Last year my Big Bertha bells, my Sweet Bananas, my mild jalapenos, and one of my reg. jalapenos are the only ones that produced constantly from June to October. All my others (3 other bells and 4 others mediums) wilted and/or died from neglect and/or soil problems. I tend to neglect my peppers starting in August (excpet jalapenos) but those Big Berthas and Sweet Bananas refused to stop growing and producing.

To be honest, I usually grow them just for fun except for using a few in my breakfast burritos and salsa. The others are given away or thrown out. This year, though, I ate a few sweet bananas after they turned orange to red and they were impressive.

Ilene,

Peppers are easy, so don't let them intimidate you! Just think of them as spoiled children....as long as they get their way and you give them EXACTLY what they want, they'll do what you want. (Not that I know any children like that. LOL)

I have grown several dozen varieties of peppers over the years and about the only thing they have in common is that they are picky, picky, picky!

I love to grow peppers.....sweet, hot and ornamental, but it has taken me lots and lots of experimentation to get them to do what I want for them to do, which is to produce a steady crop throughout the growing season. And, in order to get them to do what I want, I have to do what they want. (So, I guess the peppers have trained me to do what they want, right?) By the way, from reading your post I think you have 98% of this already figured out, so I am just reinforcing what you already know.

What do peppers want (and need)?

1. Full sun. I will qualify this by saying that sometimes the intensity of the mid July to late August sun will cause the fruit to have sunscald, but there's ways to work around that. And, sometimes I do put some shadecloth or sheets over them to keep late summer sun from just burning them up. Also, in horticultural terms, "full sun" requirements can be met with only 6 to 8 hours of sun a day for most plants, and you know that plants in our climate can get significantly more than that, so you may want to plant them in a location where they don't get more than 8 hours or so.

2. Well-drained soil. I have had them grow equally well in well-amended black clay, red clay, caliche clay and sandy/silty soil. The key is just tons of organic material added to ensure good drainage. Also, they love nitrogen, so I like to amend their soil with more manure than I generally put in tomato beds.

3. They HATE being exposed to cold temps. Early exposure to cold temps in the spring can impair their ability to produce fruit for the entire season. (It took me a long time to really grasp this because I love to plant early.)

4. They crave attention. I think that peppers could be thought of as the "diva" of the garden. For them, it really is "all about me".

WHAT WORKS:

1) Planting peppers from transplants. (I know you know this, but thought I'd throw it in for any newbies who might be reading.) You can direct sow peppers in the spring after the soil is really warm, but you won't usually won't get a harvest from these plants until fall. It is best to set them out when they are 5, 6 or 7 weeks old, BUT I have started them really early some years, and kept them growing in paper cups until they were 12 to 16 weeks old before setting them out, and they grew just fine.

2) Keeping the transplants inside and good and warm until the ground and air temperatures are really, really warm. Plant them in their permanent location only after the soil temp is 55 degrees or above for several consecutive days. (You can speed up the warming-up of the soil by covering it with black plastic for a couple of weeks, but the air temps. need to be warm also.) IF peppers are exposed to soil temps below 55 degrees, the roots can be seriously damaged. The plants may recover and grow just fine, but the pepper production likely will be negatively impacted. I plant peppers about 2 to 3 weeks after I set out tomatoes in a normal year (i.e., when I set out tomatoes on time, not early).

Once the pepper transplants are getting too tall to fit underneath the lights on my light shelf, I carry them outside every day and inside every night. This way they can benefit from the sunlight and warmth without suffering the nighttime coolness.

3) Understand that peppers are very much like large-fruited tomatoes when it comes to setting fruit: ideal temps result in ideal production. The plants set fruit best when the nighttime lows remain below 60 degrees and the daytime highs are around 80. That is a small window of opportunity in our climate. Don't get me wrong, plenty of peppers WILL set fruit at other temps, but it is while they are in this ideal range that you will get the best fruit set. You may notice, especially in VERY hot years, the fruit that sets at higher temps is not of the best quality--the walls may remain very thin and the fruit is often misshapen. Once high temps are consistently in the 90s, fruit doesn't set very well. However, just keep watering and feeding the plants and they will bloom and set fruit in the fall under the more moderate temperatures.

4) They like lots of moisture but not soggy soil, which is why they grow so well in raised beds and well-draining containers. If they have inadequate moisture while the fruit is growing, the peppers will grow slowly and additional bloom/fruit set may not occur. Peppers really hate to wilt, so try to keep them evenly moist.

Remember that heat is NOT the only cause of plant wilt. Many plants wilt when their fruit is TOO WET and that may have been the problem last year, when you think about how excessively wet it was!

5) I also think that it does matter which peppers you choose to grow. I get the best production from those that are considered early-maturing varieties, which ought to give you ripe fruit 65 to 80 days after their transplanting date. One of my all-time (and relatively new) favorites is Blushing Beauty.

Your hybrid (F1) plants may give you plants in the F2 generation that are fairly true to type. It is sort of the luck of the draw. Some hybrids grow out consistently for many successive generations, and some don't. I think a lot depends on how complicated their parentage was.

6) Spacing is criticial. To get really good production, space them 18" to 24" apart. If they are too close, production can be impaired, unless they are one of the varieties that stays REALLY small.

7) They love to eat. It is hard to overfeed peppers because they thrive on nitrogen. If you plant them at the proper time AND your transplants are about 6 or 7 weeks old, healthy and disease/insect-free, you should see blossoms about 18 to 24 days after the transplants are set out in the garden (or container). I like to feed them when this first set of blooms occur. By feeding them, you are giving them the energy to turn those blooms into fruit AND to set more blooms and make more fruit. If you do not feed them at this time, that first bloom set may be all you get for a long time. Use a food that is heavy in nitrogen for best results.

Finally, about black spots on the peppers. Usually the black spots indicate either a fungal disease or a bacterial disease. Spraying the plants periodically with a baking soda spray can help to head this off. If you had black spots on peppers in one location, rotate your peppers to a different location the next year because the fungal spores can overwinter and attack the next season's crops.

IF you go out of town for a few days in the hottest part of the summer, you may return and find brown to black spots that probably are sunscald/sunburn. They start out at beige to brown blister-like spots on the skin of the peppers but may turn black after a few days, especially in a wet year.

Don't give up on your peppers....just spoil those cranky little things!

Dawn

Wow, Scott, I'm going to have to give you my recipe for sweet and sour pork and for pepper steak. Then you'll have a use for those peppers! Any peppers I don't use right away I core and cut into recipe sized pieces and freeze. I also use the peppers to make veggie pizza.

Dawn, thank you for all that information. I'm going to paste it into a document and save it to refer to. Some of my pepper seed has come up and others have grown some kind of mold. I have more seed, I'll try again. Truly, I am bell pepper challenged.

Well,there's worse things than being "bell pepper challenged"! Hang in there and you're master this challenge.

As much as I love gardening, I have to admit that I have learned the most by failing at growing a particular plant, and having to work at it until I get it right.