| Subject: |
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The American Tomato scare |
| Name: |
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J |
| Date Posted: |
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Aug 1, 08 - 4:29 PM |
| Email: |
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hilfy@earthlink.net |
| Message: |
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Hi Grant,
Yes, slowly taking this off-line, but since growing things are a part of the environment I'll answer you here. After all, growing plants scrub CO2 from the environment. How noble of you! It might be interesting to do a calculation of how much they scrub vs. how much O2 you scrub.
Oh my, I'd be surprised if they matured to pepper production point in that amount of soil. This variety is optimized for growing in pots but given that most pepper plants start producing peppers when they are about 1-1 1/2 FT in height I think you would want to transplant the 3 largest plants right now to a 1 gallon (~4 liter) pot for each. If you are into cheap ways to do it (maybe not, you're not that close to Yorkshire  ), you can cut up old milk jugs - they make great pots. That size pot is a bit big for now but should give it enough soil to support a plant that is mature enough to fruit. The scrappy runt plant can have a little more time in the pocket if it's in its own pocket - if it's not, just transplant it too. Typical transplant plant size I'm familiar with is between 4-8 inches in height. Our local hardware stores stock dozens of varieties of vegetable/herb plants in the spring in little cups that have about as much soil as your "pocket". These are sold for transplant; you don't grow them in the cup.
If all your plants are growing in one pocket, I would carefully cut the pocket open when the soil is still damp from watering, and gently use a stylus of some sort to separate the plants. Do the separation within the soil, don't grab the top of the plant and attempt to pull it away from the others. Try to leave each plant with its own little bit of soil for transfer to the big pot and try to disturb the roots as little as possible. Give it some water with the transplant, but not enough that it stays soaked and water regularly from then on. Good luck on your transplants. If you get any peppers you'll have to let me know how hot they are! I'd also be interested to know if the plants survived to fruit more than 1 year. I grow mine outside and the dead of summer here usually kills off the plants, so I have to grow them as annuals.
Cheers, J |
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