Pepper

27-07-2018

Tips and ideas

A permanent component of the diet of Russians is pepper, the cultivation of which is within the power of any gardener who is ready to care for this attractive crop. The plant strikes with a variety of varieties, shapes and colors: green, yellow, orange, red, brown and even black fruits can be up to 30 cm long and weigh up to 200 g. Eyes scatter when you start to look at the photo on sachets of seeds, but these are the photos and help determine the choice. Despite the fact that the plant is considered to be thermophilic and capricious, it has got acclimatized in our country, because the cultivation and care do not require excessive labor costs from the grower.

Although pepper grows well in the open field, but prefers heat, and in many regions it is planted in greenhouses. Many people grow peppers according to the standard scheme: they put them in the ground, which is available, they water when they succeed and harvest when they remember. But if you try a little and figure out how to grow a good crop of pepper, and then apply the knowledge in practice, the beds will thank you for the increased volume of fruits to be picked.

Soil preparation

If you properly prepare the soil, suitable for peppers, the cultivation is much easier. The plant does not tolerate cold soil with a high content of clay. It is preferable to prepare a mixture of loam or sandy soil in a mixture with humus.

Vegetable growers, who know how to grow peppers properly, say that the plant feels bad after the nightshade and easily becomes ill if cucumbers grew on this garden bed last year. At the same place the plant is planted no more than 1 time in 4 years, the same break should be done if on this garden bed first grew solanaceous.

Peppers are grown not only with regard to crop rotation, but also with the obligatory application of fertilizers. A year earlier, in the spring, compost or manure was added under the precursors, and in the autumn of the same year, during the digging, potash and phosphate fertilizers. In the spring of the year of planting in the soil is added fertilizers containing nitrogen.

To properly grow peppers from seed to seedlings, the soil can be prepared in several ways, mixing in different proportions with each other:

small sawdust, peat and humus (0.5: 1: 1);
turf and humus (1: 1.5);
rotted manure and turf (2: 1);
humus and peat (1: 1).

On 10 l of a mixture add 1 tbsp. l superphosphate and wood ash.

Seedling preparation

Growing pepper seedlings begin in the winter, in the 3rd decade of February. Seeds should be acquired in advance by visiting a specialized store and reading the photos and descriptions of varieties. When you see in the picture what the crop will look like, the choice is much easier to make. Seeds before planting are treated as follows:

Disinfection about half an hour in a 1% solution of manganese.

Treatment with ready-made stimulants or soaking for a day in a solution of sodium humate, nitrophos, or wood ash (1 tsp. Per 1 liter of filtered water).

Germination within 1-2 days between layers of wet gauze before pecking.

Pepper seedlings do not like picking, so the seeds are planted in individual pots up to 10 cm in diameter, since the root system of the peppers grows slowly. In the center, at a distance of 0.5-1 cm from each other, 2-4 seeds are placed in a circle; later, weaker sprouts are removed.

Pots are well watered, covered with film or glass. At this stage, the lighting is not required, if only the temperature in the room was not lower than 22 ° C, and when pepper sprouts appear, the seedlings are transferred to the western or eastern sill with diffused lighting (in the southern one you will need to shade). Further cultivation of pepper seedlings requires the following conditions:

Maintain daily temperature at 26-28 ° C, night - 13-15 ° C.

Maintain indoor humidity by spraying moisture on and around plants.

Timely watering with warm water. The soil should be wet all the time, but not flooded.

Airing the room. Cool air should not directly reach the plants.

Lighting lasting 12-14 hours a day.

Feeding and hardening

When the pepper is grown for seedlings, fertilizing will be useful, although some gardeners are sure that they are necessary only for weak plants.

After the appearance of the 3rd true leaf, you need to prepare an additional feeding composition: dissolve 5 g of urea, 12.5 g of superphosphate and 3 g of potassium salt in 1 l of water. Pots with seedlings watered with warm water, and after a while to feed on moist soil.
The second feeding is carried out after the appearance of the 4th or 5th sheet.

2 weeks before planting, seedlings of pepper must undergo a hardening course. To do this, it is carried out on a glazed loggia, leaving it there for an ever longer period, first opening and then opening the windows. A day before planting in the soil, the seedlings can be additionally sprayed with a natural growth stimulator.

