California Green Pepper Log 04.06

The peppers have been planted and are looking really good. So far...

Interestingly when it comes to planting them it is totally different than the tomato. The tomato plant requires you to bury the stem in the ground where as the Peppers you do not. Nor do you need to pinch off any leaves. You just plant them. They do suggest not growing peppers in the same spot two years in a row.

Same rules do apply in terms of spacing; roughly 12-16 inches apart. It is recommended to use some compost or aged manure into the pepper bed before planting. This will give the peppers plenty of nutrients. Use aged (not fresh) manure to prevent nitrogen overdose, which can cause low yields. One of the articles I had read about peppers had cases of six-foot tall jalapeno plants with plenty of foliage but no pods on them, because the grower fed them too much nitrogen too fast. Thankfully we let the soil in the garden sit for two weeks before we did our initial planting. (We used Miracle Gro garden soil. I hear conflicting results when using Miracle Gro vs just plain Manure or compost material. So we will just have to see how it turns out.)

Again, since I used the Jiffy Professional Greenhouse peat pods in a package of twelve and I only used five, I kept the remaining pepper peat pods around for a while. Since the stems are above ground, I have had a few of them snap in half due to wind, critters, etc. and needed to replace them... make sure to keep your peat pods moist and not let them dry out.

And keep that garden weed free. Weeds can attract pests like leafhoppers, which can spread the Curly Top Virus. This had happened in New Mexico in 1995 where many a crops had been lost.


Until the next Log... Cheers!