Stunted Pepper Plants?

[cruisin_psu]

I'm growing Serrano and a Golden Cal Wonder which both appear to be a bit stunted (I think?). Meanwhile I have a Hungarian Wax (not pictured) that is growing steadily and already harvested a couple peppers). The Cal Wonder is especially short and doesn't show much growth after ~2 weeks. Am I being impatient? Should it be taller? The serrano is flowering (which seems to be a good sign) but the leaves are a bit curled and it looks spindly. I am using an organic potting mix, watering 1-2x/wk in morning, and have mixed in fish/seaweed fertilizer to the water in each of the past 2 weekends.

Hopefully the pictures can tell the story better:

Golden Cal Wonder - a short little guy..


Serrano (definitely the better of the two):

[AnnaIkona]

Have you recently transplanted it? I think that the pepper is simply being a little "stressed" after the transplant and doesn't want to grow quite yet.

Different varieties mature and start growing at different times after transplanting.

Peppers don't need much nitrogen so if I were you, I wouldn't fertilize them.

This can also happen due to cold wheather. Each pepper variety tolerates cold differently. I think it will start growing again once the temperatures rise and the night won't be too cold.

Good luck

[cruisin_psu]

I transplanted them ~2 weeks ago. I hope you are right that it is just taking its time to grow

The fertilizer I am using is only a 1-2-1 concentration.. so pretty mild. I won't overdo it.

Thanks for the good luck I will update this thread after some time...

[pepperhead212]

My peppers, as well as many other plants are way behind this year, due to a very cool May - coolest for 13 years, until we had our first heat wave last week! LOL I didn't realize how far behind, until I looked up a photo of a variety from last year, and saw these things double the size in a bunch of 6-5-15 photos! Yet this heat wave gave them a real fast boost. Hopefully, you'll get the same.

[AnnaIkona]

Yup, you're right. One of my peppers was in the shade and it barely grew and the other was getting full sun, and was thriving. So I swapped them and both grow fine now

[MOFishin]

My peppers seem to have been stunted/hurt by this year's weather too. I'm bummed too, because I planted a lot of different ones, and they all seem to have been affected, to varying degrees.

[cruisin_psu]

Just an update - my sweet pepper is still super runty! It has bushed up a tad, but has hardly gained any height. On the plus side, I have just noticed some blossoms in the past couple days. It is just the smallest sweet pepper I've ever seen. Possibly the weather has stunted it. Photo update at next post.

The serano on the other hand, while a bit spindly, is chugging away making nice little peppers. We've harvested a few and they're good. I was expecting hotter, but they're nice.

[rainbowgardener]

Bell peppers are slower. I planted out my jalapenos and bell peppers at the same time in the same bed. The jalapenos have been producing for weeks and the first bell pepper plant now has the first little pepper on it. And the jalapeno plants are definitely bigger than the bells.

[imafan26]

Bell peppers are slower and shorter. It seems like the ones that have the wider leaves take a little longer to get bigger. the narrower the leaf the faster they grow. Unless they are a dwarf like Thai sun or Thai hot. The Bhut jolokia was only so-so and in the last month it just starting getting taller a full month behind the serranos and jalapenos. Now, it dwarfs them.