Topping

The question about pinching is very controversial. Some growers are confident that no one should pinch the plants under any circumstances. But experienced gardeners, who have been growing peppers for many years, are sharing methods of pinching, which increase yields, because the bulk of the fruit is formed on the side shoots that appear after the pinching.

Pinching is carried out during the cultivation of pepper in pots, when the seedling has a 5-6th leaf, and is used on early or middle ripening varieties. After the procedure, the seedlings will stop growing upwards for about half a month, and will begin to bush, which will facilitate its transportation to the landing site. These bushes will begin to bear fruit about 10 days later, but as a compensation, the harvest will be more abundant. Therefore, part of the seedlings can be left without pinching, for earlier fruiting, and some pinch.

Growing in a greenhouse

Growing peppers in a greenhouse does not require any special agrotechnical methods from the grower, which takes a lot of time and effort, but you shouldn’t throw at all the planted plants either. To get a good harvest, you need to follow simple guidelines describing the cultivation and care. No matter how much you want to get an early crop of pepper, planting in a greenhouse, greenhouse or open ground is not made before the soil at a depth of 12 cm warms to at least 15 ° C.

A greenhouse is a stationary object, and it begins to warm up with the first rays of the spring sun, which means that the soil in it will warm up much earlier than it will be possible to plant the pepper in the open air. But if the gardener plans to plant the pepper early in the greenhouse, then immediately after the snow melts, when the sunny days come, the greenhouse can be tightened with a film, the space under which will warm up during the day, and with the onset of darkness the air under the film will not cool so quickly, which will accelerate the warming soil.

This will allow earlier to plant the peppers in the greenhouse or greenhouse and, thanks to such early warming, get a harvest earlier than in the open field. On the seedlings by the time the peppers are planted in the greenhouse there should be at least 7 true leaves and formed buds. Some early varieties have time to form a little ovary at the time of landing.

Pepper planting

To make plants comfortable to grow, you need to know how to plant pepper. To facilitate pepper care, planting is done in 1 m wide beds. Paths between them should be left at least 50 cm wide. The plan (density) of planting depends on the specific variety - for tall ones, the distance between plants increases. Usually when planting peppers in a greenhouse, the following guidelines are recommended:

for early ripened varieties, seedlings of pepper are planted in a greenhouse, 10 pcs. each. on 1 m2 (15 cm);
srednerosly planted in 25 cm;
tall - after 35 cm

The seedling is placed in the wells, which are prepared in advance and each is watered with 2 liters of warm water, and then mulched.

Plant Care

Planting peppers is not the last step on the way to harvest. Further care begins. Nothing unbearable from the grower is required. There are no special secrets in how to grow excellent harvest. The seedling grows beautifully when there is everything you need: a lot of light and good humidity, which the farmer must provide. If watering is insufficient, the fruits are crushed, and the stems quickly become stiff. If there is a lot of moisture, diseases can develop.

Gardeners with experience, thoroughly knowing how to grow peppers in the greenhouse, regulate the moisture loosening.

To reduce the amount of watering, you should loosen the soil between the plants when a crust begins to form on it. Only this should be done carefully, since the root system of the peppers begins at a depth of 10 cm and is easily damaged by careless movements.

When growing peppers in a greenhouse during the growing season, all leaves and shoots on the main trunk should be removed prior to the beginning of the fork. Tall varieties are tied to a trellis as they grow, and fruitless shoots are removed on middle ones.

All about sweet pepper (video)

Secrets of a good harvest

If in the first week after the seedlings emerge to maintain the temperature in the room at the level of 16-18 ° С, the growth of the stems will hold back a little, but an intensive growth of the root system will begin.

As soon as the fetus has grown and formed, it must immediately be removed so that new ovaries appear.

Do not be afraid of the autumn cold and immediately remove all unformed peppers. Even if the bush partially freezes, nothing will happen to the fruits, they will continue to grow until the bush is completely free of frost.

The basis of a good harvest lies in the above simple agronomic techniques. Every vegetable grower once grew peppers for the first time. Someone studied using step-by-step instructions from a photo, someone gained experience from neighbors, and someone experimented independently. And everyone who knew how to grow peppers in a greenhouse, understood that success only needed fertile soil, high-yield varieties, full-bodied seeds, meeting deadlines for planting and planting in a greenhouse, timely watering and sufficient sunlight.