Bell Peppers in the heat!

I've never been able to successfully grow Bell Peppers in the hot Texas heat. Most other varieties do well and produce well, but my Bell peppers simply wilt when the real summer heat arrives. This year, I will try growing them in 25 gallon containers instead of in the soil and see if more moisture and a shade cloth will make a difference. I'm curious if anyone can suggest a variety of bell pepper which may withstand the heat better than other varieties.

In the past, I've had good success with some varieties of long chile peppers like Numex Big Jim, Giant Jalapenos, Habaneros, and a few others. Unlike tomatoes, I don't know variety traits very well because I have been limited to growing varieties vendors sell. I will try growing from seed again so variety suggestions will be appreciated.

Also, I know the best tomato seed vendors having dealt with them for many years. Please name some pepper seed vendors whose variety descriptions seem most accurate.

Thanks

Ted

[ContainerTed]

FTIW!!

Folks can say what they want, but I get best (sweetest) results when I give my plants a little shade when the real heat sets in. It seems to take a lot of the "STRESS" away and I get get more yield. Maybe the plant can focus on fruit when it's not having to focus on survival.

JMHO

Originally Posted by ContainerTed

FTIW!!

Folks can say what they want, but I get best (sweetest) results when I give my plants a little shade when the real heat sets in. It seems to take a lot of the "STRESS" away and I get get more yield. Maybe the plant can focus on fruit when it's not having to focus on survival.

JMHO

Yes, mine have produced well in the spring. When the heat arrives, the blossoms dry up and fall off. The Bell peppers simply die. Most produce well again when the weather cools in the fall. Mine seem to produce best in the fall because the plants are so much larger. I've always thought it was funny that peppers are considered a hot weather plant, but mine have never seemed to enjoy the really hot weather.

I used to travel to a gas plant on Avery Island, Louisiana where the Mcelhenney family has produced the Tabasco plants and sauce for many generations. I drove through mile after mile of the Tabasco plants basking in the hot, hot sun and high humidity. They always seemed to be enjoying the heat, but mine don't.

Ted

[Skaggydog]

I try bell peppers every year with mediocre luck in hot inland So. Cal. The best bell pepper plant I ever had was buried so deep between two large tomato plants that I forgot about it and didn't see it again until the tomato plants started to die. I'll bet it went a couple of months without direct sun hitting it and it was about 3' tall with 6 or 8 full size peppers on it.

[Hotwired]

I guess I'm in a different world up here in NY. I spend my summer hoping for mid 80's to get my bell peppers producing. You guys in Texas are always wishing it would cool down into the 90's. Up here in NY, Bell peppers thrive, and the jalapenos and habaneros don't get enough warmth to do well. So if you did the complete opposite of me, you'd have a great pepper crop.

Originally Posted by Hotwired

I guess I'm in a different world up here in NY. I spend my summer hoping for mid 80's to get my bell peppers producing. You guys in Texas are always wishing it would cool down into the 90's. Up here in NY, Bell peppers thrive, and the jalapenos and habaneros don't get enough warmth to do well. So if you did the complete opposite of me, you'd have a great pepper crop.

When we were living in Louisiana, I would often fly into the Corning, NY airport and rent a car. My garden back in Louisiana would be stone cold dead from the summer heat. Driving from the Corning airport, I would immediately see residential gardens with the most beautiful crops of Bell Peppers and other vegetables that had been long dead in my garden. Envious can't begin to describe my feelings looking at those gardens. What I always forgot was the fact that my garden looked like those a few weeks earlier while the NY gardens were still sleeping under a blanket of snow.

I also remember a number of times I was in NY and your supposed 87 degrees had reached 95 degrees and no one had air conditioning because it rarely exceeded 87 degrees. My thoughts were always "at least I have air conditioning at home" as I lay in bed at night trying to sleep.

Ted

[greentiger87]

Try:
Italian sweet peppers - long and much narrower than bells, but sweet, many cultivars. Corni di Toro does fantastic for me, more than I can pick usually.

sweet banana peppers - many varieties, all are blockbusters

poblano peppers - slightly hot, but can be used interchangeably with bell peppers if you adjust other sources of heat

bell peppers - California Wonder, Charleston Bell, and Chinese Giant have all performed admirably for me.

With the pots, be careful that the root zone doesn't overheat, as they're prone to in Texas summers. Unless you're going to be moving them around to take advantage of different locations, I think sweet peppers do better in the ground.

[peppero]

here in sw tennesee i get some of all types of peppers during summer but they really thrive from september on. i even have a bell, some long sweet pepper and some hot peppers in my greenhouse from plants that i am carrying over. what amaze me is that during the winter the temps spend a lot of time in the 40sand 50s. mind you, iam not complaining. jon

[Redbaron]

I have had very good luck using companion planting to solve the heat problem. Basically using companion plants to create a local micro-climate. In years past NONE of my bells produced anything but 1 or 2 tiny shriveled up thin walled bitter peppers before dying in the heat. The last couple years I got HUGE thick walled peppers sweet and tasty that produced right through the severe up to 110+ degree drought and heat wave. Some plants got 3 - 4 feet tall and had so many heavy peppers branches were breaking. I hadn't changed the variety, just the standard Bonnies Best from Lowes. I didn't use any special fertilizers, just paper and grass clippings. What I did change was adding additional companion plants including Marigolds, Basil, Cilantro, Borage, Tarragon. Also I think the soil quality in that bed has been improving over the last few years, but nothing special I did to cause that except mulching.

