Feed them, after the 1st couple sets of true leaves they are good to go.

Thank you guys. I appreciate the advice! At this stage in their young lives, and with the paleness, was I correct in assuming I should get some nitrogen rich fert in there? Or what fert route would you recommend?

Foliage pro by dyna gro is a great all around fert. That's what I use for all of my containers. Also I would start to plan to pot up pretty soon.

I am 100% organic in ground but in containers your media is essentially inert so organics don't work.

I would start out with light fertilizing. Maybe half strength. Getting them some good unfiltered sunlight will help as well. Make sure you introduce them to the sun and wind gradually though. This is called "hardening them off".

Also, you can use a wooden stick in the soil to determine how wet or dry your soil is. And when watering you can try bottom watering so the soil only absorbs the water it needs. +1 on Dyna grow foliage pro, i use it once a week to all my vegetables. Has pretty much all the nutrients covered if you are a casual gardener.

I am active on the citrus forum and we all use Osmocote plus which is a control released fertilizer in our container mixes. This year I included it in all of my container peppers at potting up time and they have grown like gangbusters, with better vigor than ever.

I will be using it in every container moving forwards. I don't think it is required but sometimes I am lazy about fertilizing with the foliage pro so having the CRF in every pot has helped with consistent feeding

Just a thought! I have been meaning to ask if anyone else uses it.

I use Osmocote in my containers as well. I don't start adding any additional ferts for at least a month after I pot out for the summer. I would probably wait longer but I use fast draining mix.

Yeah I read the advice about waiting to fertilize transplanted seedlings. I didn't and only saw positives, do you know the logic on waiting esox?

This was the first year with the CRF and I noticed a big difference in seedling vigor. But we also had a very early hot spring so that must have helped too.

My main reason is that most potting soils have built in nutrients so adding more right away could lead to an overload, especially with a plant stressed by the transplant.

That makes sense, I use a promix type media so there isn't any nutrient in there.

I often wonder about "transplant shock" with young seedlings. In 9 seasons of pretty intensive growing and planting of all types of veg I have never experienced it. Even with squash which is supposed to be so finicky. Until this summer when I killed my fave citrus potting up, but it had other stuff going on I think.

I guess the shock is proportional to how much the roots are disturbed. I think I noticed somewhat of a correlation when up-potting peppers. When slightly root-bound or on the verge, transplant is often an easy pull-out and drop-in and my plants barely seem to notice it.

Yes, if the root structure is large and strong, the transplant goes off without any noticeable stumble. However, when I have badly root bound plants, I always "tease" the root ball. Otherwise, the roots have a tough time breaking out of the "ball". If you buy a potted tree at a nursery, they almost always are root bound in the small pots and they usually come with instructions to break up the root ball before transplanting. Some even say to use a box cutter or knife the score the root ball vertically on three or 4 side up to an inch deep.

Feeding at this age also results in that kind of colour on the leaves

You should add some garden soil to your next soil mix especially if you use Coco coir

Also if you cut the leaves they will do this which is perfect for scorpion plants

Asses environmental factors.

Get some mycorrhiza it enables the roots to absorb up to 6x more nutrients as it's fungi that feed the plant by embedding into the roots in exchange for sugars, etc.