Whats the secret to growing peppers?

Year in and year out my peppers plants don't do well. I get peppers and some plants just give and give, but my plants don't get very tall and some don't produce many peppers.
I mostly grow greens and jalapenos.

Anybody got the silver bullet?????

I don't know much about peppers, but I know some plants are particular about what the soil ph is.

Soil is a major player, when I moved in with my now husband one of my first projects was to dig a small garden out back. The first year was a total flop, that fall I purchase a four garbage cans full of organic compost and dug it in. The next year I had so many peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and ended buying canning jars to preserve for the winter. Worked for me.

Heather

With the cost of food going up I bet alot more folks will be putting in gardens.

Matt - growing peppers is one of those things I love to do but up here we have a very short growing season - so I have changed my gardening a little to help get the most out of my pepper plants. I have varied what I grow over the years - mostly Anaheims, Garden Salsas, Green, Yellow, Red and Orange Bells, Jalapenos and Habeneros. This year is stickly Bells and Habeneros.

What I do is mix up compost (manure and compost mix) with top soil and place in used tires I have in the back yard. Looks like heck but the tires absorb the summer heat and retain moisture. Once all the plants are in the tires I cover everything with about 2" of compost to help keep everything from drying out.

Attachment 90838

Works for me - if you have any questions - let me know.

well drained soil mixed with compost. around 6.5 ph. lots of bone meal and kelp meal. composted chicken poop is good too. this formula is good for tomatoes also.

Steve -

Please don't tell me that, that is what your pepper plants look like this year.

Matt - sorry, that photo was taken 2 years ago. Last year's crop was shredded by golf ball size hail on June 21 but still managed to freeze about 1/2 gallon of sliced up Habeneros. This year's crop was planted just last weekend and are only about 8" to 12" tall.

We have raised beds with soil that drains well and we fertilize often. The plants in the ground out produce the ones in pots by quite a large margin. We are getting lots of serrano peppers right now and several jalapenos, but we have really enjoyed a new pepper for us, the lipstick pepper. The LOML made a batch of salsa tonight using fresh tomatoes and peppers from the garden. We have hit 100 degrees every day for about 2 weeks in a row now, so we water almost every day.

Thanks for the info guys and gals.

I'm going to try the raised bed approach.

Hopefully - salsa in a month or so!!

MMMMMMM salsa.

Pepper do better closer together. The flowers are wind pollinated and don't produce a lot of pollen so having the plats touch each other when mature helps set peppers. Second, if you are a smoker, wear gloves when working on your plants as they are susceptible to a virus that comes from tobacco. I don't recall the details, but my Dad who was a smoker always had problems until he started wearing gloves when working around his pepper plants.

I buy the "Charlie Brown" plants after Mother's Day, hit 'em with Miracle Grow for vegetables, and by Flag Day I am eating peppers (and Rolaids), and my tomatoes are doing well. I just love lazy gardening. Weeds get pulled periodically, and the volunteers from last years late crops keep us in veggies all summer long. I use raised beds for my veggies and a separate patch for my blackberries. If the berries all mature, a bumper crop this year! Yippee!

We have a single jalapeno in a pot and it seems to have forgotten that it's supposed to grow. :(