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Peppers: care during the season

Protect plants from the cold in the spring

Sweet and hot peppers are fearful of the cold and adore the heat! Sweet pepper plants are particularly sensitive to cool temperatures and winds that blow off their flowers, with a smaller yield the result. To maintain your pepper plants in the protected warmth they crave, and to ensure a good yield of peppers, follow this advice:

  • Hold back on planting for two weeks after the risk of frost.
  • After planting, protect your plants (pepper plants in particular) from the wind and cold by wrapping a sheet of clear plastic around several plants in such a way as to create a fence, or wrap a single tomato cage (one plant) at a time in clear plastic.
  • Grow sweet and hot pepper plants under shelter, such as a tunnel or greenhouse.
  • In the garden, opt for a black geotextile sheet installed before planting instead of organic straw.
  • At the beginning and at the end of the growing season, night-time temperatures often dip below 10 °C. Protect your plants with a floating cover or garden fabric – or bring containers indoors.

Summer maintenance

Minimum maintenance throughout the summer will ensure a plentiful harvest of delicious sweet and hot peppers.

Watering: water thoroughly but not to excess. To fine tune the taste of your peppers, space out your watering towards the end of the summer. This concentrates the flavour.
Fertilizing: fertilize with seaweed fertilizer.
  • Garden: once during the growing season
  • Container: twice during the growing season
Insects and disease: in optimal conditions, pepper plants are not generally susceptible. To protect them against slugs, put roughly-crushed egg shells around your plants.

Harvest time – at long last!

For nutritious and delicious sweet and hot peppers, harvest them when they are fully mature. Protecting your plants from the cold and ensuring they get enough heat is paramount all season long, but particularly towards the end of the summer.

When the threat of frost becomes serious, harvest all your peppers even if they are still green.
 
When you harvest your peppers, always use shears and never break the stem, or stalk.

Yields:

Sweet peppers: 4 to 8 peppers per plant, and more for varieties producing smaller peppers.
Hot peppers: under favourable conditions, it is possible to harvest 20 to 30 peppers per plant.