Hey Shorty! What's up Stretch?

My sweet peppers are too short. They are all under 14 inches. One has fruit and the others have buds. It just doesn't seem right.
I decided to check out the University of Minnesota site and I found a paper with basics about peppers. I think the plants are short because of all the weird weather we had - they need warm weather to grow and all of the flux, they just couldn't get in the mood. It warns, though, that high temperatures will cause the blooms to fall off. I haven't noticed anyone's pepper plants. The tomatoes are tall so maybe their peppers are short too. I'm going to water with plant food for the next couple of days and see what happens. It's over 90 again today so fingers are crossed.


The sunflowers are getting really tall. I've learned that the stalks are really tenacious. They'll do whatever they can to get at the sun and grow tall. They seem to grow from the ground up rather than the head stretching to grow up. One plant was growing through the mesh I've put up for the climbers. The "shoulders" of one leaf set were caught on a horizontal section of the mesh. The stalk kept growing from the base and the stalk was forming a "c" shape because it was pushing up, but was caught. It's free from the mesh now and the leaves that were hooked on the mesh died.

I have a clump of 6 or 7 sunflowers that are planted close to each other. I noticed early on that they were wrapping around each other to follow the sun and get the most sun possible. I put a large tomato cage around them to contain the stalks so they wouldn't fan out and shade the neighbor's plants. This has worked well. The plants are growing straight. They lean against the cage which reinforces it and keeps them all in check.

Four of the sunflowers are planted in a row on the border with Alexi/Valentina. They were blown by the big storm last night so they were leaning over the neighbor's plants. They are about 6 feet tall and since they are in a line, there isn't much I can do to keep them together. As a short term solution, I put a large zip tie loosely around the stalks, tied cord to the zip tie loops and tied the cord to a tall stake six feet away. There is a lot of extra cord on each tie so there is some flexibility as they grow, but I hope they will get back to straight, anchor well, and I can remove the cords. I'm mentally planning a Plan B, but no run to Home Depot yet.