pepper update, June 26, part one

It's been... uh... two months since I posted any pepper pictures? Wow. Where DOES the time go?

Anyway, I repotted my first batch about three weeks ago (except for the one that couldn't break its own seed case and whose cotyledons I accidentally cut in half while freeing it) and moved them out onto my back porch. They suffered some kind of leaf blight in their first week outdoors, but I sprayed them with a general purpose insecticide/miticide/fungicide and they're all doing better now, though obviously the ones least affected by the blight are bigger and more mature than their compatriots.

In fact, a couple of them already have buds and I expect flowers by next weekend. Closeups to follow in my next post!

The second and third batches of peppers didn't grow quite as vibrantly as the first batch, which I think is because they were in smaller seedling pots and had no room to stretch their roots. But today I got around to transplanting them as well, including the pepper with the mutilated cotyledons and the one whose cotyledons failed to separate properly. I spritzed them all very lightly with insecticide, which I fully expect to get washed away by Saturday's predicted rain, but maybe that will stave off the leaf blight issue for this cohort.

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Okay, so, you probably noticed there are no actual pictures in this post! That is because I'm tired of my embedded image links breaking EVERY TIME Tumblr does some kind of "upgrade," so from now on I'm just going to link to the relevant Tumblr post that contains the photos.

Which in this case is THIS POST RIGHT HERE. Click on the photos to embiggen them. :-)

pepper update, June 26, part two

And here are some individual pepper plants! The first is the poor plant that got hit most dramatically by the leaf blight I mentioned in my previous post. (Don't worry; it survived!)

The second is the biggest and healthiest of my first batch of peppers, gearing itself up to bloom. I fully expect blossoms by next weekend. :D

Then we have my two problem children, both of which failed to properly split their seed coats back when they first pushed up through the dirt. I rescued the first, but accidentally halved its cotyledons in the process and the resulting shock (and loss of photosynthetic power, since the mutilated cotyledons did not grow much past their initial size) slowed its subsequent development by about two weeks. Also, it kind of sprawled outward rather than aiming upward once it finally started to grow again. Hopefully fresh air and 360-degree sunlight will agree with it.

The second problem child had defective cotyledons that failed to separate. Since the stem and true leaves are supposed to grow from BETWEEN the cotyledons, this presented it with a bit of a conundrum. After some heavy thought, it sprouted a single leaf at a sideways angle, and now, after another bout of heavy problem-solving, it's finally sprouting a pair of true leaves off the side of that first leaf -- that's the little blurry green blotch in the center of the V-shape made by the stems -- and ignoring the cotyledons as a bad path. I am cheering it on!

And HERE IS THE LINK TO THE PICTURES, yay!