My Mom raises killer ones in the next state over from you.
I cannot seem to grow decent peppers.
What am I doing wrong and what does my soil need?
*what does my soil need?*
Relocation to Texas?
“I cannot seem to grow decent peppers.”
Those slutty peppers are hot!
In your location you should be able to grow the variety’s cultivated in most of europe.
Hungarian wax, bannana, bell, etc.
The southern varieties wont far so well. You need more heat for those.
Visit the FR gardening thread...it is weekly and packed with news and tips. We have quite a few master gardeners on FR.
I grow great HOT peppers...and I think it is because I am horribly mean to them. Bell peppers, not so much.
My Mom raises killer ones in the next state over from you.
We gave up on Bell peppers. However we had really good luck with bush beans, tomatoes and okra.
Test the soil for ph level.. too acidic or too alkaline will give poor yields, depending on plant varities. I grow jalepenos and bells in Colorado front range, and I add organic matter and bone meal to my soil which has a natural ph around 8. I also use humic and folic acid to the soil to lower ph to 6-7. Easy on the fertilizer or the plants tend to grow lots of stems and leaves and little fruit.
Are you using potting soil for the seeds? If so, don't. Use regular soil instead. I wasted soooo many pepper seeds before I got the peppers to grow.
How much sun do your peppers get?
I am in a North/South valley, so we get the sun late in the morning and its gone earlier in the evening. The plants grow and I even get some peppers, but they take well over 120 days, bear much less than I think they should and the peppers themselves are very prone to rot if it gets too cool.
I container garden indoors in winter using Aerogardens. Last year, I was given some miniature red/orange peppers and I saved the seeds. I am going to plant some around the first of March. I am hoping it will be warm enough, long enough to get a harvest. I have tried supposedly dwarf pepper plants in hydro before, but they dropped blossoms after growing way too tall.
I look for dwarf and miniature varieties of a lot of things, except some tomatoes. I also try to plant mostly early varieties, since most everything that isn’t a cold weather crop seems to take an extra 2 weeks for me. Our last frost is usually May 23 and we can have first frost as early as September 21.
Years ago, I asked a produce manager at the local co-op why sweet red peppers were so expensive. He just answered that they are hard to grow. Now, I have found one grocery store that always has them for way less than anyone else. So, I buy 3-5 at a time, store them in Green Bags and mostly, they last pretty well. I use them in nearly everything.
Are you trying to grow hots or Bells? Here in eastern North Carolina, most hot peppers are a plant-and-forget. Keep the weeds down early on, and they'll start making peppers in July and not quit until they freeze in November or December. Last summer tobacco mosaic did a number on my tomatoes, but the peppers seemed to weather it okay.
Now if you're trying to grow those big, sweet, blocky Bell peppers like they have at the grocery store (and charge a buck each for during the winter), I haven't yet put all the pieces together on that one myself. I think strong fruit is a matter of:
1) Plenty of phosphorus in your soil, but not too much nitrogen. A little nitrogen is necessary for plant growth, but too much will make your peppers grow stems and leaves and not much fruit. Phosphorous on the other hand just seems to make the plants healthy-looking and strong.
2) Plenty of water. Those grocery-store Bells are downright juicy, and that juice is mostly water. There has to be abundant water available to the plants from fruit set to ripening if you want big, juicy peppers with those thick fleshy walls.
3) Thin the blossoms. Your plants won't make good peppers if they're making half a dozen peppers each. Thin the blossoms down to one or two, and you'll focus the plant's resources into a single pepper.
Like I said, I've never made this work for myself... it's easier for me to just grow stuff that requires less attention... but this is how I'd do it if I were to try.
Really? I grow habaneros in New England...visit FR’s ‘Garden Thread’...PLENTY of Freepers there willing to help out...I’m starting my pepper seeds this weekend...
Forget it and grow Jalapenos and banana peppers. Those great looking sweet peppers in the catelog are phonies. I know, I’ve tried for 3 years to grow some great looking ones, the seeds from last year now lay lovinging and sweating their brains out in my compost heap.
I lived in NM for 14 years. Hatch, NM was in my weekly travel, that is the home of the finest Chili’s in the world.
The secret there is water from Elephant Butte Lake released at the right time, the right soil (sandy loam) and warm nights.
The most common failure is the “warm nights”. I have a jalapeno (Jolero) in my sunroom that is over 3 years old and still producing peppers. Had it outside last year in a pot and it did nothing (unusually cool year especially in the evenings), when I put it back in the sunroom, bingo, it started to produce again.