going to grow around in circles uh entangling the root system and potentially leading to further stunting when we go to bring this outside into the ground by the way these plants are from our patreon where we're growing plants together with you so if you're interested in seeing more of the progress of these plants as they continue to grow go check out our patreon in the link down below another similar topic that could lead to stunted growth is transplant shock so if your plants are in one environment and then suddenly you bring them to a place where the environment is totally different such as going from indoors to outdoors into the sun without giving a proper transition period or hardening them off the plants can become stunted they can shut down they can lose their leaves and it can take some time for the plant to recover which is why it's really important to harden off your pepper plants or adjust them to those outdoor conditions and we have a video all about hardening off which i'll link to down below now if you've hardened off properly and you put your plants outside and they seem to be stunted there's the possibility that you have compacted soil it's less likely than transplant shock but essentially if your soil isn't covered or you don't have plants growing in the soil or if you walk all over your soil especially when it's wet the soil can sort of compress making it really hard for the roots to expand down into the soil and basically the roots are still confined to that small space that they were in before because the roots just can't expand so the solution there is to loosen up the soil if you have compacted soil you're just going to have to go in there with a fork or you can till but we like using a fork and just digging down and sort of loosening up the soil going down at least eight or ten inches in addition to that you can put some compost on the surface and do that every year and definitely avoid walking on your garden beds for plants that are outside already and they seem to be stunted there's the possibility that they're competing with weeds so we always mulch around our plants even in potted plants although it doesn't offer much benefit but especially in ground use straw or leaf mulch or lawn clippings things like that to mulch around your plants and suppress those weeds keep them at bay and if you have established weeds already pull them up and make sure you're getting those root systems out so they don't continue to come back another possible cause of stunted plants is ph imbalance and we haven't talked too much about ph on the channel because we just don't really run into issues with it here because garden soil is typically ph balanced and most ground soil especially where we live in new england is in the perfect zone to grow peppers that zone is somewhere between 6 and 7 ph but you can fall outside of that range and still grow peppers your ph is going to need to be significantly out of whack to really see damaging results or stunted growth but essentially what happens in that case is your plants can't uptake the nutrients even if the nutrients are present in the soil the ph imbalance locks out those nutrients from the root system and you'll start to see signs of nutrient deficiency so if you're feeding your plant it has plenty of nutrients you know the nutrients are there then maybe you want to check ph and the best way to check ph is to send away a sample and get your soil tested that's really the most reliable way to do it but you should also check the ph of your water if you're watering with a hose you know you have either groundwater or you have public water the ph of treated water can be pretty high in some cases and rain water can be actually pretty acidic so it's a good idea to check the water that's actually watering your plants and lastly i want to talk about pest damage if you have a pest problem it can be hard to know without getting really close in there especially if you don't have good eyesight up close you're gonna want some sort of magnifying glass or maybe even just using your phone but if you have thrips or aphids or white flies or spider mites all of them can cause stunted plant growth because they tend to go after the youngest leaves those leaves that are just starting to butt out they'll be feeding from that point which usually causes those leaves to become misshapen you'll see sort of like curling leaves where newer leaves are starting to grow and if this is happening indoors then it's a pretty major problem that you're going to have to deal with swiftly if you want your plants to get back on track we use a number of products if we have these issues we've had thrips we've had aphids indoors it's no fun but we have used insecticidal soap with success you just want to make sure that you shut off your grow lights when you're spraying you know spray the plants top and bottom keep the lights off until they're completely dried because a lot of those soaps and especially anything that contains isopropyl alcohol can cause the leaves to burn if they're wet when the lights are still on them if your plants are outside i would recommend taking a different route first and seeing if you can get some beneficial insects into your garden to deal with the pest problem for you because spraying outside those insecticidal soaps are going to kill beneficial insects too so plant some flowers watch our video about companion planting with peppers and try to get those good bugs in to help you there are other reasons that your plants might be stunted so go check out our article on pepper geek which is a little bit more thorough there are a few more reasons that i didn't discuss in this video i'll leave a link to that down below and don't forget to check out geeky greenhouse the link is down in the description below we have a new video over there right now go watch it subscribe to geekygreenhouse and we'll see you over there and i hope this video has been helpful if you've had stunted pepper plants and you got to the bottom of it and i didn't talk about it here feel free to share that in the comments below we're always learning and trying to grow better peppers every year thanks for watching pepper geek and i'll see you next time

Channel: Pepper Geek

Views: 195,010

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Id: UMPtQ7PNRss

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022