Pepper plants had a bad start-up...

General tips / questions on seeding & planting

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Elmigo
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A few months ago -admittedly it was a little too early and I was impatient- I've put some pepper seeds in the soil. Once sprouted they looked healthy, untill a few weeks later. All the leaves started getting this yellow haze over them (see photo) and they stopped growing despite consistent high temperatures and a bright spot near the sunny window.

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Immediately started to panic and bought some fertilizers to try something here and there. I figured that it was a sign of nitrogen deficiency. Apparently the soil I used was great for local plants, but a disaster for foreign plants that grow in different soil types. If anyone experiences the same thing, this is the solution!

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Bought the above natural fertilizers and used the left one, which is a nitrogen fertilizer. I sprinkled a little bit around all the pepper seedlings and within a week their yellow leaves turned into this rich, darker green (photo below). I figured this might be worth sharing as some plants can be quite difficult if the conditions or soil just isn't right for them. This saved them.

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There's a clear difference in color! By the way, it happened to all the different pepper varieties. Jalapeño, Cayenna, Bhut Jolokia...
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Tony Hague
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What was the compost ? Commercial peat free potting, homemade blend ?

I have a theory that some of the commercial potting composts contain so much only partially composted wood waste that once the initial nitrogen is used up, the continuing fungal decay of the wood causes nitrogen depletion. Hoof and horn works for me in my homemade blends.
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Geoff
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Good result. I'm with Tony on the theory, I make most of my own potting compost but feed with fish, blood and bone. Do you have the actual N:P:K figures for your three fertilisers?
Elmigo
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Tony Hague wrote:What was the compost ? Commercial peat free potting, homemade blend ?

It was indeed a commercial organic potting mix. What are some basic things I need to know about mixing my own soil? I already save compost material in buckets, including banana peels and organic material. Only natural garden waste, nothing else goes in there. No pine needles, etc... Do you use a meter to measure, say, soil PH and all that? How well does this work?

Geoff wrote:Do you have the actual N:P:K figures for your three fertilisers?

Excuse me, what exactly do you mean by N:P:K figures? It's the "balance numbers" like 10-10-15 fertilizer for example, right?

The regular fertilizer is an organic kitchen garden fertilizer I use for basically everything and it's actually a 10-10-15. Did not use it for the pepper plants untill I saw the leaves turning yellow. I mixed some of it with the nitrogen fertilizer, just a little bit of it.
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Tony Hague
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I don't mean to say there's a huge problem using the commercial peat free compost, just that I think I can see why you might need to feed more / sooner than the conventional advice.

I am trying to move away from buying in so much New Horizons this year, using instead sieved garden compost mixed 4:1 with medium vermiculite, and a handful of hoof and horn per barrowload mixed in (you can tell this is all very scientific :lol: ). My compost heap gets kitchen waste (citrus included) grass, corrugated cardboard, shredded shrub prunings and Christmas trees I collected, and wood ash from the stove. I guess it all balances out ok, it seems to work well enough for tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. The drawback is my heap is not hot enough to kill seeds, so I get quite a lot of "weeds" - mostly squash and tomato seedlings. Mildly irritating for potting, useless for seed sowing because I can't tell what's what.

Oh yes - my experience with the garden centre pH meters is that they do not work. The one I had always read acid - even in a paste of garden lime and water !
Elmigo
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Tony Hague wrote:my experience with the garden centre pH meters is that they do not work.


I knew it!

But christmas trees? Isn't this a recipe for perfect acidic blueberry soil? I try to remind myself to not put flowers in the compost too but I forget about it occasionally, then end up with lots of seeds sprouting in it too. Banana peels add lots of potassium to the compost mix, for cucumber plants that's great!
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Tony Hague
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But the woodburner ash has lots of potassium, in the form of potassium oxide. When wet, it forms potassium hydroxide, which is strongly alkaline. As I said, I think it must all balance out. I have some of the wet, universal indicator based soil testing kit, so maybe I could do a test.
Elmigo
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I might need to buy one too but I hear so many stories from people where those things just don't really work. Hope it's worth it!
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I use seaweed quite a bit which seems to work either as a soil feed or a foliar feed & my other fav is chicken manure, not the pellets but the flakey one which I find breaks down quicker & I am not digging up pellets at the end of season & you literally use the smallest amount. (I use 6X from 'A'). If you have access to the beach the seaweed is indeed not expensive but unsure of the rules on that over there, we can harvest what washes up above the tide line here but unsure of your rules.

You will get loads of other recommendations & it is a bit of a suck it & see thing, (not literally btw) :) It could be an interesting time for you getting an English education on fertiliser but there are well clever guys & girls on here who will break down fertiliser to soil need but go with the multi purpose options to keep costs down.
Love your cat btw - beautiful!
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johnlehman
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Very good result, each plant loves the sun, humidity and of course a lot of attention.
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