Pepper Row

After much trial and error I've settled on the method that seems the best, for me, to raise peppers. Just sayin' what works for me to get very heavy yields year after year - and maybe some of what I'm doing will help others.

(1) I raise pepper plants in a row running east/west, in full sun, planted 18 inches apart. I've found that all varieties like to be crowded a bit and lean on each other. The east/west row gives them full sun, but each plant is in the shade of neighboring pepper plants for a good part of the day, preventing sunscald.

(2) As soon as my plants are in the ground, I place a soaker hose the length of the row right beside each plant. I've found peppers like hot weather and sun, and they really like water - lots of it.

(3) I support each pepper plant with a standard wire "tomato cage" as found in the big-box stores. These things are too small for tomatoes, but they're just right for peppers. Pepper plants are much more woody and brittle than tomatoes, and I get such heavy yields my plants will break themselves down without support. Once in place, I tie the wire cages together to really make the row solid.

(4) MULCH. I think this is very important. I mulch my pepper row with fresh-cut grass clippings about 6 to 7 inches deep. That goes on top of the soaker hose and I'm careful to keep the fresh mulch an inch or so away from my plant stems. That's because it cooks - a day after mulching I can't hold my hand under the grass clippings, they get too hot. I think that heat kills any weed seeds near the surface of the soil, and I won't have any weeding to do in that row for the rest of the season. The heat of the mulch soon subsides, and it keeps the soil around those pepper roots moist and cool.

(5) Fertilize. I've got rich garden soil from composting, and I till in 10-20-10 granular fertilizer before planting. Throughout the season I use MiracleGro or some similar, mild, liquid fertilizer once a week. I've got a 2 gallon watering can, and I use two tablespoons of MiracleGro in the two gallons of water and sprinkle it down the row of 18 plants, right on top of the plants. The grass-clippings mulch retains the fertilizer and releases it with every rain and watering into the soil, I think. Pepper plants really go into overdrive in these conditions.

Ozark, I really Jonesing for summer here in cold, cold NE Texas today. So I'm going through some of the forums to find photos of glorious green veg gardens to keep me going. I found this photo and have been covertly staring at it here at work. Thanks for posting the photo!

I was just going to ask: Do you pinch off the first flush of blooms? My first attempt at peppers down here in Texas as pretty much a bust as the plants did not want to grow much before they started to produce flowers. And then the plants stopped growing to product fruit. The small plants subsequently flopped over under the weight and both plant and peppers never did get any size at all. I started to pinch off the first few flushes of blooms to let the plants grow large enough as per suggestions from Dave's (thanks guys!) and it seems to work for me. You seem to have such nice large plants, I was just wondering if you had to pinch blooms too! Just curious, ever curious LOL!

Terri

Hi, Terri. No, I've never tried pinching off blossoms, and I've never had any problems with pepper plants setting and bearing loads of peppers as well as developing big, strong plants. Pepper plants are woody and brittle so I always have to support mine with standard-size wire tomato cages (the ones that are too small for tomato plants). If I don't do that, they'll get full of peppers and the weight breaks them down.

The way your pepper plants have acted in the past, I wonder if your soil is lacking in something. I've spent years building up my garden soil with compost and I side-dress fertilize several times during the growing season as well as tilling in a bunch of 10-20-10 before I plant in the spring. If your plants quit growing to produce fruit, it sounds like some nutrient or mineral in your soil might be low. Before the gardening season you might want to take a soil sample to your University extension for analysis - that's a $12 test here, and I think most places are similar.

Ah, good advise! Actually, my soil tests were sent off last week. For the veg garden and then for the new pasture we are fencing off. We need to really refurbish the pastures! I do amend with composted goat poo, shredded oak leaves, so chicken litter and egg shells (mostly). I don't have any problems with the tomatoes, eggplants, onions, etc. The wind blows like the devil here in my garden for at least three months in spring. I'm going to keep trying, though. The pinching did seem to help quite a bit last year. Maybe the missing nutrients will get me over the pepper hump LOL! Of course then hail will hit or something ☺.

