When to start growing peppers
How To Grow Peppers - Complete Growing Guide
well hello everyone and welcome to
another complete growing guide here on
the emigrant channel in today's growing
guide we're going to be talking about
peppers peppers are a very easy plant to
grow but until you've grown them
successfully you really don't know how
easy it is and that's because there's a
lot of small things that can go wrong
it's really not a hard plant to grow but
when you do those small little things
wrong it can lead to a less than
successful pepper harvest later on so
hopefully this episode is going to clear
up those tiny little things that might
be going wrong and get you on your way
to having a successful harvest the first
thing you're going to want to make sure
is that you either start them in a
greenhouse or go to get them at a
greenhouse the reason is because
oftentimes people want to start them
from seed in ground and that is a huge
mistake the reason is because when you
wait sometimes you wait until the soil
temperature is right and that's after
about a month or two after your last
frost but then depending on what you're
trying to start maybe bell pepper seeds
take about five to nine days or maybe
you're trying to start something like
habaneros or bucho low Kias those can
take up to a month so you have a case in
which you've already waited to date or
two months and then you're waiting up to
another month so that's three months out
of your growing season just spent
getting a plant to be up and growing so
that can be very very discouraging to
someone that's doing that because you
you basically spend all of your growing
season just trying to get a plant
started and then once they do sprout it
takes between 50 and 80 days to actually
get ripe fruit so you don't want to do
that because it's just going to waste
all of your time only to get nothing so
what we have here is some healthy plants
we started in our greenhouse about four
weeks before our last frost date and
that's going to give us a really good
head start on our growing season now the
next thing is making sure the soil
temperature is warm we touched on it a
little bit earlier in the episode but
you want to make sure that the soil
temperature is between 55 and 65 degrees
and that's because warmer soils are
better for peppers peppers are a
tropical plant and tropical plants
obviously like those warmer weather that
warmer temperature so if you try to
start them and you put them in the
ground when it's
you know high 30s or low 40s mid 40s
anything like that that's still
considered cool or cold soil is going to
stunt the plant that a stunted plant
means less harvest because it's going to
be a smaller plant also less fruit and
it's going to just look like a stunted
pathetic plant however if you wait for
the soil to be warm it's not going to go
through any transplant shock in terms of
temperature goes so you're going to have
a much better start to your season if
you just wait a few more weeks to your
soil temperatures warm up the next thing
that kind of goes along with soil
temperature is the amount of Sun they
get so peppers are also a plant that you
don't want them getting too hot because
if they get too hot they're actually
going to start dropping their flowers
and drop flowers means dropped fruit in
the end which ultimately leads to less
harvest so what you're going to want to
do is you're going to want to plant them
in a place that gets between five and
eight hours of full Sun any more than
that in the peak season of late July
early August when it's really hot you're
going to find that the peppers will drop
some of their fruit if you get any more
than five eight hours of Sun because
they just get overexposed and it ends up
stressing the plant out so that five to
eight hours is going to give you just
enough to make sure they're not not not
getting enough Sun but not too much that
they're dropping their fruit also make
sure that the sunlight is a very strong
full Sun though you don't want to plant
them under a tree that might get
filtered Sun pepper plants need a very
full strong Sun but they just don't need
a lot of it so no more than eight hours
and you're going to be fine
the last thing before we start planting
is the soil the soil we're using is a
compost blend it's just a mixture of
sand a little bit of topsoil and mostly
compost and that's going to give us a
very loose Airy fluffy mix optimized
people don't give the right soil
mixtures to their pepper plants and
pepper plants are something that's
really going to surprise you when you
actually do it successfully how large
the roots go out because you need at
least a square foot per plant in order
to get all of the available nutrients
and water that's required to have a six
bell pepper plant so oftentimes people
might they might not have a good soil or
they might overcrowd and which we'll get
to in spacing in a little bit but you
make you want to make sure that you have
that square foot so you can take up all
that available nutrients all available
water and then that way they can get up
to a really great healthy plant for you
so let's start planting now and then
we'll talk about some other tips in a
little bit so when it comes to pepper
plants
I never space mine any less than a foot
and a half apart I treat them just like
tomatoes pepper plants they can be grown
a foot apart but I find that a foot
apart is just not enough for me when I
have a really successful really
beautiful healthy pepper plant it takes
up every inch of that foot and a half so
I like to give them a foot and a half
and a foot and a half that way they have
a great great growing space where
they're not going to crowded out by
anything and they can really just do
their thing to the best of their
abilities so in this bed here we're
talking three feet long and so I'll put
a plant here and a plant here now
talking about soil pH if that's
something that you like to get into
pepper plants don't like an overly
acidic pH they like a pH not like
tomatoes that like at five point five
but they also they don't like it to be
super acidic they like it to be around a
six to a six point five just barely
