Growing Bell Pepper: What You Need To Know In Advance

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Growing bell peppers is a painstaking but exciting task. To achieve success, the gardener faces many tasks: pick and prepare seeds, grow healthy seedlings, then take care of the pepper in the beds, protecting it from the invasion of pests and diseases. Is it any wonder that the summer resident treats the harvested crop with great love, and calls the pepper sweet?

What you need to know about seed

When choosing seeds, it is very important to pay attention to the plant variety. It should be zoned appropriate for your region. If you were visiting friends or relatives away from home, and brought the seed of your favorite variety from there, there is a danger that the plant will not take root in your native climatic conditions or the fruits will taste bitter.

I would like to warn summer residents who, in order to save money, buy seeds by weight. High germination rate remains for 2-3 years, later it is greatly reduced. The manufacturer indicates the expiration date on the package, but when buying seeds for weight, there is no such information. In addition, the packaging will serve as a hint if you like the selected variety and want to return it to the beds again.

Is it difficult to become a breeder?

You can also multiply your favorite variety on your own. To do this, during the cultivation process, you need to note the most productive bushes, which give good large fruits of the correct shape. Although these specimens are very attractive, you need to resist the temptation to serve such handsome men on the table, and leave them to ripen as seed material.

This pepper should have good access to sunlight. The finally ripe fruits are plucked and stored in the house until the skin on them begins to wrinkle. This is a signal that it is time to collect seeds from the fruit. They need to be thoroughly dried and stored in canvas bags, not forgetting to mark the collection date and the name of the variety on them.

Placing pepper in the beds

For some gardeners, peppers present an amazing surprise: sweet pepper seeds were sown, and the fruits taste bitter! This happens when the beds of bell peppers and hot peppers are placed next to it. The fruits are pollinated, and as a result, such an incident occurs. Therefore, it is necessary to take this property of the vegetable into account when planning plantings.

Another important point is the previous crops in those beds where you are going to plant your bell pepper. It belongs to the nightshade family, which means it is vulnerable to those diseases that affect plants of tomatoes, eggplants, physalis. Therefore, after them, it is impossible to place peppers in the garden. It is best to sow it where cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, pumpkin, peas, beans used to grow. It is permissible to place pepper on those beds where there were root crops, onions.

Selection of bell pepper seedlings

If you did not succeed in sowing pepper seeds in time, but you really want to grow it in your garden, purchased seedlings will help out. But in this matter, it is also important not to miscalculate, otherwise the plant will become ill during transplantation.

What rules should be followed? There are not so many of them:

• It is better not to risk buying small plants sown in a continuous row in one large container. The pepper does not like it when its roots are disturbed, so the seedlings need to be bought in separate pots in order to plant them in the ground in a permanent place with a lump of earth.

• Ask about the age of the seedlings. It is time to transplant to a permanent place when she will be at least 60 days from the moment of sowing the seeds. By this time, the plant should have at least 10 leaves, and the stem height should be about 20 cm.

• You can take seedlings that already have a bud. But don't buy overgrown plants. They take root with great difficulty and often perish in new conditions.