Re: [gardeners] Re: pepper plant size
Thomas Giannou (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sat, 17 Oct 1998 11:22:34 -0700
I am going to strive to keep that plant alive this winter and plant it when
the sun warms the ground next year. It seems to have a definite cycle to
it. It was about a foot high when I got four peppers off the plant. It
has grown about 2 inches in 15 days since I brought it into the house. It
took two months to get the first 4 peppers to mature. And it is taking
about the same length of time for this second crop. After the first crop,
it grew another foot and a half and then formed blossoms and the new peppers
for the second crop. When I brought it in, new blossoms were still forming
and I noticed a lot were being lost because of that first frost. I took a
little paint brush and went from blossom to blossom to polinate the flowers.
Some of those are part of the 15 green bell peppers that are on the plant
now.
I used a pen and poked some holes around the outside edge of the pot into
the soil and dropped some Biosol fertilizer (6-1-3) into those holes and the
plant seems to be responding well to that. That fertilizer is perfect for
mycorrhiza and won't harm the symbiotic relationship and won't overpower the
plant with phosphorus. With mycorrhiza fungi present, a plant can absorb
four times the phosphorus and plants will burn if you use a fertilizer that
has a number above 1% in it. I tried some fish pellet fertilizer 8-5-1 on
my Raspberries which were inoculated with mycorrhiza and my best plant died
out. Several other plants had a lot of yellowing in their lower leaves...
I learned the hard way on that one.
If this pepper plant continues on through the winter, I should, as you say,
be able to put it back outside. I should get a larger pot for it so as to
include enough room for the root system. If I could get enough room in a
large enough pot, and if I could feed it adequately I might be able to just
keep it in the pot outside next year and bring it in before the frost.
Wouldn't that be a blast if I could get this thing up to 5 or 6 feet and
have 40 or 50 big green bell peppers on it?
At the rate it's going, if it goes into a growth spurt after I harvest these
peppers, then it will be another two or three feet higher in two months. I
should expect to get at least another crop of peppers off this plant by next
spring if it all holds together like this. Hmmm... does sustainable
agriculture come to mind?
I wonder if I could do a similar thing with tomato plants?
Best Regards,
Thomas Giannou