help with peppers please!

[Puddleduck]

Hi all, before I start planting I wanted to try and get a bit of advice with my peppers. I've tried growing them for the last few years and am getting nowhere fast. Every year, no matter how many I plant and how much love I give them I only ever end up with 2 fruits. I get masses of flowers but they just end up dropping off and never coming to fruition. I've tried indoors, outdoors, greenhouse, toasty warm places, slightly cooler places, windowsills and various other ledges but still only get 2 fruits. I don't honestly know where I'm going wrong, especially as I can get hundreds of chillis in exactly the same locations.

I love peppers so I don't want to give up. Any and all advice gratefully received.

[gregorach]

I did quite well last year, using 90L reusable grow-bags filled with a 50/50 mix of garden compost and topsoil, in the greenhouse. Good root depth seems to help, as does regular feeding.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

You could try misting the flowers with a fine water spray. This is said to encourage fruit setting after fertilisation.

[Biscombe]

Where are you growing?

[Puddleduck]

Thanks guys. Biscombe, I'm in the north east of England (the very frozen north at the minute!) in County Durham. Doesn't really make a difference to anything else although I do have to plant out later than some of our southern ishers.

I have been planting in quite shallow containers, so I'll try giving them a bit more depth this year.

[MKG]

I can't remember for the life of me where I read this, but I did try it last year with my jalapenos - and it worked. Seemingly, it's a good thing to water very sparingly until the flowers set, then water generously. Because the environment is not too friendly at first, the plants try to reproduce like mad.

As I say, it worked for my jalapenos - I got about 120 from 6 plants - but then jalapenos turned out to be not what I wanted anyway. I don't think I'd suggest doing it for all of your plants, but it may be worthwhile trying it with just a couple as an experiment.

Mike

[Broad Bean]

You also need to make sure you're growing early varieties which can be harder to get hold of. The ones that the likes of T&M are a bit rubbish to me but you can get some brilliant ones from the likes of Real Seeds which although a bit expensive to start with should work well, they give you great advice and you can save the seeds for future use. I do well by sowing mid to end of Jan in a heated propogator, gradually potting on but keepind on a window ledge until May. Putting in the greenhouse (by this time they'll be in 5" pots) for a couple of weeks before planting out in the beds of the polytunnel in late May. I feed with comfrey feed (or occaisionally commercial tomato feed if I'm feeling lazy) and usually get a decent crop with the last fruits about end of October. You'll get more fruits if you pick at the green stage but I do like some to go on to orange or red or whatever their colour should be when ripe, depending on variety.

[Biscombe]

There are 4 familes of capsicum and the sapsicum annuums are the easiest to grow.

Peppers do like to be potted on, so when the roots poke through the drainage holes pot on.

Peppers are susceptible to getting 'damping off' so sprinkle cinnamon on the soil surface when you sow your seeds to prevent this.

I try my best to keep the plants above freezing especially at night, got a slightly heated greenhouse which helps!

When they start flowering a fortnightly spray with epson salts works wonders! I also feed with a mix of molasses (which is cheap and easy to get hold of where I live) and comfry.

Too knackered to think of more at the moment, but hope this helps hope they grow well for you this year

[Biscombe]

PS If you want to save seeds, they cross very easily. To prevent crossing cover unopened flowers (they self pollinate) with tulle, when you see a pod remove the tulle and tag the pod.