Terri-when do you plant your pepper plants in the ground? Im like Ozark, I just stick the plants in and they grow like crazy, but sometimes they take a little longer to kick in then the tomato plants do. They don't do well in the cold so I wait to plant them out..

I wait until the ground temps reach the mid 70's. I think part of my problem is just the wind. Last year I separated my sweet peppers from my hot peppers as suggested to my by a Dave's gardener and I did get much better results. The hot peppers did fine and I think I just need to stop experimenting with the sweet peppers like I do with the tomatoes. I have fair to good results with Yolo Wonder and Chinese Giant. So maybe I should just stick to them and wait for the soil tests to come in.

But right now I just need to look at photos of green things growing in rows to overcome the end of winter blahs! I've got two beds all rototilled out with only onions and garlic planted out to show for it. Too cold and sleet on and off this weekend. And after the gorgeous day on Friday I was disappointed.

terri, in my experience hot peppers are easy to grow and sweet peppers are a little more difficult. Also, wind hurts peppers a lot - they like to be sheltered and cozy, without their leaves whipping around. (Thinking North Texas here - hah!)

My suggestions about your sweet peppers - give them some shelter from the wind while still allowing them full sun for much of the day. We don't get as much wind as your area, but we get some and then there are spring and summer thunderstorms, of course. Our winds generally come from the west, so I grow my peppers just to the east of a tall wire fence that every garden season has either big tomato plants or pole beans tied up on it. That gives the peppers shelter from a lot of the wind AND shade in the summer afternoons, preventing sunscald.

Even more important, you mention a couple of big bell pepper varieties. I pretty much gave up on growing bells years ago - they're just so much more difficult than sweet non-bell varieties. Last year I grew one Big Red (bell) plant and I got a few off of it, But - I easily get 10 TIMES the weight of peppers per plant with sweet non-bells and they practically take care of themselves. If I could grow only one sweet pepper my choice would be Gypsy Hybrid, followed by Carmen and maybe Bounty. For smaller frying peppers, my wife wouldn't be happy if I didn't grow Jimmy Nardello every year (wow, the flavor!). I like Corno di Toro Rossi, though they're late-bearing, and Sweet Pickle is a good one, too. Last year I bought a replacement Yummy Orange plant from WalMart (see the other thread) and it was really, really good.

Bottom line, quit messing with those bells and most of your sweet pepper difficulties will go away.

I agree with Ozark, the sweet non bells are much easier to grow and give a much higher yield. I like Marconis. This winter has been terrible, I can't seem to shake the blahs....

Why thank you for the advise, Ozark. I already have some Yolo Wonders started, but it is not too late to start some Gypsy Hybrids. And I did see your thread regarding the Yummy Oranges from Wally World. I think that this year I am going to get some of the tomato frames one can buy and the farmer's co-op to use on the peppers. Then I have some of that plastic with the flaps cut into it (from Territorial Seeds) and I will wrap the frames with that. That should really help with the wind. Our big winds come out of the south or the west in the spring. But if we get a cold front coming through then the winds come from the north. So we are in an evil, garden wind vortex (almost). And I have grown the Jimmy Nardellos before and I do like them. Last year the Yolo Wonders did pretty well, with Pizza Peppers really doing very well for me.

1lisac, all I'm asking for is temps in the 50's or better and sunshine at least half of the time. That's not too much to ask for, is it?!?

Terri I haven't started my peppers yet and last year I started them in the middle of Feb. and they did fine. I think you have time. They don't mind the hot weather....at this point either would I. I don't think you are asking for too much...sun and temps above 50* would make me feel like I was in the tropics. Lol

Trouble is, when winter finally breaks and we get sun and temps in the 50's I still won't get anything done in the garden - I'll be fishing. When spring comes, everything starts happening at once. I'll need to get a garden out and I'll have to start mowing and the crappie and white bass will be running, and the storms will be trying to blow us into the next county, and there's spring turkey season, and, well ..... you know. LOL

Ozark,

You are making me jealous... I wish I still lived in that area. The only thing you missed was the trout fishing below the river dams or in the cold, spring-fed rivers like Eleven-point or Current.

