Peppers are an all-time summer favorite, perennial plants in their native habitat. Most of us temperate growers rush to get these guys into our spring gardens so that we can enjoy that late summer bounty.
They aren’t a hard crop to grow by any means. The pepper plants are far from maintenance-free: full direct sun, warm temperatures, moist organic-rich soil, good drainage, good aeration, and, of course, a little bit of food.
Pepper plants are highly prolific, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If we’re taking this much out of the garden, we’re going to have to put something back in as well. When grown as an annual, peppers are a two to three-month crop; these guys are about halfway there, and feeding them started almost right away. So let’s take a trip back right to the start when I first planted these guys and cover step by step how to feed and fertilize your pepper plants right after the harvest.
**Fertilizing Seeds**
There’s no doubt seeds are amazing, tiny little vessels that turn into these fantastic powerhouse-producing plants. Adding to that, seeds including these pepper ones here contain all the young plants need to live for up to two weeks after germination. So early on in our pepper life cycle, the seeds can be sown, germinated, and the plants cared for for nearly three weeks to a month before really needing anything else from us. True leaves soon appear, however, and that’s our cue. At this point, the young pepper seedlings are either moved on to larger pots containing a nutrient-rich potting mix, or they get their first feeding. Early on, we’re all about that vegetative growth; we want more leaves, more stems, more greenery. So a liquid organic solution skewing slightly higher in nitrogen is what we prefer. Fish emulsion works perfectly for this. Go very light, dose one-quarter strength at most, and feed every two weeks until the situation changes.
**Fertilizing Peppers**
At some point, your young peppers are going to be planted in their final spot for summer, whether it’s out in your garden, in a raised bed, or in a large pot. This transition is important and it’s usually dictated by and timed with the weather. Don’t feed your peppers when transplanting. I know a lot of people do, and a lot of people are tempted to feed them because they think they need it, but don’t—just fresh water at this time. After about two weeks, however, we’re ready for the second stage of pepper fertilizing. Starting two weeks after transplanting, usually well before the tiny flower buds begin to appear, we apply our first real application of fertilizer—a balanced blend of either equal NPK or slightly higher in nitrogen is preferred. Go full strength on the manufacturer’s recommendations and water it in nice and thoroughly. The plants are growing nicely, but they’re still trying to get established. We still want to promote that foliar growth and branching. Depending on how nutrient-rich your soil is to begin with, repeat this feeding two weeks later. A month to six weeks after planting, right where these guys are right now, we change the fertilizer completely.
**Fertilizing Pepper Plants**
Nitrogen—the ‘N’ in your NPK, although still important, is no longer the focus. Instead, we switch gears to emphasize higher phosphorus, potassium, and trace minerals. Don’t negate the nitrogen completely; the plants still need it to grow for sure. However, both your phosphorus and your potassium should be double the ratio of nitrogen in the fertilizer that we’re using at this point. Again, just thoroughly watering that full-strength fertilizer as we did before. Now, if you’re wondering when the best time of day to fertilize is—it’s early morning. You always want to water and fertilize before the heat of the day hits for maximum absorption. If, however, for some reason you missed your window of fertilizing that morning, just wait until after dinner around sunset and it’ll work just fine. Your young pepper plants should begin forming flower buds at this point, if they don’t already have full flowers. The actual pepper fruit forms from these flowers, so once you start seeing the buds, you’re well on your way. So, with your peppers right on schedule, keep your fertilizing right on schedule too. Keep doing what’s working. Bi-weekly feedings of the same fertilizing mixture are going to serve the plants well. The real key with pepper plants, and this is important, is consistent moderate feedings. You don’t want the plants to have to go searching too hard for nutrients to sustain themselves, but at the same time, you also don’t want to over-fertilize and stunt them. For peppers, more than any other crop I grow, that feast-or-famine approach just doesn’t work. A continuous, steady supply of nutrients is always going to result in larger and better pepper harvests. Now, after eight to ten weeks in the ground, we’re looking at our first harvest, especially for the sweeter peppers that tend to grow a bit faster. Now, for a lot of crops (check that, most crops), harvesting and the time leading up to it, normally we’d back off that fertilizing completely. Not so with peppers. As a nightshade, they’re naturally a perennial. They’re gonna keep growing and producing as long as the weather allows. Just keep that same feeding schedule every two weeks right up until your last days of harvest. The plants need it; they need it to produce the biggest, juiciest peppers possible.
