When do you start feeding Peppers?

[donnakebab]

Here's a photo of one of my sweet peppers from last year, it has those brown patches that you mentioned...

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I'm no expert but looks fine to me. I'm new to growing peppers and chillies so I'd be pretty happy to have something growing like that.

[The Large One]

I have one scotch bonnet pepper plant that is older than my sweet peppers but appears to have crinkly leaves which I read somewhere is a sign of calcium or magnesium deficiancy, and they reccommend always using bonemeal to pot peppers.

Coluld also be aphids so check for signs of the little blighters

Also my peppers are different sizes. Three of them have grown several sets of true leaves and really coming along, but others only have 1-2 sets and are several inches shorter.

i'd say mother nature in action, i too have plants which have been sown the same time, same conditions and same compost etc which look totally different plants.
would suggest potting on the ones grouped together

I recently transplanted some of them into larger pots that are about 11-12 inches across and about the same depth. Will this be as big as I ever need for them?

thats a great finish size pot but i was always told to pot up in stages to allow the roots to reach the sides and bottom of the pot first
9cm - 1 litre - 5 litre - 10 litre is the way i will be doing it this year
most of mine will stay in 5 litres but some i want to try to get big so putting in 10 litres

[Brentalist]

hi essexrob

I use chillifocus instead of tomarite for hot peppers and that seems to keep them healthy. in terms of pots I was told and follow the rule of keeping them almost pot bound so only potting them up when you really have to , for small ornamentals I think a 1-2 litre is fine, the biggest I used was a 5 litre. what I noticed when I put them all in the compost at the end of the season was that very few had roots that reached the edge of 2-3 litre pots. so this year I ma being really mean and not moving them unless they are busrting out. saves lots of time as well!

[mcuk]

I'm no expert but looks fine to me. I'm new to growing peppers and chillies so I'd be pretty happy to have something growing like that.

Thanks, though I was answering the previous post, but forgot to quote it.

In relation is ItsEssexRob's question about different rates of growth: there's different species of pepper, each with their own traits, and within those, there are different varieties.

[ItsEssexRob]

One other thing. Yesterday I accidently spilt washing up liquid ( tescos antibacterial) over one of my plants unfortunately one of my more established one. I tried to rinse some of it off but was pretty thick.

Today I noticed 2 of the new shoot leaves have died and theres some brown patches on the big leaves.

Is this down to that? Should it survive? Bit worried about the baby leaves dying.

[mcuk]

Soaps are designed to absorb and/or burn oil from the surface of objects, so if it wasn't removed quickly then it probably caused some superficial damage. Those new leaves are most vulnerable. If they are badly damaged then I would remove the new leaves and that will hopefully encourage the plant to bush out a bit. Keep the old leaves for now.

If you got any washing up liquid on the soil then make sure to flush it out with lots of water, let it dry because chillis don't like soaking soil, then give it some plant food or new compost to replace the nutrients that were flushed out.

[MyLifeWithAndrew]

I found this link somewhere on the board which is full of information.
(Thanks to whomever posted it first)
Perhaps it will be of some help:
chilli pepper growing guides

[Gazz666]

I've never fed mine before the flowers, but I'm trying it this year feeding every two weeks with Miracle grow and I can see a marked difference, hopefully it's not going to restrict flower formation. When they flower, I'll feed with Tomorite, or shop's own version, or my own comfrey tea.

I was chatting to my neighbour the other day, he is a good gardener and has been at it for yrs, he saw my plants in my little GH, all around 3-4 inches and are starting to develop thier first or second set of adult leaves, he told me to start feeding them now once a week.

I didnt use Tom feed as it states to use it once the plants have started to flower so I started using miracle grow, it seems to be doing the job, the ones in the green house are slowly getting there but thats because the weather is pants but the ones in the house are shooting up.

Toms, Chillies, Bell Peppers and Cucumber

[taff]

my fsather feeds everything no matter how big or how small. His tomatoes are always twice the size of mine, but I console myself that mine are organic
He feeds regularly with phostrogen, no matter how small the plants. It certainly seems to work.