I think I need to make some adjustments...after checking on the plants this morning I began to take a closer look at my seedlings (not sure it's still appropriate to keep calling them that at this stage..but oh well). The first tip off was that I noticed one of my Charleston plants had "tipped over". I was actually expecting this at some point. His leaves were getting awfully big, but his stem was still pretty leggy and skinny. I knew he was going to become top heavy at some point. I got a toothpick and stuck it in the plug next to him to try and help prop him up a bit. I'm thinking this is primarily due to too little light? Isn't that what usually makes plants "leggy"? Them stretching out trying to get closer to the light source?
Anyway, after putting a temporary fix on this guy I started to take a closer look at the rest of the plants. I actually started to notice some stuff with a few of them that has me a bit concerned. I've again posted a couple of pics to try and illustrate what I'm trying to explain.
First pic is of the Charleston I previously mentioned. You should be able to see the yellow toothpick running along side the stem
. Not an ideal solution I know, but didn't have much else on hand at the moment. However, if you can see on the leaf on the left side of the picture, there are some yellow spots developing (sorry, I know the pics are a tad fuzzy...stupid iPhone again
). I noticed this exhibited on the cotyledons quite some time ago, but I wasn't concerned about it because it is my understanding that these initial set of leaves will eventually just die off and wilt away after the "true leaves" begin to develop. However, I'm thinking the yellow on the true leaves isn't a good sign.
The second pic is one of my Thai Sun plants. You can see similar developments. The true leaf on the left showing signs of yellowing.
The last pic is of one of my Bolivian Rainbows. And I actually don't know if I should be concerned about these guys or not. Notice the discoloration in the true leaves. I'm actually thinking this is expected though. Any experience with Bolivian Rainbows? Pictures of these plants I've seen shows these plants usually have darker colored leaves with a mix of dark and lighter green like this. So I'm not necessarily thinking these guys are sick, but thought I'd throw that out there as well in case anyone has experience with this particular pepper and can tell me if this is "expected development" for this type of pepper.
I've also cut my
pump time back and put it back on a 15 minutes on/45 minutes off cycle. This should help reduce the
nutrient solution temp a few degrees hopefully, but I'm maybe also hopeing part of my problem was maybe that the plants were getting too much water.