How to feed peppers during fruiting

Pepper is traditionally considered not the easiest crop to grow, although this opinion has developed mainly due to its relative heat-loving nature. Adult pepper plants are quite resistant to low temperatures, but young pepper plants really need a minimum of +18°C for good growth and development; at lower temperatures, plant development stops. At the same time, peppers tolerate heat well, which is why the crop is quite common in the southern regions of Russia. Nevertheless in greenhouses and film tunnels, peppers can be grown in almost all areas right up to the north. But with any growing method, you always want the fruits to be truly large and sweet. Therefore, you cannot do without feeding peppers, especially if the soils are not the most fertile.

When is feeding needed?

The fruiting period is the final period in growing peppers and, of course, the most important and responsible for the gardener. Almost everything that could be done has already been done and all that remains is to wait for a good harvest.

But pepper is a fairly demanding crop in terms of nutrition, and if you plant them in ordinary unfertilized soil, then feeding comes to the fore during such cultivation. Therefore, it is safer to take care in advance of the composition of the soil in the beds where you are going to grow peppers. The best place for pepper beds is in former compost heaps. If they are already occupied, or their number is not enough, then it is necessary to add at least a bucket of compost to each square meter of beds before planting pepper seedlings on them.

If we assume that this was not done, then the pepper needs regular feeding with organic and mineral fertilizers every two weeks. But by the time the first fruit ovaries appear, you need to be extremely careful. The use of mineral fertilizers is undesirable, since there is a high risk that they will accumulate in ripening fruits. However, if the peppers are severely retarded in growth, there is a clear slowdown in fruit development, and spots of varying intensity and color appear on the leaves, then, of course, they need feeding.

Signs of nutritional deficiencies

Determining what peppers lack to ripen a normal harvest is not always easy, especially since sometimes some nutritional elements are present, on the contrary, in excess.

• A lack of nitrogen always manifests itself in the lightening of leaf blades, and the lightening affects the entire surface of the leaf along with the veins and begins, most often, with the lower leaves. But nitrogen, as a rule, is no longer needed by pepper during the fruiting period.Much more common is an excess of this element, which leads, first of all, to the inability of pepper to absorb such an important element as calcium, which is responsible for carbohydrate metabolism. This means that many other elements also begin to be poorly absorbed.
  
• Due to lack of phosphorus, old leaves acquire a bluish-brownish tint and turn black when dry.. Usually, at the fruiting stage, a lack of phosphorus is rarely observed, but it can happen after the first wave of fruit production, when the pepper bushes are in no hurry to bloom again. Excess phosphorus is very rare.
• Potassium deficiency usually manifests itself during the budding stage, but may appear, as well as phosphorus deficiency, after the ripening of the first wave of pepper fruits. The leaves curl at the edges, and a light border appears on them. Subsequently, the tips turn brown and die. An excess of potassium, as well as nitrogen, leads, first of all, to the inability to absorb many other elements: calcium, boron, zinc, magnesium.
• A lack of calcium is indicated by young pepper leaves that curl, turn pale and die.. The apical buds of the shoots are also damaged.
• Lack of magnesium and molybdenum occurs mainly on acidic soils, while the deficiency of boron, iron and manganese increases on alkaline soils where excess nitrogen and lime have been applied.

Feeding necessary during fruiting

Summarizing all of the above, it can be noted that regardless of the fertilizing operations carried out in previous periods, pepper bushes require comprehensive fertilizing at the moment when the first fruits have reached a state of technical maturity.

In order for them to acquire the richness of the shades assigned to them according to varietal characteristics, and also in order for new fruit ovaries to continue to form and ripen, pepper bushes need additional feeding.

In this case, you can choose from several options.

1 option

Top dressing is prepared from weeds growing on your site: dandelion, clover, nettle, coltsfoot, wheatgrass and many others. Fill any metal or plastic container to ¾ of its volume with all of the above herbs and fill it with water. You can also add one liter jar of wood ash per 10 liters of liquid to the container. All this is covered with a lid and infused for 7-9 days. One liter of the resulting liquid is diluted in a 10-liter watering can and the pepper plants are watered with this infusion instead of water.

Option 2

This feeding option can be prepared from a mixture of potassium and phosphorus fertilizers in combination with a full set of microelements, preferably in chelated form. For 10 liters of water you need to take one tablespoon of superphosphate and one teaspoon of potassium sulfate, as well as one tablespoon of any set of microelements. The consumption of fertilizer liquid when feeding pepper bushes is about one liter per plant.

Option 3

It is the simplest, but no less effective way of feeding than the previous two. You need to buy potassium humate in a special store, preferably with a set of microelements. It is usually sold in the form of small bags weighing about 10 grams.This is a completely organic fertilizer, which, in addition to the fertilizing effect, has an additional stimulating effect and improves soil properties. One sachet is diluted in 200 liters of water and the resulting solution is poured over the peppers at the root.

The peppers may no longer need any other help.

Feeding rules

It is better to carry out fertilizing procedures in the morning, so that all the moisture on the leaves and soil surface from the fertilizer solution has time to completely disappear by the evening temperature drop.

The soil must be moist before fertilizing. Therefore, abundant watering is a necessary procedure before feeding peppers.

Some time after watering, it is advisable to slightly loosen the soil surface to provide oxygen access to the pepper roots.

Use of folk remedies

Since everything you feed peppers with during the fruiting period will certainly affect the internal composition of its fruits, as well as the taste characteristics, many people prefer to use exclusively folk remedies during this period, which can quite effectively replace traditional mineral supplements.

For example, dried and crushed banana skins contain a sufficient amount of potassium. They can be used together with wood ash instead of any potash fertilizers. In addition, ash also contains some phosphorus.

Many beneficial microelements are found in milk and dairy products, such as whey. If you dilute one liter of any dairy product in 10 liters of water and add 15-20 drops of iodine, you can get an excellent food for peppers, which also has a protective effect against pests and fungal diseases.

Finally, it is during the fruiting period that you can carry out feeding peppers yeast. To do this, just dilute 10 grams of dry yeast in 10 liters of water, add 2 tablespoons of sugar and leave for several hours. It is necessary to add several handfuls of wood ash to the infusion, since yeast has the property of “eating” potassium and calcium from the soil. The resulting solution is diluted in a ratio of 1:5 and the peppers are watered with it instead of ordinary water.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to feed peppers during fruiting and get an excellent harvest, which will also have an amazing taste and health benefits.