Originally Posted by greentiger87

Try:
Italian sweet peppers - long and much narrower than bells, but sweet, many cultivars. Corni di Toro does fantastic for me, more than I can pick usually.

sweet banana peppers - many varieties, all are blockbusters

poblano peppers - slightly hot, but can be used interchangeably with bell peppers if you adjust other sources of heat

bell peppers - California Wonder, Charleston Bell, and Chinese Giant have all performed admirably for me.

With the pots, be careful that the root zone doesn't overheat, as they're prone to in Texas summers. Unless you're going to be moving them around to take advantage of different locations, I think sweet peppers do better in the ground.

I grew a Poblano two years ago that I loved. It grew beside my dead California Wonder Bell peppers. By the end of the season, it was taller than my head and I am 6'3" tall. It was loaded with peppers when the first hard freeze of fall arrived. I had so many Poblanos, I let them freeze with the plant. The peppers had a slightly brown color over green that was very attractive. They had enough heat in them that you knew you were eating a chile pepper, but it didn't hang in your mouth very long. It was just a pleasant heat. Since I bought it at a big box store, it was simply labeled "Poblano" and I have no idea if I can find the same variety of Poblano again. By the end of the season, I had to stand on a small step ladder and wrap a rope around the top of it to prevent the weight of peppers from breaking branches off.

Ted

[Redbaron]

Wow Ted! I never had a pepper grow that tall!

Originally Posted by Redbaron

Wow Ted! I never had a pepper grow that tall!

The base of the plant was 1 1/2" thick when I pulled it while cleaning the garden in the winter. I assumed it was a normal size for Poblano peppers, but I didn't know. I only know the plant was huge and produced great peppers. Each pepper was probably the weight of a large Bell pepper, but they were more elongated than a Bell pepper. I will search for that variety by description and see if I can grow it again.

I was trying to determine why a pepper plant like the Poblano performed so well in high heat and one of the supposed "better" varieties or any variety of Bell pepper just can't take the heat in my garden. I'm also trying to figure out what I am doing wrong with the Bell's because I know some folks pretty close to my part of the country have no problem growing Bell's.

Ted

[WVTomatoMan]

I too have never grown a pepper plant that big and a lot of people admire my pepper garden - whew they'd probably go nuts with Ted's. Poblano pepper plants do grow big, but mine are only about 5 feet tall - they'll be some of the tallest ones in the attached picture of my pepper garden. I can get some decent sized bell peppers (also refer to the attached pictures). IMHO peppers like rich soil.

Good luck.

Randy

p.s. The picture of the pepper garden was taken on July 30th last year, so there was plenty of growing season left so the plants got a lot bigger, but this was the only picture I had at work of the pepper garden. And, the plants on the left are eggplants growing in containers.

Originally Posted by WVTomatoMan

I too have never grown a pepper plant that big and a lot of people admire my pepper garden - whew they'd probably go nuts with Ted's. Poblano pepper plants do grow big, but mine are only about 5 feet tall - they'll be some of the tallest ones in the attached picture of my pepper garden. I can get some decent sized bell peppers (also refer to the attached pictures). IMHO peppers like rich soil.

Good luck.

Randy

p.s. The picture of the pepper garden was taken on July 30th last year, so there was plenty of growing season left so the plants got a lot bigger, but this was the only picture I had at work of the pepper garden. And, the plants on the left are eggplants growing in containers.

My peppers don't grow so large in a single phase. They get normal height in the spring. They seem to rest in the high heat with little growth. They start growing again in late summer and grow huge by the time the first freeze arrives. Of course, my Bell peppers are only a memory by the time the late summer growth phase arrives. I don't really concentrate on growing peppers. I work harder to grow my tomatoes. This year, I will concentrate on the peppers a little more making sure they receive timely shade cloths, and plenty of water, in much larger pots full of rich soil. I feel I am missing a trick with the Bell peppers because other folks seem to grow them fine. I will try growing some red and yellow Bells this year in addition to the green Bells. Maybe they will grow and survive a little better.

This year, I want to produce some nice peppers of various varieties in order to try pickling them. I've never attempted to preserve my garden produce with the exception of freezing a few things and drying tomatoes. It should be interesting and rewarding to have pickled peppers along with preserved beets, cucumbers sweet and dill, plus a few other things. I also want to cook a few dishes utilizing peppers as the main ingredient instead of using them as a flavoring in a dish starring some other ingredient.

Ted

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by tedln

My peppers don't grow so large in a single phase. They get normal height in the spring. They seem to rest in the high heat with little growth. They start growing again in late summer and grow huge by the time the first freeze arrives. Of course, my Bell peppers are only a memory by the time the late summer growth phase arrives. I don't really concentrate on growing peppers. I work harder to grow my tomatoes. This year, I will concentrate on the peppers a little more making sure they receive timely shade cloths, and plenty of water, in much larger pots full of rich soil. I feel I am missing a trick with the Bell peppers because other folks seem to grow them fine. I will try growing some red and yellow Bells this year in addition to the green Bells. Maybe they will grow and survive a little better.

Ted

Ted,
I may have mentioned this to you before, not sure, but the trick that got my bells through the heat and the drought was companion planting low growing companions. I had read that bell peppers especially needed other plants nearby transpiring and creating a micro climate. So I tried it. It worked. I am not so far from you. Just a bit north. So try it and see if it works there too. I got a really big late harvest from my bells this last fall. The peppers were smaller, but actually over-all production was better in fall than spring/early summer because there were a lot more of them. I used basil, tarragon, cilantro, and dwarf marigolds all mixed in my peppers last year.

PS I also used borage, but not inter mingled, the borage was a row over because it gets too big to plant between the peppers in the same row.