9 Pepper Growing Mistakes to Avoid This Season - How to grow peppers - Pepper Geek

hey there welcome to pepper geek in today's video i'll share some common mistakes to avoid making when you're growing peppers we recently ran a poll on our channel and we were pretty surprised to discover that around 50 percent of the people who responded are first-time pepper growers so with that in mind i just wanted to share some common mistakes that people make that we have made in the past when growing peppers that you should avoid your first year if you can all of these things will give you a better shot at getting good harvests off your plants and healthier plants overall now before i get started please subscribe to pepper geek this channel is all about growing peppers and helping you get better healthier plants so thanks for subscribing okay so number one is planting your seeds on time peppers take a long time to mature the time from planting your seed to when you harvest your first ripe pepper can be anywhere from 120 to 150 180 days for very hot varieties so it's important in most climates to start your seeds indoors and transition them outdoors this helps elongate your growing season by a couple of months getting the plants off to a stronger start and increasing the chances that you actually end up with ripe peppers before the season ends we live in new england in zone six so we start our pepper seeds indoors in early to mid-march depending on the variety the time of year that you plant seeds will depend on where you live in the world so check out our video on when to plant pepper seeds i will link it down below it'll help you find out exactly when you should be sowing your seeds indoors the short version of that video is that you should plant your seeds about six to eight weeks before the plants are ready to be transitioned outdoors that gives enough time for the seeds to sprout and grow to a stage of about three to five inches tall where they'll then be ready to move outdoors which brings me to number two which is moving outdoors properly a lot of people move their pepper plants outdoors way too early you really need to wait until the temperatures are not dropping below 50 degrees fahrenheit at night this is important because most pepper varieties cannot tolerate really cold weather and if you do get temperatures down into the 40s low 40s high 30s your plants are going to suffer this is especially important if you're planting in the ground where the plants cannot be brought back indoors anymore for us in zone six again we wait until typically late may or sometimes even early june depending on the weather forecast if your plants are already in the ground and it's going to be cold there are still things you can do you can mulch around the base of the plant and you can cover your plant with garden fabric and that'll sort of create a barrier around your plant to avoid some cold weather but don't be afraid to wait an extra couple weeks it's really not going to matter in the long run as long as you got your plants started at the right time keeping them indoors and out of those cold temperatures is only going to help them in the long run now on the subject of cold temperatures it can be really good to introduce young plants to some cooler temperatures while they're still indoors if you can do it i recommend introducing the plants to about 65 degrees 60 degrees at night once or twice a week if possible you know you can crack a window and let some cool air in at night just to acclimate them to cooler temperatures that will better prepare the plants to deal with colder temperatures if you should get an odd cold spell in mid-june or july now the other aspect of moving outdoors is called hardening off and that's the process of transitioning your plants from indoor grow lights to outdoors direct sunlight i don't care what grow light you're using i don't care how many watts it is it's nothing like the sun and so if you were to take a plant that's been growing indoors for a couple of months and then just put it out into 12 hours of direct sunlight the plant would likely die you would see leaves drying up and shriveling and falling from the plant and the plants can essentially be set back to square one and have to make a full recovery and reset their leaves so to avoid this we gradually introduce our pepper plants to the sunlight increasing the amount of outdoors time daily so we might start with about 20 minutes of direct sunlight and then bring the plants back indoors under grow lights for the rest of the day but just make sure that you're keeping an eye on the plants while they're hardening off if you see that the leaves are shriveling up or starting to droop bring them indoors and start again tomorrow okay so number three is choosing the right planting location whether you're growing in pots or you're growing in the ground in a raised bed or a garden bed you should survey the land that you have at your disposal to make sure that you're giving the plants as much sun as possible so look around your yard look for trees any structures that might cast shade in the morning or in the afternoon and try to pick the location that's going to get the most sun if you're growing other taller plants in your garden like tomatoes or corn those plants can cast shade as well so make sure that you're planting those taller crops on the north side of your peppers so that the south facing side is still getting full sun now if shade is going to be cast on your garden try to make it afternoon sunlight that is being shaded morning sunshine is typically a lot more gentle and more suitable for pepper plants while afternoon sun can be pretty abrasive so getting shade in the afternoon is not always a bad thing potted plants are very easy you can just move them around so that they get as much sun as possible and you can also move them into the shade to avoid the hottest parts of the day if necessary number four is over watering this is one form of over loving your plants a plant that has too much water will start to show curling leaves and you can end up with root rot and eventually plant death the soil should be moist but not sopping wet and after you water you really want the water to drain away from the soil from there the plant can use water as it's needed and once the soil becomes dry again you can reapply water for really young plants we recommend bottom watering but once the soil has absorbed that water you really want to get rid of any excess water that is sitting in the basin if that water is just sitting there the soil becomes soggy it's constantly trying to wick up more moisture from that basin and it's better to just allow the soil to dry out for more established plants grown in pots you can just feel the surface of the soil you know dig down an inch or two and if it feels dry it can probably use a drink another way to tell is by