peppers are one of the most fun crops to
grow no matter who you are because
there's really a pepper for everyone you
have your sweet peppers your hot peppers
your super hot peppers your rare
varieties your classic bell peppers your
stuffing peppers you get the picture
in fact there's really a class of
gardener that only grows peppers which
is kind of mind-boggling that there's
something so fascinating about the
pepper that someone would only grow
those in their gardening life and I can
certainly appreciate that dedication and
enthusiasm which is why in today's video
we are going to talk about five
different mistakes you might be making
when you're growing your peppers so I'm
gonna take one of these pepper plants
from my grow back garden it's examine it
we'll use it as our test case and
without further ado cultivate that like
button for 50,000 Scoville units now
let's get into the video let's grab this
beautiful specimen this jalapeno that is
actually overwintered and we'll use this
for our test case
[Music]
mistake number one when growing peppers
is their spacing and more than that
their placement in your garden so again
you have your sweet peppers you have
your hot peppers you have peppers of all
different varieties and you want to
preserve that flavor for the eventual
harvest well peppers really easily cross
pollinate and so especially let's say
you're growing a banana pepper and this
jalapeno right here well if you plant
those right next to each other they may
cross pollinate and those flavor
profiles may actually get messed up so
you may have a pretty spicy banana
pepper or potentially a somewhat mild
jalapeno and if that's fine with you
then that's fine with you but if you do
want to avoid that sometimes it's a good
idea to split your sweets and your hots
into different sections of the garden to
reduce the chance of cross-pollination
also when you have generally just
general spacing small peppers like this
jalapeno maybe a foot apart from each
other is okay as you get to these larger
peppers that bush out a lot more you can
do about 18 inches or so and if you're
really going crazy and you're saving
your pepper for seed it's a good idea to
space it at least 50 feet away from
another variety to really eliminate the
chances of cross-pollination mistake
number two and honestly this is a
mistake with a lot of plans so I
wouldn't sweat it if you make it but try
to avoid it is a problem with watering
so peppers like tomatoes have the
potential to get blossom end rot with
inconsistent watering especially like
putting it through a drought period okay
not watering it and then just flooding
it with water because you forgotten you
want to make up for it things like that
can really stress the plan out and so
really consistent watering what I do
with the grow bags at least is I do grow
bags on drip irrigation so I can just
turn on the valve all these grow bags
behind me get irrigated and then I don't
really have to worry about it too much
another thing you can do is you can
throw some mulch on top and this would
apply to raised beds or any other
container to really just stabilize that
soil moisture so it's not going through
this rapid drying out wetting drying out
wetting period that's going to help
quite a bit
it's shocking how much just properly
watering a plant just eliminates so many
of the problems another problem you're
likely to run into with your peppers is
over loving them is what we call it so
you're fertilizing too much or you're
using too much nitrogen so if you use a
lot of nitrogen with your fertilizer
like if you were to dump some chicken
manure in here or any fertilizer liquid
that's high NPK so the ends really high
that's just gonna lead to a lot of
foliage growth not a lot of fruit
production as you can see this jalapeno
is throwing off a nice amount of fruit I
haven't done a whole lot of fertilizing
here but I did apply a balanced aka
the NPK plus all the trace minerals and
nutrients are relatively balanced in
their ratio to the top so there's a
granular organic fertilizer that I made
myself with some phone meals some blood
meals some chicken manure sort of
different things like that put it on the
top at the beginning of the season and
as it gets watered it will slowly make
its way into the soil the microbes in
the soil will break it down and you have
a really nice blended slow-release
fertilizer so you don't have to go crazy
with it you just really want to avoid
over fertilizing your peppers the next
mistake which I don't really want to
call a mistake so much as an oversight
is the ability to overwinter your pepper
or grow the same pepper two three four
five years in a row so let's say you
like jalapeno is a lot like I do I love
jalapenos well why would I throw this
plant away at the end of the season and
then start a new jalapeno plant from
seed when this one's perfectly capable
of growing over the winter and then
coming back and so what I did is I took
a cut right here I took a cut right here
and there's another one back there that
basically cut it down about two-thirds
or so in November of last year now I
live in a zone that doesn't freeze if I
did I would have taken it inside and
provided a minimal amount of light over
the winter just so that the soil and the
roots don't actually freeze and die I
left mine outdoors but then what I did
is as spring approached I just kept an
eye and what I saw is new growth
starting to sprout out from these thick
woody stems and as you can see this
jalapeno plant is doing really well and
we're only in mid-june so this thing is
going to push up and produce quite a bit
throughout the rest of this growing
season and who knows I probably will end
up overwintering it yet again so again
not so much a mistake as an oversight if
you know you want to grow the same
variety next year give overwintering a
try our final tip before a quick little
bonus tip at the end of the video is
temperature really matters now these
guys are quintessential summer crop they
love heat and they love a lot of Sun but
if temps go above 90 for too long
especially as it's developing its
flowers these little guys right here can
start to drop off because what the plant
does is it says wow these conditions are
really crazy I don't know
I as an organism can survive it so what
I should probably try to do is stop
focusing on propagating myself and just
focus on surviving so it'll throw these
flowers to the ground and then it'll say
I'm gonna shrivel up I'll wilt a little
bit I'll try to make it through this
heatwave and then when things are safe
I'm gonna go ahead and put my flowers
back out so what you do is you can add
some shade cloth and or move it to a
shadier spot of the day if it gets these
crazy heat waves so one thing people
will do is they'll just take some shape
cloth put it over the top I'll do a
video on shade cloth sometime in the
future but a lot of people will get
anywhere from thirty to fifty percent
shade cloth that percentage defines the
amount of sunlight that it blocks
basically so fifty percent shade cloth
blocks fifty percent of the sunlight so
that can cut your heat down quite a bit
our final tip has to do with the peppers
themselves so take a look you've got
this small jalapeno up here now could
you harvest it at this point you
certainly could but you probably
wouldn't want to because it really isn't
as intense in flavor and it's just not
as mature now then you have a more or
less middle mature one right here and
right here but then down here look at
this guy this guy's starting to crack a
little bit or cork as it's called and
sometimes that is when the flavor really
really starts to come out some people
will even wait till it corks even more
this is basically just a stretch mark on
your pepper that is the skin is
splitting because the skin kind of stops
growing and then what you see is you see
the interior kind of grow out and that's
why it causes this little split a lot of
people will say this is the point where
the flavor becomes really really tasty
peppers again one of the most fun plants
to grow and I really encourage you check
out some of my other videos on peppers
specifically the pepper pruning one I
think you'll find that pretty useful but
this guy is probably my favorite little
guy because it's the first one that I
overwintered and it came out really
really well so I'm probably gonna have
this one for many years to come I
encourage you guys to grow some peppers
this year until next time good luck in
the garden and keep on growing
you