Once the seedlings acclimated to being outside and living in a good sized planter, they took off and grew like mad!\u00a0 About a month ago we started seeing flower buds appear on the jalape\u00f1o plants, and soon after a few white blooms popped open.\u00a0 One by one, the entire bloom and stalk would wither and drop off (aka “blossom drop”).\u00a0 This could be from a number of things, most notably a lack of pollination.\u00a0 Peppers (and tomatoes) are self pollinating plants, needing little help from outside influence, but if the plants are in a sheltered area with little wind and there are no wandering insects to lend a hand, then pollination more often than not won’t happen.<\/p>\n
After a little research I found that one can apply a q-tip to the inside of the bloom the spread the pollen about, and it actually seemed to work.\u00a0 After faithfully diddling each new bloom every day (henceforth know as “plantsturbation”)\u00a0 I had two jalape\u00f1os starting to grow and very little blossom drop.\u00a0 After a week or so of no new peppers appearing I did a little more research… I had a sneaking suspicion that the q-tip method was a little heavy handed.<\/p>\n
Turns out, there is a much simpler method (actually, two, but they amount to the same thing).\u00a0 The consensus is that a vigorous shaking of the plant and\/or flicking the bloom with your finger is more than sufficient to shake the pollen off the stamens and onto the stigma.\u00a0 It also takes a hell of a lot less time.\u00a0 I even found a helpful video, too<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 Now, we have a bunch of jalape\u00f1os growing on several different plants, and a ton of flowers all around.<\/p>\n The bell peppers are being shy… only two of the dozens of buds have opened, and one of them has dropped off (this was before I learned the shake\/flick technique).\u00a0 I feel that they are gonna start popping any day now.<\/p>\n Our biggest failures from the beginning have to be the herbs.\u00a0 We planned on having eight or so different varieties, and as time went on they just didn’t fare well.\u00a0 I estimate that the problem was two-fold — first, the craptacular starter kits that we bought that just kept the environment far too wet, which resulted in a lot of mold killing off seedlings and hampering root development, and second, that we didn’t transplant the seedlings soon enough after their initial growth in the seeding trays.<\/p>\n The only survivors were a few really stunted chives, parsley and basil.\u00a0 Not ones to give up, we went ahead an planted them anyway and did what all good parents do when the family hamster dies… we bought replacements from the store before the kids could notice the missing rodent.\u00a0 The store-bought plants took off while our gimpy herbs just sorta’ survived.\u00a0 Gradually, though, we noticed that our herbs were actually starting to grow… the lone basil seedling grew into such a large bush that it overtook the sweet basil that we bought.\u00a0 What the parsley lacks in abundance, it makes up for with strength and the chives, while sparse, are frigging gorgeous.<\/p>\n<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n