Our peppers are doing pretty well, their leaves are dark green and they’re about 1-2ft tall. We have some fruit on our Lady Belles, some jalapenos, and one of the Beaver Dam plants has 2 or 3 fruit on it. It’s been really warm and dry the last month, they seem to like it.
My two 7-pot plants are about 20in tall, with no buds on them yet. My three Habanero plants have put on a good growth spurt and have lots of tiny buds on them.
cool, subdood.
have you noticed that your hotter peppers produce later than the lower scoville types? the hottest i’m growing are datils, and they’ve put out blossoms, but i don’t see any developing pods yet.
Hey EaT, hard to say as I havent grown a lot of the really hot peppers. Last year my Serrano, Bulgarian Carrot and Habanero were my hottest varieties, and they seemed to actually produce before my milder peppers like Padron, Ancient Sweet, Beaver Dam, and the bell peppers. My Serrano and Padron plants ended up looking more like bushes, they were huge (about 3ft tall and 2ft wide). Last year we had a bumper pepper crop.
We planted about 8 jalapenos but they ended up being kinda mild, not really that hot. They also had severe corking, which I attribute to all the rain we had last summer, which might explain why they werent too hot. Even my Habs were just medium hot.
I was out in the tom/pepper plot this evening, and noticed that my 7 pots actually had some tiny little pods on them (!!!), and the Habs also had some similarly sized pods on them too. As of now, my Ancient Sweet, Aconcagua and Balloon plants don’t have anything on them yet. I have two of the Balloon, and they are at least 2ft tall, and empty as far as I can tell.
These plants are in a patch with 33 huge (4-6ft) tomato plants and those aren’t exactly pumping out fruit either, so it may be the plot being a bit poor of nutes, particularly P and K.
Must be nice to be able to have a second year pepper plant, but being in Cali, I guess it’s actually possible. I don’t know if I’ll have enough time for my 7 pots to produce mature pods this season. I don’t know how fast they’ll take once the pods show up. I got the seeds from @thepodpiper, maybe he could answer that question?
thanks for the rundown, dood.
the datil should be about as hot as the habs.
one thing i’d like to learn as I care for the pepper plants: their longevity. I’ve read of pepper plants that have lived eight to nine years, and now that I know about drainage holes (!) for the planters, i’m going to try my darnedest to keep these babies alive at least that long.
Peppers are indeed actually perennials but will only survive outdoors if climate permits. That is why in certain climates they are overwintered indoors.
The heat this summer will play a big part for the lack of pods, it is the night time temps stay to high that is causing blossom drop. If you are not getting any flowers then that may be a nutrient issue. I use a P number up around 50 when I want my peppers to flower.
If my 7-pots run out of time, and don’t ripen any mature pods before it gets too cold, is it possible to dig them out of the garden and transplant them into pots for indoor growing? Does this type of transplant have a high rate of success?
Both of them have very tiny pods on them now, so I don’t know how long it’ll take for them to ripen.
What kind of high P nutrient do you use?
transplanting greenhouse grown peppers to outdoors. Type Portuguese Red hots.
My question… the peppers are about a foot high in small pots, several peppers on each plant and rootbound.
I’m going to plant outside tomorrow… a sunny hot day. Would it be better to loosen up the roots so they’re not root bound or just plant as is, figuring the roots will find their way outside of tight pack? I’m afraid if I loosen up the roots will be greater transplant shock
I’ll provide some protection against the Sun for a few days.
thanks!
@subdood_ky_z6b is hard at work (or maybe hardly at work because of the heat) these days so I will try to answer for him.
The recommendation is to gently loosen up and untangle the root ball of the plant.
With that said, I personally like to do this while keeping some of the root ball soil intact with the plant. By that I mean just partially loosening and untangling the roots at the bottom.
Provide water and shade until the plant is recovered from the shock of the transplant.
What Sam said…
Yes, I’ve been very busy working at the greenhouse, it was a “pleasant” 90 degrees in there today, in addition to the humidity. I thought yesterday was bad, but today was stifling. Thankfully we got off for the 4th of July weekend, we usually work on Saturdays.
My job is really putting a crimp in my home work, I really only have time for mowing and a bit of gardening. The rest of the farm is falling into neglect because I just don’t have much time, plus some days, like today, I am pretty much wrung out when I get home.
I get to take tomatoes home every Thursday, but for some reason we have 48 plants in the garden this year, in varying states of growth. Yeah, that’s a lot of plants, but I’m just not that into it this year. We also planted corn, beans, okra and peppers, but the corn never came up, I guess bad seed. Our peppers and some beans got washed out by flooding rains, the peppers look puny, the beans are mostly okay, but need weeding and trellised. Okra did come up, tho.
My fruit trees are slowly being robbed by tree rats, I imagine. Most of my small crop of peaches are gone, and some apples, but deer could be responsible for some of that.
Most of my blackberries are producing now, getting a good crop of Osage and Traveler, the Triple Crown canes are pretty loaded, but are still green. Got a good crop of gooseberries, my wife picked about 2 quarts last weekend.
Bob, glad to see that your working happily.
Well, I planted some hot peppers (I know you really like the hots) this year that were started from seed - 3 or 4 Anaheim Chili and 3 or 4 Jalapeno M plants. Have not had hots in many years. They give me indigestion and cause me to have trouble with sleep. So I have to be careful with them. Also. planted some sweets - Cubanelle, Sweet Banana and Cal Wonder Bells that are in a different area of the garden from the hots. Already have baked some stuffed Bell peppers!
Yeah, I like the hot ones, but this year we ain’t getting any. None of my pepper seeds germinated (bad starter mix), and like I said, the ones I did plant got washed out or look poor. I just got in from staking up some of our tomatoes before it started raining.
I wouldn’t say I’m happily working, it’s a job that wrings me out about daily. Never thought I’d be picking 'maters in a greenhouse at 56, most of the people I work with are half my age. When I tell them when I graduated high school their jaws drop. I think I’m still there to prove I can hang with the youngsters…
In just over 3 months, I figure I’ve picked about 150,00 pounds, and I’m one of their slower pickers. It is an impressive setup, I must say, though. Rows upon rows and thousands of plants, it’s mind boggling. Our side of the facility is 30 acres, so you can imagine the scale.