lifting potted plants it's easy to get a sense of how heavy the plant should be when it's been watered and when it is dried out to reduce the amount of watering that you need to do i recommend mulching around the base of each of your plants mulch helps to prevent evaporation off of the surface of the soil but it also helps suppress weeds you can use straw or grass clippings or anything else that doesn't have seeds in it while we're on the subject of watering i always recommend you water at the base of your plant right at the stem and avoid splashing water all over the leaves if you water over the surface of the foliage water beads will develop on the leaves and sunlight will actually refract through those beads of water and can burn holes in your leaves if you're applying some form of foliar spray either for pest prevention or for nutrients i recommend doing that early in the morning before the sun rises or late in the afternoon after the sun has set number five is container size now this is not a very good example here this was just a plant that we grew indoors over the winter so we have intentionally constrained it to this relatively small pot but you really need to know what type of pepper you're growing if you're growing jalapenos or bell peppers or banana peppers these are all capsicum annum varieties that's the species of pepper and those plants tend to be relatively small a bell pepper plant may grow to be three three and a half feet tall jalapeno plants can be even smaller and other annual varieties can be a foot or even smaller full-grown but if you're growing a capsicum chenin's variety like the ghost pepper or habanero or any other super hot variety your plants can get pretty big if this plant were planted outdoors or in a very large pot it could be five six feet tall when fully grown a three gallon pot may be perfect for your jalapeno plants but you might want something larger like a five or ten gallon pot for your capsicum chenin's varieties of course plants will grow just fine in smaller containers but you will end up with smaller plants and smaller harvests so plan accordingly and get the correctly sized pots for your plants number six is not checking for pests i recommend looking over your plants once or twice a week just peer underneath the leaves and above the foliage and look as closely as you possibly can get out your reading glasses because a lot of these pests can be very difficult to identify aphids are green and blend in perfectly with foliage aphids and other sap suckers like young foliage so look at the really small leaves look at any flower buds that are forming that's typically where you'll find them first so one method i recommend is looking against the light so the sun would be shining here against the leaves and you should get under your plants and sort of look against the sunlight this way if there are aphids on some of the smaller foliage you'll see there's shadows shining through the leaves i'm not going to go into pest prevention in this video but catching a pest infestation as early as possible is for the best number seven is improper fertilization one of the biggest mistakes pepper growers make is providing too much nitrogen later in the season now nitrogen is of course an important nutrient for plant growth but it can cause you to grow an abundance of foliage and not that many flowers or peppers for this reason we recommend starting at the beginning of the season with a higher nitrogen fertilizer and then moving on to something with lower nitrogen and a higher phosphorus and potassium level once the plants are setting flowers i'll leave a link down below to our article about the best fertilizers for pepper plants which goes into great detail about our fertilizing regimen for our plants number eight is not bottom pruning your plants the idea of bottom pruning is to take away foliage that is growing close to the base of the plant and avoid any leaves laying in the soil for peppers you typically cut away any of the foliage that is about two or three inches from the bottom of the plant this will help increase airflow around the base of the plant but also will avoid splashing from the soil onto the leaves whenever it rains or whenever you water now this is important because a lot of bacteria and other pathogens are living in the soil and are just waiting to be splashed onto the leaves of your pepper plant so that they can infect your plant this is one of the best disease mitigation techniques that i can recommend it becomes a lot more important once the plants are more established so you don't need to do this when the plants are indoors and are very young and are still being bottom-watered but once you move them outdoors and you're watering from above it's really important to just go in there once or twice a season and take away lower branches and finally number nine not harvesting your peppers in a timely manner now it's pretty easy to tell when peppers are ready to be harvested almost every pepper variety will change color dramatically when it is fully ripe jalapenos turn from green to a dark black all the way to red when they're fully ripe even banana peppers will turn from a yellowish color to a bright red when they're fully ripe however letting them sit on the plant for too long is a bad thing and that's for a couple of reasons number one is by harvesting ripe peppers you move the plants energy away from those peppers to ripening new pods so this is one way to effectively increase your yields is by plucking ripe peppers and then the plant can move on to the rest of the pods that are in development on the plant another reason to pick your peppers when they are ripe is pests and rot in some places pepper weevils can be an issue and of course anything could damage your pepper as it sits out there in the elements and if the peppers become damaged the skin is exposed to the elements things like mold and rot can begin to develop don't worry about what you're going to do with your big harvest you can throw them in the freezer in just a few minutes or you can dehydrate them you can do a lot of stuff with your peppers so make sure to pick your peppers when they're ready i hope you found this video helpful i hope that it helps you avoid mistakes the mistakes that we've made if you have any other questions about your pepper plants this year please leave them in the comments below i'd be happy to try to help out so that's it we're getting ready to plant our seeds for this season i can't wait to share this year's crop with you we have a lot of amazing varieties planned so stay tuned and subscribe to pepper geek for more thanks for watching peppa geek and i'll see you next time you

Channel: Pepper Geek

Views: 284,358

Keywords: growing peppers, Pepper growing mistakes, gardening, chili peppers

Id: BBdtgWovOIw

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 08 2021