Did you plant the same variety of pepper?

Sometimes these things aren't obvious. Last year, my peppers hardly produced anything and this year there are peppers everywhere even though the plants are in the same spot.

It may be the hot, dry weather. Maybe watering them more will help. You might try hand pollinating the blooms. Maybe your pollinating insects are taking a break this year. Are your peppers being shaded by anything else in your garden? Maybe they are not getting enough sun.

I've had much of the same problem with many things. (CT) Peppers finally got going and are producing . Seems that everything bolted(?) this year. Even a lot of my perennial herbs poked their heads up and grew a few inches and started going to seed. A bad year for purple too as my purple basil and peppers are still in a frozen state. I would wait. I was going to yank my habenaros last week as there was no sign of life but now they have quite a few growing. Nothing like last year but better than nothing. I did cut the roots a bit with a shovel but can't really say that's what did it.

I had the same trouble with eggplant this year. I would have thought the heat and extra sunshine this year would have had them growing leaps and bounds, but they have literally not grown one new leaf since I planted them. I saw one flower that never developed into a fruit. I thought it was kind of odd. I had a good layer of mulch on them that I thought would keep them comfortable and moist, but, I can't figure it out. Better luck next year I guess.

Thanks. I did get some Super Phosphate and fed them with that... and will water more often. The problem is no blooms. Phosphate is supposed to help with that. We'll see.... weirdly, the eggplants (same row!) and tomatoes are both doing great, and I thought all had similar requirements.

I planted several varieties, including some the same as last year. They are not shaded. It's very mysterious!

I have 4 hot pepper plants - 2 jalapenos and 2 habaneros. One of the jalapenos has 1 tiny little pepper on it. The rest are duds. Nothing. Not even a blossom.

I changed my location this year since I thought my previous location was too shaded. And I had gotten small pepper crops the past 2 years. So I moved the hot peppers over near the patio where they get lots of sun, and hopefully the benefit of the patio heat. But it doesn't seem to really be making a difference this year.

One of my new gardening friends is having a wonderful pepper crop this year. She told me that pepper plants are perenial. So she overwintered her pepper plants (not sure where or how) and she has been picking peppers since late June. Maybe I'll have to find something to swap with her!

I wouldn't yank them out quite yet. Our red peppers and eggplant were doing absolutely nothing as well. We went away for a few days a week ago and had all intentions of ripping them out on our return and came back to blossoms, blossoms, blossoms. Go figure. Today I have half a dozen inch long eggplants. They are growing so fast, you can almost watch them grow. Now if the watermelon would stop blooming and start producing fruit, I'd be in veggie heaven.

StacyNeil -

This won't help for this year, but for next year consider planting a few Ace peppers, which you can get seed for from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Over a number of years, I've found that they produce for me better than any other pepper out there, even when weather is too hot, too cool, too dry, too wet . . you get the picture. They really do seem less fussy about their requirements to bloom and to set peppers, regardless of adverse weather conditions. I always plant Aces and then try a few other varieties, and the Ace have done best every year for as many years as I can remember (perhaps 20), regardless of what I plant with them.

nhbabs, I love to hear a recommendation that has been time tested like that. Have you ever visited the Cornell Vegetable varieties site? You can rate any of the varieties of vegetables and look up the most recommended varieties of vegetables. I looked up peppers and the most recommended one, is 'New Ace' and the second is 'Ace'.

I tried a new one I like this year. 'Giant Marconi' was a long sweet pepper. It produced 5 peppers on one plant with very little attention. I've noticed this year, that the peppers are ripe very early. I have been picking red peppers for about 10 days now. I'm usually still waiting for them at the end of August. I only get 6 hrs of sun, so that is a lot for me. I'll have to try the 'Ace' next year too.

I wish I planted more pepper plants this year. [g]

Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell Vegetable Varieties

Thanks for the Cornell link, PM2.

I haven't really been aware of 'Ace' vs 'New Ace', so I'm not sure what I have planted recently. I guess I'll have to see if I can find that info. My memory was just 'Ace', since that's what I planted first, but I'm not sure.

I will qualify with the comment that 'Ace' peppers aren't as big as some I've grown, and are more medium wall thickness, but that's better than no peppers in my view. I'd rather have bunches of fist-sized peppers than just one larger pepper.

My best warm pepper (it's not really hot, just mildly so) is 'Hungarian Hot Wax', though this year I found 'Hungarian Wax' and hoped that it was the same thing. I'm not sure how it will produce since it seemed to get a very slow start, at least partly because I have been traveling for work and while DH will water, he hasn't weeded. So the garden gets thoroughly weeded for a week and then they grow for two weeks while I'm gone; some of the pepper plants haven't liked that.

