JohnDKestell said:

my garden is on its' first year, so the soil isn't great, but not really too
bad either. I added blood and bone meal to the holes before planting (for some
gentle nitrogen and potassium)

Blood meal is pretty strong organic nitrogen; it is capable of burning plants.
Bone meal provides gentle *phosphorous* along with calcium.

Peppers appreciate a goodly supply of potassium.

but am a little bit scared of trying to use some
artificial 20 20 20 on it (like some Peter's). I was thinking, maybe at half
strength or even quarter strength I could see if it helps, then dose it up
from there?

I'd say at this point see if you can get yourself some seaweed meal (potassium,
micronutrients) or some liquified or dry powdered seaweed (Maxicrop is the brand
I use) and foliar feed the plants.

What I do, growing peppers:
My peppers get set in a bed that's had some compost and alfalfa pellets worked
in a week or so earlier. Each planting hole gets a dose of Tomato-tone (from
Espoma) workd into the bottom. Later in the season when the weather warms
up, they get mulched with shredded leaves mixed with cocoashells and occasional
foliar feeds with Maxicrop. The plants are always lush and loaded with peppers.

I set 18 plants in a roughly 4' x 8' bed. Each one has one of those little 3-hoop
tomato cages set around them. If they didn't, they'd be falling over with the
weight of the peppers.

I experimented one year comparing compost mulch vs. leaf or leaf and cocoashell
mulch. Peppers with shredded leaf or leaf+cocoashell mulch did better than those
with screened compost as mulch. (Aside: corn and eggplants prefered compost
mulch.)
--
Pat in Plymouth MI

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(attributed to Don Marti)