Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
johnny_2009

jalepeno flowers keep falling off

johnny_2009
15 years ago

I have a 5 month old hydroponic jalepeno plant in a 5 gal bucket that is about 3ft tall. It's roots look healthy and it's growing great. The only problem is it produces lots of flowers, but they eventually fall off! I'm currently using bio bizz grow/bloom at the same time. I have a 400 HPS watt light on 10hrs a day and air pump running 24-7 with an air stone providing sufficient oxygen. The water in the bucket is up to the primary roots so the bottom 2" of the net. I know in the enviorment its in it can produce because I have three jalepeno plants in dirt and they are fruiting. PLEASE HELP

Comments (11)

  • grizzman
    15 years ago

    It seems I've read, just recently, that this can be the result of too much nitrogen in the nutrient.
    Try reducing it.

  • johnny_2009
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    I will try that..

  • wordwiz
    15 years ago

    Yep, peppers do not like nitro when it comes to flowering. Plus, 10 hrs a day of light is not much. They like about 16-20 hrs.

    Mike

  • mrpepper
    15 years ago

    In addition to what was already stated; I would not use any grow solution on Peppers, they just do not like Nitro at all. I use GH Flora Nova Bloom at 500 ppm (never go above 500 ppm) and it works perfectly. I would suggest you rinse your media well, keep your temp above 65 F and Below 92 F. I would give them at least 14 hours of light, either HPS or MH works fine for me.

    Make sure you have plenty of air moving around, if needed put a small fan in the room.

  • johnny_2009
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    Everyone thanks for your input I will only use the bio bizz bloom and rinse out the media and put at least 14hrs of light on them. I currently do have a fan in the room. Temp during day is at about 75-80 and at night 65. I will report back. THANKS!

  • willardb3
    15 years ago

    Flower drop probable causes:

    1. Day temp too high >95F
    2. Night temp too low 3. Too much nitrogen fertilizer
    4. Too much water
    5. Low light levels (reduces fertility).
    6. Very low humidity (reduces fertility)
    7. Poor air circulation (air circulation contributes to pollination).
    8. Lack of pollinating insects.
    9. Size of pot

    1. Too much mineral in feedwater.
  • hydroponica
    15 years ago

    Looks like everything's been covered here, but I've got some experience with peppers so I'll be happy to help however I can.

  • johnny_2009
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    Well I did change out the water and only added the bloom instead of grow and I have three peppers so far. There are still some falling off, but I at least have something fruiting now. One thing I KNOW I have to do is get a ph/ec meter and actually start checking these two things... would probably make things alot easier????

  • joe.jr317
    15 years ago

    EC and Ph are certainly important to monitor. You can't really control what the plant is eating if you don't know what the Ph and EC are. Bad Ph will keep a plant from eating no matter how much you fertilize.

    You'll read that high temps (above 90) cause blossom drop. As I've said before, it amazes me that so much commercial pepper production occurs in regions that exceed this during the growing season every year and yet I still seem to find peppers in the grocery store in September and October (which means the flowers didn't fall off in the hottest season). Must be magic.

    You are doing the right thing with changing diet. I went the route of changing temps as that is the most proclaimed reason for blossom drop on many informative sites, but still I experienced blossom drop. When I changed to a lower N solution from start to finish I found that my peppers grow and thrive even in the oh-so-warned-about 90 degrees. Peppers are so easy to grow. You just have to feed them right and provide adequate lighting. I'm sooo glad I didn't give up when the temp claim failed to pan out. I'm also glad I ignored it after I found it didn't. I'd still be wasting energy on trying to cool those plants to below 90. I go through two fruiting stages with each plant. I plant cayennes and three varieties of sweets (bells).

    I also found that lighting has a huge impact (more than is obvious). Inside, in 80 degrees (when I was spinning my wheels), my plants were losing blossoms left and right. Outside, in the heat of summer, I didn't lose hardly any blossoms. Since this is getting long, let me just say that I have come to the conclusion that nitrogen levels need to be adjusted according to your lighting. I don't know why, but when I started doing it, it started working. That is also the case with cherry tomatoes, which I performed an experiment on last year and recorded some results here in September. I'm going to do the experiments of T5 vs sunlight again, but unfortunately it's one of those that can only be done once a year. I'm going to have some better controls and learn from my mistakes of last year. This year will be primarily on peppers.

    A little more advice from my observations (which are largely from putting advice from on here to the test). Starve your plants when the bells reach a size you like by reducing the feeding. It seems to trigger ripening. Then go vegetative for a couple weeks. Start another round. The second round will be smaller, likely, but just as tasty. If you aren't going to market then who cares, right? If you can use real sunlight at all, I also encourage that. Much sweeter peppers (hot or not).

  • hotpepper
    15 years ago

    Try pollinating 1 flower and not pollinating another. this way you'll know if it's the nutrients or the lack or pollination. If not other possibilities that were previously mentioned.

  • hydroponica
    15 years ago

    That wouldn't actually prove anything for sure. Pepper plants will routinely drop blossoms they don't have the resources to support. They're often overzealous about it, which is why it's recommended that you prune blooms yourself according to a specific schedule so the plant doesn't drop blossoms unnecessarily.

    If you pollinate one flower and not another, and the flower you pollinate fruits and the other doesn't you don't know if the pollination helped. All you know is that one fruited and the other didn't. It could be many things that caused it.

    If you've got fruit and you didn't pollinate, you don't need to.

    It sounds to me like you just have some recovery left to do and the plant will start bearing more and more fruit as it regains its health.

Sponsored
Manifesto, Inc.
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars9 Reviews
Columbus OH Premier Interior Designer 2x Best of Houzz Winner!