In article ,
"Paul M. Cook" wrote:
How is this for a strategy:
I will feed heavy nitrogen until the plants are about 20 inches tall.
During this time I snip emerging buds. After the plant has grown to height,
I reduce the nitrogen and allow it to set fruit.
I am trying to avoid the mistakes I made last year. Namely my plants were
far too small when the summer heat hit (zone 8b). The buds tended to drop
off on their own. And when the heat went away, the nights were too cool for
them and the fruit never really reached its best. I got some nice, but
small fruit and not much of that.
I want to get as much growth on these and have set fruit before July. June
here is usually pretty reasonable for peppers. My peppers are about 9
inches tall at the moment.
Too much "N" will burn the roots.
Little or no difference in yield was seen in a study that compared the
effects of slow-release fertilizer (manure) applied before planting to
fish emulsion applied several times throughout the season.
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Don't fertilize blindly--if your plants look healthy enough, let them
be, lest they ignore fruiting for vegetative growth. Bell peppers
typically produce 7 to 10 peppers a plant, hot peppers more. When to
harvest is an interesting question. On the one hand, leaving peppers on
the vine till they're completely ripe somewhat reduces the total
productivity of the plant; on the other hand, immature peppers are
notably less sweet. To us, the choice is clear: let them ripen on the
vine. We're not commercial growers: if we want more peppers than our
plants produce with the fruits left to fully ripen, we'll grow more
plants next season. Peppers are usually picked when they've stopped
increasing in size, are firm to the touch, /and have reached their
expected color/. Don't pull peppers, because the plant's branches are
rather brittle and you can break them that way: harvest by cutting the
peppers off.
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feed after flowering (?)
Don't look right, but that's what I have in my notes.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/HZinn_page.html