My experience growing peppers is this normal?

[Gary350]

I plant pepper plants that I buy in trays at the Omish garden center. I plant 1 row about 6 to 8 plants in mid April, by late July plants are 2 ft tall and starting to blossom. Peppers are slow to come I get a few peppers late August, a few more Sept and even more in Oct. but nothing to brag about. Last frost is about April 20 and no frost again until late Oct. We usually have rain every day until mid June then it is dry as the desert until late August then the rain comes again lots and lots of rain almost every day. This year we had very little rain in the fall.

I dig a hole about the size of a 8" flower pot and fill it with a 50/50 mix of compost and soil for each plant. If I fertilize plants and peppers get larger but they don't come any sooner or produce larger quantities of peppers. I have tomatoes, beans, corn, squash the first week of July but no peppers until mid to late August.

Sweet bell peppers are very slow to produce I get a few peppers by the end of August. Buy the end of Oct the plant have produced maybe 10 to 15 peppers total for the season. Is that normal?

Chili peppers are slow to produce too but I get more chili peppers per plant than sweet bell peppers and they are late producers too.

Last year I experemented with fertilizer plants were 7 ft tall and sweet bell peppers were 5" diameter but the plants still only produced about 20 or so peppers for the whole season.

Is it normal for peppers to produce so late in the season it is about 4 months from the time I plant to the time I pick my first pepper?

[applestar]

Maybe it's the variety? Peppers come in large range of days to maturity, just like tomatoes. There are some really early ones in the 50's but most I think are upper 60's to 70's. Later varieties are upwards of 80's and some hot peppers run into 90's and 100's. Lorax recently posted that in her climate where both bells and hot peppers grow as perennials, they don't attain peak production until 2nd or 3rd year or more.

I think you might be planting them too early if last average frost is April 20 and you're planting in mid-April. They suffer a set back and sulk if you plant them while it's still cold. I've heard that you should plant them around when you plant beans.

They also don't like too much heat and they don't like wet feet. Maybe it's the combination of too little sun and too much rain when they need to be comfortable (70's/60's), then too hot and too dry in July and Aug then just as they're getting conditioned to the sunny drought situation, getting too little sun and too much water (due to all that rain).

Through all this, you didn't mention the temp, but I had the impression it gets pretty hot where you are. Not much you can do about the rain, but maybe raised bed for initally warmer soil and to keep the roots from drowning, then shade cloth during the hot and sunny might help?

[Gary350]

We do have some crazy weather. It typically rains most of the winter, spring and fall and it only snows about once every 5+ years or so. When we get snow it is usually 1/2" and melts by 12 noon. It gets cold at night down to 17 degrees sometimes for several weeks but warms up in the 50s and 60s during the day most of the winter. Sometimes we have freak 80 degree weather in February for a week then it gets cold again. Our worst weather is often first week of March when we have snow. We typically have rain just about every day all spring and all fall and it is hot and dry as the desert all summer June, July, Aug. When it rains in spring and fall we usually have sun then it rains for a few hours then sun comes out again. Sometimes we have over cast days with no rain.

This year we had a lot of rain in the spring and a really big rain 14" in 6 hours one day and 11" the next day in mid May. Rain stopped and it turned hot about mid June. We had 7 weeks of 100 degree weather every day from last week of June, July and first of August with almost no rain. We had a small rain mid Aug and another small rain late August. A few small rains in Sept and Oct and Nov. It rained hard last night and it is raining now not suppost to stop raining until tomorrow we have flash flood warnings. Temperature today was about 60 deg it has been in the 70s during the day for a week. It is going to turn cold 29 degrees at night for next 4 nights and warm up to the 60s during the day. Then warm up to the 70s next week.

I figure the plants in those plant trays are at least 1 month old maybe older. I found one of my plastic tags that came with the sweet bell peppers all it says is, sweet bell peppers, 65 days.

My garden is on a slight down hill slope its not much maybe 3" from north to south north being the lowest and maybe 8" from west to east. West being the lowest. It is enough slop to keep it from being a swamp.

I bought my plants tomatoes plants first but didn't plant them until about last week of April I had to wait for dry soil. Then it rained and I planted peppers. Then we had the flood about 25" of rain in 2 days the peppers were under water, turned yellow and died. I replanted the peppers about the 4th week of May. Then the drought came about 3rd week of June only a few rains until about mid August. I watered the pepper plants every day I had a dirt donut circle around each plant to hold water I can bump in a 15 ounce can of water the dirt circle holds it in until the soil soaks it all up.

The weather her is pretty crazy from the sound of your discription it sounds like peppers are too wet then they are too dry then too wet again. I have lots of organic material in my clay soil. It holds water for about a week after a good rain but not if it is 100 degrees every day for 6 weeks. I water the plants only not many weeds or grass will grow during the drought so I don't have to hoe the garden during June, July or August. Tomatoes always do great I didn't water them much. My corn and beans did fine too I did not water them either. Squash did ok better than usual I had only 1 squash last summer and had several this summer. I can never get egg plant to grow it always dies. Okra always does good it starts out slow like the peppers and doesn't really get going good until August. Every year for 32 years I say I am moving away from this crazy weather but I am still here been here too long.

[cherishedtiger]

I heard rumor (someone let me know if I am wrong) but I heard that peppers just didn't produce this year like they have in the past.
I know my peppers 7 different varieties - were all very sparse in producing. I would get peppers but a couple here and a couple there. I would say give it a go again next year, see what happens. With all the weird weather everyone was experiencing last spring/summer I think it was all up in the air as to what would grow or wouldn't.

[garden5]

Sometimes it is a combination of both weather and varieties. Like Apps said, try different varieties. You will sometimes have one variety that does not produce for you and another that does very well. What's even stranger is someone not too far from you may experience their best harvest from the variety that gave you your worst. There was a discussion like this here the other day.

You temps do seem like they would be stressful on the plants as well, but there is only so much you can do with that. Pretty much, you can just amend your soil so that it can handle the rains and droughts (it sounds like you have) and then hope for the best.

Also, you will often find that when you buy commercially grown plants, they can often be root-bound. This will set them back a bit. You also indicated that you put yours in when it was still cool, which can also set them back a bit.

I have no room to talk on this last point. My avg. last frost is mid-May. This year, I set the plants out in the third week of may (it was unusually warm) and got the first peppers about mid-July. However, these were only a few; the most were harvested mid-August through early September.

Since you have a pretty good growing season, I would wait next year until May when your soil may be warmer. Also, you could try different parts of the garden as some plants just seem to do better in a particular part over another .

You can also find several early varieties that you can grow yourself from seed if you are interested in doing that. This also allows you to control pot-size, thus preventing a plant from getting root-bound. Lastly........never give up! Keep trying different things and you will eventually find something that works for you.