Tips for growing my peppers
Shoxt3r
Posts: 196
Hi there,
For the past 2-3 months I've been growing some peppers from seed. They started off very well in pots and quickly were big enough to put into a raised bed which I filled with general, slow releasing feed compost and then topped off with some topsoil. I then covered them with a plastic tunnel for approximately a month which seemed to push them on quite a bit - but once they got to about 20cm and the weather got a bit warmer I removed the tunnel.
Over the past month they have been growing fairly well though I quickly realised that I had far too many growing in a small plot (around 20 plants in about 1.8m by 1m).
This past weekend I filtered out the weaker plants and am now left with 6 plants which are roughly about a foot high. However, something I noticed both when I had the full 20 and now with these 6 is that the plants are looking full of life during the day when the sun is out, and then by about 4pm they begin to wilt - is this normal for a pepper plant to do? I don't see any disease or anything and sure enough the next day they are springing up again.
I'm regularly feeding them (around once a week or so) with some general fruit and veg liquid feed and water once a day, even if I know some rainfall is on it's way, just to make sure. I noticed that the peppers particularly liked a lot of water since the heavy rainfall we had a couple of weeks ago really seemed to spur them on.
Something I haven't checked as yet is the pH of the soil but just assumed that because they were taking to the raised bed that everything was fine.
Any thoughts or general tips would be very welcome!
Cheers,
Andrew
Posts
Hi all,
Thought I would attach a photo so you can see the pepper plants and their surroundings.
Cheers,
Andrew
Last edited: 27 June 2017 20:09:19
The plants look fine - but they're in very wet soil by the look of it.
Try and keep the soil on the dry side - they prefer it. If you could cover them on chilly nights, like tonight they'd appreciate that too.
I wouldn't feed them with anything until the flowers appear then use a tomato fert. once a week.
I hope the weather improves, they're going to need to get a wiggle-on!
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Hi Pete,
Thanks for letting me know about the watering - what would be the ideal watering frequency for them, given an average summer's day (not that we seem to be getting those lately!)?
It's odd, they seemed to thrive after the heavy storms but after I've been watering them every day when it's been hot they've slowed their pace a little.
Any further tips would be very welcome.
Cheers,
Andrew
You just need to judge it by looking at the plants and the soil - in this overcast weather they probably won't need any at all.
Peppers come from a hot and generally dry climate, so you want to try and recreate that.
I'm growing mine in 10L pots in the g/house.
I start feeding once a week with tomato feed when the flowers appear and give them seaweed extract once a week. They usually need a watering in between too in hot weather. But I rarely need to water more than that. I tilt each pot every day just to see if it's light or heavy. If it's light I water.
When I do water, I do it properly. I want to see lots coming from the bottom of the pot, then I know it's been soaked and flushed.
Last edited: 29 June 2017 08:03:14
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Thanks both for your helpful advice.
I'll keep the watering to a minimum from now on and look into getting some proper feed like seaweed to push them along once it starts to flower.
Cheers,
Andrew
Seaweed is good, but it's not a fertilizer.
You peppers will still need the main nutrients NPK. Seaweed will only provide a small amount of N.
So use seaweed (I do) but they will need a tomato food as well
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
I use something called chilli focus, its seems pretty good. The first time I used it last year it made all my chillis stand dead upright with all the leaves looking perky. Some say it's like drugs for chilli peppers
I don't know if this helps but we lived in South Africa near Rustenburg. We grew peppers and always had a bumper crop. About 5kg from each plant. The soil was dry and acidic. We watered once a day (at night). Let the soil dry out a bit .