Gardening: Feed Your Peppers

A fellow Fayette County gardener wrote to me recently with some observations about bell peppers.

“I have grown enough bell peppers in my lifetime to know that most bell peppers will turn red at maturity,” he said.

But by the time they turn red, he said, “mine are always dull, limp, having lost its ‘structure,’and in initial stages of decay and decomposition, not the most appealing.”

I’ve noticed the same thing.

This year I planted some bell peppers transplants that I bought at one of the local garden centers. I’m not sure of the specific variety. The label only said “Red.” I’m quite pleased with them at their green stage. They get quite big and fleshy, and the skin stays glossy for a while. But as soon as they start changing color, the structure gets “limp,” just as the writer described.

He observed that the red bell peppers offered for sale at the grocery store often have a sticker that says “Product of Canada.”

“Might be a clue,” he said. Indeed, it seems that the fleshier bell-type peppers seem to grow better under cooler temperatures. He noted that the ripening process involves green chlorophyl in the inside the bell peppers transforms into carotenoids – the red pigment responsible for the fruit’s color and sweeter taste.

Perhaps our hotter temperature speeds up this ripening process. The flesh starts to rot before the pigment reaches its greatest potential.

I like to allow my jalapenos and serranos to fully ripen to red before picking. This produces a sweetness that accompanies the spiciness quite nicely, in my opinion. Plus, I like to smoke red jalapenos to make chilpotle peppers.

But I’ve noticed that a few of my jalapenos and serranos tend to get a little soft by the time they fully ripen. I suppose these peppers, which are a little thicker-walled than other spicy peppers, can suffer from the same problem as bell peppers in our heat. However, they don’t seem to rot as badly. Thinner-walled peppers, especially the spicier ones like cayenne, don’t suffer from this problem at all. They easily ripen to red and maintain their structure.

Some gardeners think that peppers tend to drop fruit and fail to pollinate when temperatures get really hot. This is certainly true of tomatoes, which are in the same nightshade family as peppers and eggplants. Once temperatures get into the high 70s and 80s at night, most tomato varieties stop producing.

But I don’t believe peppers suffer from this problem if you keep them fed. If your peppers stop producing in the heat, try fertilizing them. If you only apply fertilizer at planting, they will use up most of those nutrients by the time hot weather sets in. Last week I noticed my pepper blooms started to slow down. So I sprinkled a handful of organic fertilizer around the base of all my plants. This week, I’m noticing a new flush of blooms and some new fruit forming.