The health of your soil is one of the main factors that affects how successful your garden will be each season. Pepper Plants Not Growing – Factor #3: Lack of soil nutrients. This unfortunate timing might result in less overall fruit to harvest. On the flip side, if your garden is experiencing cooler than normal temperatures, less than 55 degrees F at night, while the plants are flowering they will also often drop their flowers. If your garden is experiencing an extended heat wave right around the time when your peppers are flowering, you may notice lower numbers of peppers on your plants. The flowers are what turn into the fruit, so less flowers = less fruit. When the temperature is above 90 F during the day, peppers often drop their flowers. Yes, peppers love heat, but, there is a point where it can cross the line into too much. Pepper Plants Not Growing – Factor #2: Excessive heat or low temperatures. Try using a greenhouse, low tunnel or high tunnel to trap in extra heat. Daytime temperatures below 72 F will inhibit the plant from setting fruit well. If you live in an area where the summers are cool, you may have trouble growing peppers if you don’t have consistently hot temperatures. If you’re not sure when to plant your peppers in your gardening zone, this article features a printable planting schedule and shows you how to figure out your average last frost. And I’ve found that my plants don’t grow very much in the cool spring weather, so there’s not much benefit to trying to get them out into the garden early. It’s better to delay planting than risk death from frost. They should not be planted in your garden until you’re certain the last frost has passed. Pepper plants are very sensitive to low temperatures. The ideal temperature range for plants to set fruit is between 75-86 F. Peppers grow best at daytime temperatures of 70-80 degrees F. Once you plant your peppers in the garden, you’ll need nature to provide the plants with the heat they need to grow well. Read my in depth article about starting peppers indoors for the exact process I use that yields consistent results year after year. Over the years I’ve had the best success with using either a seedling heat mat underneath newly planted seed trays or an electric soil warming cable buried in the soil of the tray. I also leave the heat on the peppers after germination to coax the plants to grow more quickly. I’ve found that providing supplemental heat to my peppers during germination ensures a quick and even sprouting of almost 100% of the seeds I planted. This high temperature is difficult to provide during the seed starting process in most homes during winter. A soil temperature of 85 degrees F is ideal. Peppers like very warm temperatures for germination. And in the past, when they did germinate, the plants grew very slowly. I’ve been growing peppers in my garden successfully for many years, but I’ve had trouble during the seed starting process with getting them to germinate. Pepper Plants Not Growing – Factor #1: Lack of heatįirst, whether we’re talking about pepper plants that are still indoors or pepper plants that have already been planted in your garden, what pepper plants love the most is heat! We’ll also talk about the solutions once you identify the problems. You’ll have to be your own garden detective and look for clues using the following factors. Unfortunately, there isn’t one simple answer to this question. Let’s get started exploring the reasons why your pepper plants might not be growing as well as you’d like. Once you can identify and solve for these issues, you’ll be well on your way to abundant and colorful pepper harvests every summer. I used to struggle with growing peppers as well, until I figured out the various factors that can negatively affect peppers. The problems often begin in late winter when gardeners are starting peppers indoors and continue into the summer when they wonder why are their pepper plants not growing. After teaching gardening for over 20 years, I can confidently say that many gardeners in colder climates like mine have difficulty growing peppers.
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