pointer80
Senior Member
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 1:50 pm
Location: northern Michigan

question on watering peppers

Hello all, I have a question on watering my peppers, I have drip irrigation and well drained soil and I have 1 gallon per hour drip emitters for all my plants and I run them for 1 hour a day in the morning. My peppers look very healthy (as seen in picture) so I am assuming they are fine but I am wondering would they benefit from less watering? They look great but don't seem to be going crazy like the rest of the garden or is it still just too early for peppers to really take off? Thanks for any info.
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imafan26
Mod
Posts: 13962
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Peppers are slow starters. They don't take off until they are nearly 2 months old. Check how deep the water goes in an hour. Deep watering makes the roots go deeper which will make them more drought tolerant. If you dig down in the soil you can tell how deep the water is going. Check how moist the soil is before you water. If it is still damp you may be able to space out the watering more. You will need to periodically check while the peppers are still growing since they will need more water as they mature and start to make fruit.

pepperhead212
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2852
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:52 pm
Location: Woodbury NJ Zone 7a/7b

That's more than I have mine set for - plants that size don't use a gal a day, but then, I don't know how well drained your soil is. I like to set mine for every 3 days (though I just set it back to 2 days, with this horrible heat wave I am in!), and let it soak the soil deeply, as this seems to generate deeper root growth.

I notice where you are located; I am farther south, yet this season my peppers were horribly stunted by cool nights, well into June, which almost never happens. We had a warmer than normal May, but nights were in the 50s almost all the time! So I assume that yours may be stunted from the same weather conditions, and just haven't taken off yet. My habaneros, especially, were very small, until the last few weeks, and they took off growing!



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