My favorite long sweet pepper stopped being produced several years ago, much to my dismay. I haven't yet found one to rival it for flavor, size, or number of peppers, including 'Giant Marconi', which I have tried. I think that growing peppers this far north will always be a bit of a gamble with our late starting, short season. I'm ready to go back to raised beds with hoop tunnels over them, which seemed to get the season rolling much earlier when I had those available.

Here's another recommendation for Ace. I grew it this year for the first time, and the harvest of peppers has been remarkable. I have around eight plants and I have harvested dozens of peppers. I no sooner harvest them than another round is well on their way to harvest.

Who knew there were serious vegetable gardeners here? lol That was the first gardening I did and I love it.

We grew halapeno last year and they really produced. I will have to try the Hungarian Wax and Ace and New Ace next year. I'm going to have to grow them in pots though.

Do you have a new long pepper favorite, Babs? We don't stuff peppers, so I like the long ones better.

That's a LOT of peppers, tree oracle! Eight plants, that seems like a number I could aspire to next year. Thanks for the encouragement. We eat a lot of peppers.

We have raised beds and I have some old windows around that I'm planning on constructing some kind of top to try to grow some greens later into winter.

After having gotten 1 jalapeno all season long, I noticed this morning that I have 2 tiny jalapenos starting to form. *If* they grow - that will bring me to a grand total of 3 jalapenos all year.

Absolutely nothing on the Habaneros this year.

It's been so hot and dry I would have thought it would be a good year for peppers. Oh well.

Habaneros are seriously long season plants. We usually don't get much, if anything from them the first year, so the big harvests are from plants that were overwintered. Right now I'm looking out the window are two Habs just covered with orange peppers. It's actually quite scary, just thinking of all the Scoville units it represents. My DH makes a good habanero-peach preserve, but a whole batch of that only takes a couple of peppers.

I've never heard of Peach/Habanero preserves. It sounds interesting.

How did you winterover your plants, mad_gallica?

We have been making gaspacho with our sweet peppers and freezing it. It's delicious.

Sorry, but I don't have a new favorite long pepper, PM2. I haven't yet found one that produces well enough to give it the garden space. I also haven't found one with the wonderful flavor that I got from Montego, which had thick, crispy walls, grew up to 9" long, had great flavor, and produced well even here with our short seasons. I wish someone would start producing the seed again!

I don't know if I'd be considered a serious vegetable gardener at his point in my life, since my current garden plot has more shade and root competition than I'd like. We do, however, eat quite a bit from the garden most years, though less this year because it's not getting much care and the woodchucks have done much damage. We are getting potatoes, garlic, basil, onions, squash, peppers, and tomatoes, and I need to get out there to see what else has started producing while I was out of town. There are a bunch of veggies I don't plant since DH doesn't like them and it's not worth planting just for me when I can harvest a few from friends or relatives. So I am a rather casual vegetable gardener, with years of rather more serious experience to fall back on since I started growing veggies in high school just to have fresh tomatoes and have only missed a very few years since. I tend to grow lots of the veggies that we eat lots of, but it's a limited range of veggies.

We just bring the peppers inside, and keep them in a sunny window. The biggest problem is aphids, and it really is a big problem. When it gets really bad, the peppers get hosed off in the shower, and sprayed with pyrethrin spray for indoor plants. At this point, habs are the only ones we bother with. Cayennes are a very good short season hot pepper, as are serranos.

Gee, I didn't think it was that easy. Too bad you couldn't bring in a few ladybugs with them. [g] I'm going to try that next year, thanks.

"Too bad you couldn't bring in a few ladybugs with them. [g]"

I hate to tell you this, but the ladybugs that winter in my house (oodles of them as it's an old farm house with lots of spaces for them to hide in) don't do a thing with the aphids that come in with my overwintered tender perennials. Maybe it's a day length thing and they are just too drowsy during the winter, but even during those winter days with snow outside causing bright reflected sun the indoor ladybugs do little if anything to control my aphids and whitefly. I'm conidering using yellow plastic cards with tanglefoot on them, which is supposed to attract and control whitefly. As MG suggested, the shower works pretty well when things get too bad.

Babs, I guess it's the ladybug's 'dormant' season. [g] The shower idea doesn't sound so bad. I'm not in the habit of wintering over much, so I haven't had any aphids or such in the house. I'm taking a few cuttings this year and collecting seed and that's about it. Except for houseplants that go out for the summer.

