Pepper problems

[Iris_Germany]

Are you successful pepper growers?

Me not. I have problems. Unfortunately.

Maybe you have some ideas how to improve that. Thanks in advance.

First: I grow them outside because all the space in the greenhouse is booked by tomatoes. Is it normal, that they take awfully long to ripen? Maybe you have better weather conditions where you live, but in my allotment, they take until end of September and longer until they have a decent size.

Second: Half of them were eaten by snails (Is there somewhere a killing-emoji?)

Third: This year I took sorts who are famous for "super fast growing" (Rekord Paprika from Hungary. The sort is really called "Rekord" because it grows allegedly like lightning.)

Forth: From the few I could harvest, the seeds got brown immediately, when I wanted to keep some of them. What have I done wrong? I have read somewhere that they were not fully ripened, thus the brown colour. Well, the season was over, it got cold. I could not wait any longer for better ripening.

Another sort I had (Apfel-Paprika/apple pepper) stayed relatively small.

For information: They all got a full sun place and sufficient fertilizing. These two points could not be the raison for the meager crop. But it did rain a lot and the summer came late.

When I see the nice pictures about your pepper crop, I could get envious.

https://www.seeds-gallery.shop/de/st...ika-samen.html


http://www.spicegarden.eu/Samen-unga...apsicum-annuum

[Jungle Jane]

I had a terrible year with tomatoes & peppers I grow everything outside. Worst ever year for peppers,they started off fine,perfect plants with flowers,then we had a heatwave & growth stopped,plants go into survival mode. Then it rained all summer,slugs & snails had a bite of all the peppers on each plant,except one plant hidden amongst other plants including French marigold. Slugs ate a whole (young) courgette plant in about three days,that’s the first time that’s happened. I’ve had peppers ripen in the summer before,I remember dry summers with less slugs & snails about but they do take time to ripen. The mini peppers are good (not this year!) quicker to ripen because of size

[ameno]

I've grown peppers outside on my allotment fairly successfully these last two years. They usually start ripening from mid-August or so.

I would say that growing short-season, early maturing varieties is key. Many sites list a "days to maturity" figure, and you should try and go for varieties listed as 75 days or less. As Jungle Jane says above, smaller ones tend to ripen earlier, too (I've had no luck at all with traditional bell peppers).
I don't know what varieties you can get where you are, but I've had good success this year with Sweet Heat (a very mild, sweet chilli pepper, ripened very well and quite early); Laylak (a Ukrainian variety of medium-sized pointy sweet pepper, starts purple and ripens to red. Heavy cropping and early ripening); and Marconi Yellow (large, long pointy sweet pepper, ripens to yellow. Ripens fairly early, especially for a large-fruited variety).
King of the North and Boneta, on the other hand, started ripening pretty late, despite both promising to be early varieties. You may need to do some experimenting to find which varieties grow best for you.

Next, start them off early indoors, growing them somewhere warm and bright. I start min late February, and by late May when I plant out they are usually 15-20cm tall (still in 8cm pots). Warmth, especially, is key. Grow them on a bright windowsill in a warm room of your house, not in the greenhouse (too cold at night there).
Also, to get a good, quick germination it helps to pre-sprout the seeds first. Lay them on a damp piece of kitchen paper and put that in some tupperware (to keep the moisture in), then place it somewhere warm (I put mine above the radiator, chocked up 10cm or so to prevent them baking). At ideal temperatures (around 30c), they should start sprouting in 3-7 days, and you can then pot the seeds up once they have roots showing. They'll be up much quicker than just sowing direct into pots will give you.
When you plant them out, try to plant them somewhere that gets as much sun as possible. It also helps to plant them through a mulch of black plastic, as this warms the soil (as well as keeping moisture in and suppressing weeds, as any mulch would).
Feed weekly with liquid feed for tomatoes once the first fruit have set.

As for slugs, I find them to be a real problem, too. As you say, they eat all the fruit, and any slightly damaged ones just rot on the plant.
If you are willing to use them, slug pellets help. Otherwise, I've found growing smaller fruited varieties leads to fewer losses, as small-fruited varieties produce lots and lots of fruit, so losing the odd one to slugs isn't so bad. Large fruited ones, on the other hand. produce maybe only half a dozen fruit, so losing even two or three is a big proportion of your total crop.
Also, I experimented this year with growing the peppers at elevation, in bottomless pots placed on the soil, and there was a lot less slug damage than normal. Slugs and snails will climb, but they are a lot less willing to, so it reduces damage, even if it doesn't eliminate it.

[Iris_Germany]

I had a terrible year with tomatoes & peppers I grow everything outside. Worst ever year for peppers,they started off fine,perfect plants with flowers,then we had a heatwave & growth stopped,plants go into survival mode. Then it rained all summer,slugs & snails had a bite of all the peppers on each plant,except one plant hidden amongst other plants including French marigold. Slugs ate a whole (young) courgette plant in about three days,that’s the first time that’s happened. I’ve had peppers ripen in the summer before,I remember dry summers with less slugs & snails about but they do take time to ripen. The mini peppers are good (not this year!) quicker to ripen because of size

That sounds like you have been visiting my garden: The same here!

When I came one evening in my allotment and saw fat, red slugs hanging on top of my pepper plants, munching, I wanted to scream so loud that they all would have fallen off the plants immediatly because the earth quivered. All that work I had with cuddling them from seeds at home to the right size of a decent plant, and then this molluscan terrorists come and destroy everything!

So, when I hear your experiences this season, it sounds like the weather was responsible for the bad pepper harvest and that per se they grow very slowly. A heatwave we had not this year, btw. The years before it was so warm that everything went to dust and the soil was hard as stone, and this year it rained all the time. One does not know anymore what to think about that.

Ok, then I hope for a better next year for us all.

[Plot70]

I put some peppers in and got nothing worth harvesting. Tomatoes all got blight.
Cape gooseberries have proved to be pretty well slug proof. They were planted late as an experiment and most of the fruit is green.
I am going to have a go at covering the roots to overwinter them.
The weather was awful. It started very hot and dry. It was so hot that it stopped growth of many plants before setting fruit. I blame this on the lack of aircraft trails. It then turned cold and wet once wild fires set in and the soot shaded the sun more than aircraft trails normally do.
The squashes did very well and parsnips are good too.
Nothing that needs sun after July did anything worth while.

[Iris_Germany]

Nothing that needs sun after July did anything worth while.
[/QUOTE]

How frustrating.