So, if we take a step back and look at pepper fertilizing as a whole, we can see that it’s done in two stages: first to promote healthy plants with large amounts of branching and big, well-proportioned foliage. Right off the bat, we want to increase and sustain a high rate of growth. Then, right around when the plant switches to flowering and fruit formation, we switch to a different fertilizer that supports bud formation and fruit development. Other than when we’re fertilizing the seedlings, it’s the same application rate and the same schedule, just a slight alteration in the fertilizer itself. This makes it easy on us, the grower, and keeps it simple, which is nice.
A couple of notes, however, before we wrap up: just like gardens, not all soils are the same. Some may be quite different in the nutrients that they hold before you even get started planting.
**Soil pH**
You’ll find soils that are extremely deficient in some nutrients while overabundant in others, running the risk of over-fertilization. So it’s hard to recommend a feeding regimen without first knowing what you’re starting with. If you are following the guidelines of any other pepper feeding schedule, and you’re seeing abnormal results, it may be time to get your soil tested. Further to that, the pH of your nursery assumes a colossal part in a plant’s capacity to get by, not to mention take-up an adequate measure of supplements. Pepper plants prefer a pH between 6.0 and 7.0, which is between slightly acidic and neutral. Assuming the pH of your dirt falls beyond this reach, fixing that turns out to be a higher priority than taking care of your plants.
Another aspect of growing peppers directly related to nutrients is burr (and I don’t mean the gold): Blossom End Rot. Blossom end rot, mostly associated with tomatoes, can also affect your peppers. It’s basically just a lack of calcium in the affected plants. You see, in plants, calcium makes up the cell wall, and the cell wall that’s furthest away from the root system, gathering all the nutrients, is the fruit. Even though blossom end rot is caused by a calcium deficiency, very rarely are our soils deficient in calcium.
Okay, so what gives? Yes, this disorder is always directly related and correlated to a lack of calcium, but it’s not because of the soil. More often than not, blossom end rot is a direct result of four things that we can control: improper or intermittent watering, a pH that’s out of whack, high salt levels, and too much fertilizing. And this is ironic because when new growers see blossom end rot in their peppers, their first instinct is to fertilize even more—obviously with disastrous results. So if you do see blossom end rot occurring, try correcting or at least testing some of those parameters before you go mega-dosing your soil with more calcium. If, in the rare instance, you do find that your soil is lacking in calcium, the go-to amendment is bone meal.
Right next to calcium on the periodic table of elements is magnesium. This secondary macronutrient is also very important to plants. In fact, it’s the essential core of the chlorophyll molecule itself. Without magnesium, photosynthesis doesn’t even take place. Early on in the pepper life cycle, some growers swear by an application of Epsom salts or magnesium sulfate—either a foliar feed or broadcast into the soil. I don’t use it every time I grow peppers, but really, it’s hard to argue with some of the results that these pro pepper growers are getting. It won’t harm the plants in any concentration, but one or two applications is all you need.
No doubt, that was a ton of info. Let’s go ahead and display it on the screen graphically to help it sink in. Fertilizing your pepper plants is essentially broken down into two parts: foliar and vegetative growth early on to establish the plant and then later with the promotion of flowers and fruit. For the first two weeks, pepper plants are actually not fed, as the seeds contain all they need to grow at this time. After that, when the true leaves begin to appear, a weak one-quarter strength solution is applied to the seedlings just until they get potted or planted. Once planted, we continue this higher nitrogen application only now it’s at full strength. Feed every two weeks, or if you’ve amended with a really good quality compost, you can go every three weeks. After a month to six weeks in the garden, flower buds should begin to form. This signals the second stage of pepper fertilization to a lower nitrogen ratio, boosting the relative amounts of phosphorus and potassium. Unlike most crops, the harvest doesn’t actually signal the end of fertilization in peppers. Continue the moderate but regular schedule right up until the last harvest. Peppers are an amazingly abundant fruit crop, even for us cold climate growers, but they’re also one of those crops where you really get out of them what you put into them.
Having said that, happy pepper feeding, guys! Best of luck, and I’ll see you soon.