David R

"trout fishing"
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Different strokes for different folks, David. For those who like Missouri trout fishing, that's fine. Having enjoyed trout fishing in places where they belong, like Idaho and Montana, I can't get excited about the little hatchery-raised stockers we have here. Instead of the truck dumping them in a lake and me catching them back out, it seems like the least Conservation could do is let me just scoop a limit of four out of the truck with my landing net and save having to get my boat wet. Hatchery trout, however, are fine walleye-fatteners when they wash over the dam and get into Bull Shoals Lake. LOL

Sorry, back to gardening. I got my Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog yesterday, which is a good thing because it's snowing so hard we're not even going to the post office today. A recommendation: For those who grow sweet corn, Xtra-Tender 2573 from Johnny's, which I've grown for three years now, is the best EVER. Wonderful flavor, early and heavy production of big ears, and cornstalks so compact I can grow them 9" apart in rows 3' apart. It's the best sweet corn variety I've ever grown, by far.

Ozark, I just got Johnny's, Territorial Seeds and High Mowing Organic.

I haven't narrowed down my sweet corn selection for this year so thanks for the tip on Xtra-Tender 2573. Last year's sweet corn crop was a bit of a bust for me. I usually always include Country Gentleman, which did fairly well. I think the weather was mostly the problem in my garden last year, but I also tried some varieties I hadn't before. One was Bodacious which didn't do well for me and what I did produce didn't really taste all that great to me or to DH. I've been kind of considering Natural Delight F1 Hybrid (78 days) from High Mowing. At 73 days, X-T2573 would fit in for my early corn selection. Country Gentleman is a late corn, so that would work-I stagger my planting dates but I like to pick an early, mid-, and late corn for good measure. I like to freeze some of my sweet corn and Natural Delight is described as a good freezing candidate. Did you freeze some of you Xtra-Tender? If so, how did it work out?

I suppose we should start a separate thread to begin the great sweet corn debate of 2014? Always one of my favorite threads of the year ☺!

terri, good thinking. I'm off-topic here and we can continue the sweet corn discussion over at Beginner Vegetables.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1349562/

Sam, in looking at your photo again, (this is what we did this year) what is growing to the left, the leaves showing at the top of the first cage ring? You have a stake and string going down the row?

Melissa, that's just the end of a couple of rows of my 2013 garden you can see there - those are cucumbers trained up on cattle-panel wire fences.

Yes, I support the peppers with small wire tomato cages, the ones most stores sell that are really too small to support tomatoes. I drive stakes and run strings the length of the row to be sure the cages stay upright. Pepper plants are brittle, and if the wind (Missouri thunderstorms here) topples a cage over, the plant will break off.

Sam, I copied your method for our Peppers this year... thankfully, because this has been a bumper year for them and the tomatoes. :)

Hubby wants to know what you put in your soil. :) Cucumbers never do well for us, left to sprawl, or trained on a cattle panel. Raised bed, in the ground, doesn't seem to matter.

Melissa, I've tilled lots of compost into my garden soil over the years. Before planting anything in the spring I till in a bunch of 10-20-10 granular fertilizer. Then every couple of weeks during the growing season I fertilize ALL garden plants with Algoflash liquid fertilizer concentrate (either their tomato or rose formula, doesn't matter) mixed one capful to one gallon of water in a sprinkler bucket. Algoflash is really, really good stuff - Google it for sources.

Cucumbers like abundant water, but they want their feet dry. I never plant them on the lower, wetter end of the garden where the soil stays moist because that helps fungus diseases to flourish. I spray cukes, as well as anything else in the squash family, and tomatoes, with Daconil for fungus. Then in mid-summer come the squash bugs (munch, munch). Liquid Sevin for them.

Thanks Sam. I think your Ozark Orange has become my favorite tomatoe!