Grow Bigger Peppers (7 Tips)

if you're sick of growing small bell peppers and want bigger ones instead this video is for you welcome back to peppergeek in today's video I'm going to be sharing seven tips to grow bigger Peppers bigger sized fruits on your plants there are so many reasons to want bigger Peppers there's more to eat and enjoy of course but with bell peppers and banana peppers you're usually going to end up stuffing them so it's nice to have a larger inner cavity to put stuff in there most of the tips in this video will apply to bigger sized peppers like bell peppers large banana peppers poblanos Etc because you usually don't have to worry about size as much in smaller cultivars now my first tip might seem a bit counterintuitive because I'm going to suggest that you actually take away part of your plant and that is to prune off excess fruits from your plants so this plant has been fully grown nice and bushy for about a month now and it thinks that it can produce more Peppers than it really can I just counted them up in the this plant currently has 12 peppers in formation on the plant and a bunch of flowers forming near the top so if you leave your bell pepper plants to do whatever they want they'll typically try to produce more Peppers than they can and so the average size of the fruits goes down so when your peppers are maybe this size about an inch tall or maybe even a bit smaller you can go through the plant try to identify which pods look the healthiest and remove all but maybe six to ten in other words you'll leave six to ten Peppers to produce at any given time on your plants and that way all of the energy your plants have will be directed towards that small number of fruits and deciding exactly what number of peppers to leave on your plant will require some trial and error I recommend starting higher rather than lower because you never know your plants might be able to produce 10 maybe 12 full-size fruits while other varieties will only be able to handle six and it's really that simple the result is bigger fruits as you harvest them new flour hours will appear and you can continue to leave that set number of fruits on your plant the next tip is related to the first one and that is to prune off early flowers and early fruits from your smaller seedlings so this plant we never got around to transplanting and it grew a little fruit and as you can see it's already ripe this is maybe a quarter of the weight of a typical bell pepper and that's really all this small plant can produce I've seen so many gardeners fall into this trap they transplant their bell peppers into the ground there may be a foot tall and they start growing peppers but those small plants can't really support growing even a single bell pepper so it's always best to remove them and allow the plants to grow larger before letting them set fruit the next tip is to use a large enough container if you're growing in containers this is a five gallon pot and this is the minimum size I would recommend for growing large pepper varieties such as this bell pepper you don't want your plants to be limited by the amount of soil that they have at their disposal that's where they get all of their water and all of their nutrients so if you can strain that space it'll end up just like the plant I showed you earlier where there's not enough nutrients and water for the plants to produce full-size Peppers so again five gallons or larger is a good place to start the next tip is very important if you're growing in containers around mid-season your plants can sort of run out of steam and they may start to turn yellow in some places you may start to see more flowers dropping or fruits dropping off of the plant and this is usually because the plants need a little more nutrition so around mid-summer when the plants are mid production there's probably some fruits on the plant maybe you've already harvested once I like to add some more fertilizer not too much you want to add just a bit of nitrogen and ideally a good amount of potassium to make sure your plants have everything they need the best way to do this is really just using an all-purpose fertilizer of some kind we've mentioned this before this is Miracle Grow performance Organics it's an 11 3 8 so good amount of nitrogen good amount of potassium as well and it has secondary nutrients to supplement what the plants need if you're growing in the ground a similar approach is to add compost around the base of your plants in mid-summer this will effectively do the same thing for your in-ground plants you could also use a slow release fertilizer in the ground if that's your preference try to to avoid too much nitrogen at this point that can actually reduce the amount of peppers on your plants I like to just do one maybe two supplemental feedings throughout the season so follow the manufacturer's recommendation and maybe even come in a little bit below that because too much nitrogen May trigger more leafy growth and less fruit production my next tip has to do with this glaring thing in my face you want to make sure your plants are in as much sunlight as possible more sun means more energy for your plants and if they're planted in mostly shade they're just not getting enough energy the result may be a little bit counterintuitive you might actually see larger leaves on your plants but overall you'll see smaller plants less growth and smaller fruits on that point it's worth mentioning that bell peppers and other large pepper varieties are very vulnerable to Sun scald so while full sun is ideal it's a great idea to space these plants a little bit closer to one another so that they can help shade the sides of the plants from the Sun so when the sun gets lower in the sky the sides of the bell peppers can get exposed to full sun as you can see right there and that can actually burn the skin of the fruits and cause Sun scald so just something to keep in mind my next tip is to water your plants evenly I've noticed over my years of growing peppers that when I allow plants to completely dry out the leaves are sagging and drooping that the fruit sets aren't quite as high this does vary a little bit from one variety to another some will be able to hold on to their fruits a little bit easier than others but if you're letting your plants dry out to the extreme every time before watering then that's just putting unnecessary stress on the plant so make sure you're keeping the soil evenly moist make sure it has good drainage if you're growing in pots or in the ground and avoid those extreme drought periods and one last tip this may seem a little bit silly but if you're new to growing peppers it's pretty common to get a little bit impatient and think that your peppers are done growing when they're not so if I only had one or two fruits on my plant and this was the biggest bell pepper I might think yeah that looks done but it's not it's still growing larger this can be especially confusing if you're growing varieties that are harvested before they ripen because a green bell pepper is a green bell pepper regardless of the size of it so it can be hard to tell when it's done growing in size unless you're paying attention one thing I like to recommend that new Growers do is take pictures of your plant as the fruits develop so you can see that progress over time and then you can know when the fruits are done developing in size and at that point you can pick them or you can wait for them to ripen one last bonus tip is to find varieties that are known for producing larger Peppers there are many different types of bell peppers and usually if you're shopping online you can see the average weight of those fruits when they're ready so if you're looking to set records definitely spend some time on seed selection and before you go if you're interested in learning how we grow our peppers from seed to harvest check out our ebook growing perfect peppers in the link in the description below I hope this video helps you grow bigger peppers I love harvesting nice big meaty bell peppers and banana peppers from our own Gardens if you have any more tips or growing methods that you'd like to share leave a comment down below thanks for watching peppergeek and I'll see you next time

Channel: Pepper Geek

Views: 148,216

Keywords: gardening, growing, peppers

Id: 5rhn2CtHNDU

Length: 7min 42sec (462 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023