Hot pepper plants and how to help them grow.

[Beekissed]

For the past two years the hot pepper plants have been a complete bust, stunted and blighted looking and seem to be lacking in some kind of essential nutrient but I'm having trouble pinpointing exactly what that may be.

In my search I found this vid on YT and will venture to say that this fella might have a channel worth subscribing to!

Don't know where he lives, but guessing it's down south a good bit, so has much better soil and growing seasons than do I, but I'll still peruse his channel to see if I can glean any nuggets.

 

[Beekissed]

Turns out hot peppers like a lot of potassium and phosphorus, which is pretty much lacking in acidic soils like mine and I had the solution for it all along, just sitting on the back porch in a bucket....wood ashes.

So, I went out in the rain and side dressed the hot peppers a little with the wood ashes. Yeah, I know they can be caustic when wet but we are going to have rain for the next ten days and these will eventually get wet anyhoo, so kill or cure, they are on the ground next to the peppers.

If I don't correct what is wrong with these peppers I'll be buying peppers for my canning needs this year and I don't like doing that if I can avoid it. Funny thing is the bell pepper plants are thriving and they are planted just 6 ft. away from the hot peppers and, supposedly, they like the same food. What's up with that?

 

[Dave2000]

Peppers like a lot of calcium and if you apply as calcium carbonate (bone meal, egg shells, limestone, chalk, gypsum/plaster/wallboard/etc. and most wood ash too) mixed into the soil, this will bring the soil pH up closer to neutral over time, providing a slow release source over the entire season. Designer/retail bottled calcium supplement liquids that are already a reacted calcium salt will not do that.

Peppers like loose, well draining soil. If yours has a lot of clay then consider mixing in a lot of peat moss or using a compost source with a lot of brown material in it, things like dried out grass clippings, straw, untreated lumber sawdust, coffee grounds, mostly decomposed leaves, etc. Try to water infrequently at first so that the roots have a chance to penetrate and suspend the soil instead of it overly compacting.

Give them some supplemental high-nitrogen fertilizer early in the season but then a low nitrogen fertilizer once they start to bud significantly, to get good initial growth but avoid BER on the pods later which can happen with rapid growth even if your soil has high calcium availability.

Try to avoid allowing them to get a lot of rain, or to sit in soggy soil. If in the ground then a drainage ditch around them, and/or planted in raised mounds may help. It's often helpful with the hotter varieties to let them get larger in pots before transplanting as you can better control the soil composition and drainage, or move them out of the rain if you only have a few, but make sure they are in pots large enough that you don't have to water frequently, more often than every couple days and try not to water enough that it comes out the bottom of the pot, washing away nutrients. Bottom watering instead can also be helpful to avoid that.

 

[Beekissed]

Good info! These peppers are in hard, clay, acidic soils with a 4-6 in. layer of wood chips overlying the soil. We've had rain nearly every day for the past 2 wks...a lot of rain. Everything they hate, they are living with!

Despite all of that, many of them are starting to green up and grow, so time will tell if they produce anything. Lots of buds on them but I keep picking them off. Could be they have been off to a too rough start to recover and produce.

 

[Dave2000]

If their roots stay too wet then most root hairs will rot away and it will stagnate growth for a while. I've had some in the past which just sat there doing almost nothing but looking sickly for a month before the soil had stayed dry long enough then the plants started growing good again.

The trick in that case is to stake and tie them good so that with their degraded roots they aren't harmed by wind, are forced to stand straight up instead of being blown down.

If they are in pots there is something counter-intuitive you can do. Water them excessively, VERY excessively once with fresh out of the tap, water (assuming a municipal source with some form of chlorine in it). Make sure a lot comes out the bottom of the pot. That will flush out and kill some of the nasties in the soil, then they shouldn't be watered again for a long time, nor allowed to be rained on much.