Hi folks-
Thanks for all your comments and suggestions...
I tried phosphate and did get some blossoms... hoping they will have time to mature , but I'm not sure they will now that the weather's FINALLY turning cooler.
FWIW I planted a variety, including a few Ace, CA Wonder, Lady Bell, etc. None are doing any better than the others.
Next year I will be laying soaker hoses as well as keeping a closer eye on how much nitrogen the pepper bed gets!
Stacey

If it makes you feel any better, I talked with a market gardener yesterday who said their peppers and eggplants didn't do anything this year.

FWIW - I brought my 4 pepper plants (2 habaneros, 2 jalpenos) inside shortly after Colombus Day. They spent about 2 weeks - until Halloween - on my 3-season porch. They are now in my living room, in front of an east facing window. I keep a lamp on over near the peppers most of the day.

These plants are looking the best they have looked since I got them and potted them. No blossoms, but lots of new leaf growth. Maybe I'll actually get some peppers next summer.

I just harvested another 18 bell peppers from my Ace and Orion pepper plants this weekend. Those two are definitely the ticket. I grew all of my peppers in raised beds that are about two feet high and contain really rich soil. Maybe that was the difference.

I missed this question the first time around. The following is available on-line and may also be found at Lowes. Many of their stores are now carrying it. The product is a 4# bag of Espoma Bio-tone Starter Plus all natural plant food which contains Mycorrhizae and beneficial bacteria. Check the package to make sure it includes all that I have listed. You seriously need this in your bag of garden 'tricks'. At planting time add a scant handful to seedling planting holes. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, plus other veggies, too. Add a handful to container grown plants.

Not every plant utilizes Mycorrhizae fungus, but many do. Try using it next year to see if it increases your yields. I think you will see difference.

Then, there is the continuing battle that rages. Should pepper plants be spaced close to each other so foliage touches or spaced apart? I tend to fall on the close planting side after years of experimenting and plant mine 7 inches apart. Works for me.

Joining the conversation 5 years late!...

Prairiemoon2 - just curious...did you abandon the SQ Ft gardening method...sand are you aware he's promoting his "new and improved" method, which supposedly almost totally replaces the previous method? (I haven't researched it much myself yet...)

FACE

And NH Babs, re: aphids....you can try a couple of smaller preying mantises (if you're OK with them in the house)...but also, I've found - at elast, out in the garden - shiny aluminum foil plates (if you're not too paranoid about the alleged potential contribution to Alzheimer's - wait...what was I talking about...?)...or for that matter, anything highly reflective, facing up from soil level seems to discourage/scatter them effectively (that's why they're almost always on the underside of the leaves - very direct-light sensitive)

Hi MusicSub - Well, I wouldn't say I abandoned it, no and I hadn't heard there is a new square foot gardening method. I'll have to check it out. I still grow in raised beds and plant fairly close together, but I don't mark out each square foot or pay that much attention to the distance. I'm still paying more attention to other projects, I guess.

This year, I planted in the spring, kept it mulched and watered and barely paid any attention to the vegetable garden at all. It made a difference, I was not as successful with the garden this year. I've had trouble with tree roots invading my veggie beds and I just didn't have time to dig them all out before I got started. It was discouraging.

Speaking of peppers and having no fruit on the plants. I planted Carmen peppers this year. I grew them in the backyard where there is 6hrs of sun and the front yard where there is full sun. I've always planted them in the back and produced peppers by the end of the season. This year the plants in the front grew much larger than those in the back. I'd say double the size. Strangely, same variety of pepper, 3ft apart, in same amount of sun, same amount of fertilizer and water. One Carmen pepper was covered with peppers and nothing on the other one, all season. Plenty of flowers and bees too. I just noticed there are a few tiny peppers on that plant finally, but the other plant has a lot more and already picked a couple of red ones.

The Carmen pepper is a nice elongated pepper and they really produced. I'd say that they have a thin wall though. I really like a juicy Bell pepper and I haven't found one I like yet. I have about a half dozen still left in the back that are almost all red. And a dozen green peppers in the front right now.

Sungold tomato - grew it in the back in 6hrs of sun and full sun in the front. What a difference. The plant in the front is probably triple the size of the one in the back. Pushing out tomatoes to beat the band. Shared them all summer and had more than enough for us. It was our earliest tomato too. I just brought in 5 dinner plates full of ripe tomatoes this morning from one plant. Pretty good for doing very little to the plant all summer. Weekly, half strength Neptune fertilizer and that was about it.