acidic and you'll notice what I did when
I planted this pepper plant is I did not
bury it super deep oftentimes people
treat them just like tomatoes and that's
a really common mistake is that there is
an urban legend out there or a you know
an old wives tale that says oh if you
plant peppers like tomatoes they'll
plant they'll put out roots all along
the stem and that's just not true
the reason is because pepper plants are
in fact in the Solon dense a family just
like tomatoes eggplants tomatillos but
you'll notice that they don't have the
hair all along the stem like tomatoes do
and so what you're going to find is that
when you bury them deeper it's really
actually going to hamper the growth and
I'm not quite sure why and a lot of
people have
not been able to answer this but I think
it has something to do with the fact
that the soil actually kind of girdles
the stem and doesn't allow the the plant
to actually expand the stem and when the
stem expands it actually will help more
more nutrient uptake more water uptake
and that can have a larger healthier
plant years that I've experimented with
burying them even two inches three
inches up the plant the plant actually
gets stunted and has less flowers and
fruit than one that isn't very deep so
that's why you really just want to plant
them at soil level now the next thing
that I want to talk about with peppers
is it comes to pruning oftentimes people
want to prune their pepper plant that is
totally fine if you want to do so and I
would highly recommend it
I don't prune my pepper plants because
you will find that depending on your
growing season you may not want to prune
pruning a pepper plant will in fact help
lower the center of gravity so it'll be
a less it'll be less easy to snap it
will in fact start bushing out a lot
like tomatoes but you want to make sure
you have a long enough growing season
because when you eliminate the top
growing stem it takes a while for them
to push side shoots and then those side
shoots have to grow it as well in order
to fruit so it's something that you have
to do with your own personal it's your
own personal opinion on what you do
I don't however you can if you have a
long enough growing season and the very
last thing we're going to talk about is
soil nutrients when it comes to
fertilizing peppers you want to give
them a very good all-purpose fertilizer
I've sprinkled in some of our trifecta
in here and amended this it amended it
all into the bed but when it comes to
pepper plants if you're not using
trifecta you want to use something
that's pretty all balanced you don't
want a fertilizer that's going to be
favoring any nutrients so let's say it's
really high in let's say it's really
high in nitrogen that's going to be a
problem because the amount of nitrogen
in the soil is going to directly have an
effect on the plant if it's really green
you're giving it too much nitrogen
because a pepper plant does not need to
be a
super dark green the the leaves of the
the leaves of the pepper plant should be
a light - kind of a lime green you don't
want them to be a deep forest green that
just means they're getting far too much
nitrogen and it's going to be growing
more than its fruiting and so you might
have a really healthy plant in the end
it's going to be large but how much
Rooter you're getting and that's really
what matters the next thing is
phosphorus you don't want to have a
whole ton of phosphorus in the soil
either or a fertilizer that favors
phosphorus more or less because that's
going to just give you a lot of fruit
but the plant won't really grow and the
thing is is that a taller plant that
also fruits is going to be better than a
smaller plant that has tons of fruit
because the plant also needs to be able
to sustain the amount of fruit that it's
putting out so it kind of need they kind
of need to go hand in hand the last
thing is obviously potassium potassium
kind of does the same thing as nitrogen
and you don't want too much potassium
either because it will again make the
leaves really green and it will prevent
the plant from producing any flowers
because it's going to be just it's going
to be almost too healthy and that is
going to affect the amount of fruit that
comes on your pepper plants so I
typically go with a very balanced
all-natural organic fertilizer for my
plants a five five five will be fine a
seven seven seven even something like
like a 1012 10 you know I mean something
something that's just not going to be
favoring too much in any of the
categories of the NPK and the last thing
we have to do is just water these in now
when you're watering pepper plants the
amount of water you give them does not
have to be a torrential drenching they
do not need to be that wet all the time
pepper plants are actually some of the
plants that can be a little more drought
tolerant when you when you water plant
all the time it can actually stress the
plant out and if you've ever seen your
leaves curling downwards or up sometimes
they curl up sometimes they curl down
but often times when they curl it's
caused by something called pepper leaf
oedema and that is actually an over
watering of the plant the the cells in
the in the plant leaf will actually
expand and
well and it will cause the leaf to bow
down words and and that actually can
stress the plant and cause harm to fruit
and flower production as well so you
just want to make sure that you let them
dry out in between waterings you do not
need to water them all the time and it's
going to lead to a far healthier and far
more successful pepper plant so I thank
you all for tuning in for this growing
guide hopefully you all enjoyed
hopefully you learn something new I do
hope you have a very successful year for
growing peppers and if you do let us
know how this episode helped in the
comments box below also if you have any
more ideas for any growing guy do you
like to see post that in the comments
box below you can also see all the other
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all the growing guys we've done so until
next episode this is luke from the my
garter channel hoping you all are
growing big or going home i'll catch you
all later see ya bye
