No fruit on green peppers... why and what can I do to force bloom
Stacey Collins
13 years ago
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tree_oracle
13 years agojey_l
13 years agoRelated Discussions
Forced Bulbs in Water they bloomed nicely not what?
Comments (5)I plant mine immediately in the garden after they finish flowering because we don't have frozen ground. I find they bloom the next spring. There is no delay and they are not out of season so it must be something to do with different climates. However, the blooms are never as dense as the original indoor ones. They will come up every year thereafter. The paperwhites might bloom again if you lived in a frost free place where they grow outdoors in the normal course of things. All the hyacinths in this picture started life indoors in water....See MoreDo you do this to force flower and fruit production? Nurseries do
Comments (28)I think the main reason nurseries use a peat-based mix is to reduce weight for shipping. There's very little nutrient value in peat but it makes a great blotter for holding quantities of force-fed nutrients in an environment that bears little similarity either with a garden or with a home. If you are just buying 'colour spots' as some sort of living bouquet then the fact that the plant will become root-bound, run out of nutrients, become excessively thirsty, doesn't really matter to many because it was only ever intended to be temporary. As soon as I buy anything that's not a Sarracenia, planted up in peat, it is taken out and shifted to what is, for me, a 'regular' potting mix - one based on composted bark with the addition of pumice or quartz chips to increase drainage. I'll do this even with plants I intend for the garden because if the peat dries out it is extremely hard to rehydrate and the plant can drought to death in the midst of plenty. Too, it seems to encourage wicking if any of it is left above the soil. I prefer my plants to be sturdy to stand up to my climate (windy and wet - often). I don't want juicy and vulnerable. I do want a very active root mass for anchorage and food foraging. Peat doesn't doesn't do that once a plant is older, in my experience. Plants grown in a gardening environment are usually going to be treated 'unnaturally'. They'll be watered when it's dry and fed to produce more than would be 'natural' and pruned to balance production with replacement and renewal. 'Civilizing', I suppose. I agree on the Citrus and the Clivias. They're both inground items in this zone and, guess what, their roots roam - with no diminishing of their productivity....See MoreDo cool nights help bell or other pepper fruit flowering?
Comments (5)Well, it's pretty well established, as far as I know, that heat delays or prevents proper blossoming and fruit set on peppers and tomatos, so your cool nights probably are helping, as are your frequent rains. Now, here in Michigan, we have the opposite problem, it's been VERY cool, and heat lovers are sulking. Daytime temps have struggled to hit the 70 degree mark most days in May and the first half of June (high saturday, for example, was 64), and nights have been mostly in the 40's, a few 50's, and some nights in the 30's (including one night last week when it hit 32 in Port Huron, Michigan, about an hour northeast of me). I DEFINITELY think peppers like a lot of nutrients, you just have to be careful to balance out the nitrogen so that the don't just grow leaves. I would use something like a 20-20-20 at the minimum, if not something that is actually lower in N and higher in the other two....See MoreWhy aren't my peppers dark green
Comments (7)Yep. He did say plants, didn't he. Gotta read more carefully. If these are small seedlings, it can be difficult to get all the factors in perfect balance. The Pro Mix I use, which is wonderful stuff, has no nutrients added. That's good, because I don't want any until the seedlings have one or two sets of true leaves. I try to resist getting impatient and feeding heavily. It's better to err on the light side. It doesn't take a large amount of any mineral to overcome a deficiency. The text book pictures you see that illustrate various mineral deficiencies required careful preparation of the growing medium to almost totally exclude a given mineral. Otherwise the symptoms would not be obvious. It is important to remember that an excess of some minerals can interfere with a plants ability to make use of other minerals. A plant can suffer from a magnesium deficiency, for example, even when there is an abundance of magnesium in the soil when potassium is excessive. I've recently learned that urea based nitrogen can hinder seedling development. I don't understand it fully, but I do know that urea is a big component of the popular soluble plant foods. I have on hand a bag of calcium nitrate, so I'm using that, sparingly, on my seedlings now. They need some nitrogen for vegetative growth. Other nitrates can be used. Also, since my seed starting mix doesn't provide it, I add a little magnesium in the form of Epsom salts once the seedlings get started. Chlorophyll, which is the foundation of photosynthesis, has an atom of magnesium at the center of its molecule. So I figure I need to provide some magnesium too, sparingly of course, to make chlorophyll. Plants need some sulfur and Epsom salts (MgSO4) has that too. Controlling mineral concentrations in the tiny amounts of medium we use to grow seedlings is tricky. But I am not trying to raise them to maturity in that situation. So, if I can give them a reasonably good start, they will do fine when set out in the open ground, where the chemistry doesn't fluctuate so drastically. That's a long winded dissertation on my amateur thinking thinking about seedling nutrition. The highly educated horticulturalists who produce seedling by the millions do better than I. I bought a six pack of tomatoes yesterday that are a little huskier and have slightly darker color than mine. But I'm gaining on them. Jim...See Moreprairiemoon2 z6b MA
13 years agoStacey Collins
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13 years agoNHBabs z4b-5a NH
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13 years agoprairiemoon2 z6b MA
13 years agoNHBabs z4b-5a NH
13 years agomad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY)
13 years agoprairiemoon2 z6b MA
13 years agoNHBabs z4b-5a NH
13 years agoprairiemoon2 z6b MA
13 years agoStacey Collins
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