How To Care For Peppers During The Summer Months

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

• Planting care
• Top dressing
• Formation of bushes
• Garter

Some gardeners complain that in our climate, near St. Petersburg, they cannot grow a good harvest of peppers. I will share my experience of caring for these "southerners" in the summer months. After all, it is at this time that the harvest is formed. Of course, if we managed to grow strong, healthy seedlings in the spring.

So, we sowed the seeds on time, skillfully looked after the seedlings, cut the seedlings into separate cups and, as a result, grew good seedlings of peppers by summer. After 8–10 leaves, the main trunk split into two or even three trunks, which grew, strengthened, and each of these in turn also began to divide into two or three trunks. A bud has formed in each fork, sometimes a couple of buds. While the seedlings are growing in cups - boxes, you do not need to let them bloom, the buds must be plucked out without regret, because the seedlings on which the fruits have set, when planted in a heifer, take root much worse.

Two weeks before planting seedlings in the ground, you need to prepare the soil for it. It should be loose, dug up on a shovel bayonet (without turning the layer), fertilized with humus or compost (a bucket for every square meter of the garden) with the addition of a complete mineral fertilizer, for example, Kemir. By the time the seedlings are planted, the soil will settle, and earthworms will again begin their useful work in it.

In the first decade of June, when the ground in the greenhouse has warmed up, and the night frosts have stopped, the seedlings, previously hardened, can be planted in the greenhouse. It will not be too late to land her in mid-June.

If you have only a few pepper plants, then they can be planted in a common greenhouse along with cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, watermelons and other inhabitants of the greenhouse. And do not scatter one plant at a time, but plant it with your own pepper collective - peppers love this, they create their own microclimate.

It is convenient to plant them between tomatoes and cucumbers. Tomatoes love dry air, cucumbers love humid air, and peppers just average. You don't need to plant peppers in the sunniest place. In the summer, in July, they suffer greatly from excess light. It is good when they are shaded at noon from the sun with a shade, for example, from tomato bushes.

When planting in the ground, it is necessary to bury the bushes no more than 1 cm, the distance between the bushes is 40-45 cm, and if these are low-growing varieties such as Winnie the Pooh, then even 20 cm is left. It is convenient to plant seedlings in the holes into which you first pour warm water. The planted bushes must certainly be covered from the sun with newspapers for one to two weeks, otherwise they can get sunburn. In this case, whitish spots will appear on the pepper leaves. In hot weather, the bushes under the newspapers need to be sprayed daily, or more than once a day. Then the newspapers should be gradually removed, first in the evening at night, then during the day.

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Planting care

But then the plants took root, noticeably revived, turned green, began to grow. They have new buds. At this time, I sprinkle the soil under the seedlings with ash - 1–1.5 cups per square meter of the garden bed, I cover this useful fertilizer in the ground with a heron. Peppers like ash very much - after such a pouring, they are not afraid of either aphids or spider mites, they playfully tie the fruits. In general, I noticed that aphids do not appear on healthy pepper plants.

The most important point in caring for peppers is watering. I water young plants only with warm water and not under the stem, but moisten the ring behind the crown projection. With such watering, I stimulate the growth of roots, forcing them to actively grow in all directions. After all, they do not just grow for the sake of growth, but are looking for where they can get more moisture and nutrition. Later, when the bushes grow, I water the entire area on which the peppers grow. Usually, the bulk of the roots of peppers in our greenhouses is located in the upper soil layer - 10-20 cm. This layer must be thoroughly wetted.

How much water do you need? And this can be calculated based on the fact that a watering can with a volume of 10 liters is only enough to wet a layer of soil only a few centimeters thick on an area of 1 square meter.

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Top dressing

With each watering, I add a few nutrients to the water - an infusion of grass or mullein, or a teaspoon of complete mineral fertilizer. When the plants bloom en masse, I spray honey water on their leaves - 0.5 teaspoon of honey per 1 liter of water.

I do this on the advice of Seliverstov's grandfather from the Krasnodar Territory, he does this with pumpkin crops, and I transferred this method to peppers - I do 2-3 spraying per season with an interval of 2-2.5 weeks. The peppers are very sweet and fragrant.

In hot weather, I refresh the bushes with a warm rain from a children's watering can, in the morning - over the leaves, and in the afternoon, in the heat, I slightly irrigate the earth so that the air is humidified. Peppers really like these procedures. It is not necessary to greatly humidify the air, because pollen loses its viability at high humidity.

If the weather is very hot at the end of June - July, I line the soil surface under the bushes with a layer of grass from the lawn. This layer protects the soil from drying out and from compaction, moreover, it provides additional nutrition to the bushes. Before the end of June, it is not necessary to cover the soil with grass; you need to wait for the soil to warm up strongly in the entire layer of root habitat.

You need to ventilate the greenhouse every morning. And this should be done as early as possible, do not wait for a stifling atmosphere, like in a bath, to form in the greenhouse. In July, on warm nights, you may not close the door at all at night.

Formation of bushes

Since the peppers grow in my simple film greenhouse, the bushes do not grow higher than 60–70 cm. Therefore, I form the bushes a little differently than it is recommended on the seed bags. I begin to form as soon as the stems begin to branch. In each branch I leave the strongest 1–2 stems, the weak ones (and they are clearly visible) - I pluck them out. In the bush, you can end up with 2 stems and 5 stems, such as a "cap".

If two buds form in the forks, I pluck out the weaker bud again, as with the stems.

In the last ten days of July, I remove all the buds from the bush, pinch the tops of all the stems, leave 1-2 leaves over the top pepper, remove the shoots without fruit. In this case, by the end of August, all the fruits on the bush have time to form. The main thing is that the fruits have time to gain flesh, otherwise they will be tasteless, even if later they turn red during storage.

Low-growing varieties do not need to be formed. It is only necessary to remove the sterile shoots and shoots below the place of the first fork.

Garter

Tall bushes must be tied up, and each skeletal branch must be tied up separately, because the stems of the pepper are very fragile and break easily.

Good luck to everyone in the greenhouses and in the beds!