Looking good.

My bells did something similar, they were really small and the blossoms were falling off and then, all of the sudden, they set a whole bunch of peppers.

Hopfully, that is the first of a whole bunch of peppers for you too.

Ania

worse year for peppers I have ever seen. usually you plant them and in a couple months they bury you in peppers. not so this year.

its what makes gardening fun *roll eyes

Ditto here, very few bells.

However, I can't stop the jalepenos from their hyperactive production. Somebody please take some of these jalepenos! I can't even give any more away :-)

What's up with that? After all, they're both peppers sharing growing conditions. The bells are being such laggards...

All right Steve, You need to pick it up a bit for that salsa that you have been chasing ... that ain't a going to cut it Mate LOL ;)
I do have a couple of rare cherry, cherry+ tomato seeds to send you ... but you have to swear that they don't get treated to the same size pot treatment as the monster ;)

Was wondering how all is going in the new yard ( CONGRATS!) but alas, no link???

Peppers in the beds have done well here so far. Wife and I put up 14.5 pints of salsa so far and provided maters and bells for another family. Everything else is 1/32 scale models of what vegetables should look like :(

Same here, only 2 bells started on one plant and 1 on the other. Transplanted on May 19. Sure hope I get more !!

I FINALLY got a bell pepper growing. Got to be a nice size and then something chewed a hole in the bottom and the pepper fell off. D'oh!!!!

I have a banana pepper growing at a nice rate. I am hoping it doesn't suffer the same fate.

I think the cooler summer (hardly ever hits 80 this summer) is to blame for the slow pepper production.

cozy: No worries. ;-) I may not end up getting but about 10 or so bells (we'll see...flowering like crazy now), but I have many other plants...muahahah! I have hot peppers coming out my ears. The Mucho Nacho Jalapeno's are f'in insane! lol...They must be at least half a mil on the Scoville if not more. Make a Habanero look wimpy. I also have regular Organic Jalapeno's, Hot Hungarian Wax, Serrano (this thing is a frickin tree...lol), etc., etc., etc.. The Hyponex Experiment plant does well still. =) It has either 4 or 5 mini Jal's growing on it. My recently planted pickling cuke bed is growing up the side of the house. Yellow wax beans growing quite well too. The only disappointment so far is my San Marzano Organic Maters. At 6-7 feet tall also they continue to get BER right off the bat (someone said this is common with paste maters, but only the first few fruit sets...mine are way past that). I pick a handful of bad BER maters off them every day. :-\ This will almolst deffinitely cause me to go back to Roma's. I also have cherry toms producing like crazy and my Early Girl plants are 6-7 feet tall with 20-25+ maters a piece on them. Yay! Anyways, i've been busy lately with moving & unfortunately some bad Bursitis, so I haven't updated the blog in a while. Weather permitting (hahaha...10 days straight of rain forecast...dejavu from Spring...), I will take pics in the morning and try to get an update posted by the afternoon. Cozy: You may very well not see a pic of the "Monster Cherry Tomato" plants on said update tomorrow as it's hard to fit each one in a single picture! =) I haven't done any measuring in a while, but I bet the one is over 10 ft tall with at least 4-5 branches over 5 ft long. I've picked well over 100 maters off it so far. Anyways, must go to sleep & dream of salsa, a dream that will soon come true. Cozy: I gotta send you some of the Monster Cherry mater seeds. Insanely tasty. I have a test seed bunch from one of the maters growing right now. They're already about 5-6 inches tall...muahahaha.

Peace - Steve

So funny... Peppers have been my best crop this year. Everything else... ugh, early blight. I mean, I got a few potatoes, a few zuchinni, etc. But, now, well, I'm pulling most stuff out tomorrow. :-( Peppers are good though and I'm hoping to salvage some toms. The blight problem was even on the Pittsburgh news last night. But, last year, not one pepper.
That is a cute little pepper, though. :-)

Congrats! My Cal Wonder has about 3 fruits going right now. One is about a week away from harvesting and the others just came in (about the same as yours) with a few more to come, I hope. My banana peppers have been setting fruit like crazy, though.

Ok, here's the update...long long day (week...month...) at work, so I didn't get to work on it until a few hours ago. Let me know what y'all think. =)

Steve's Garden

I found three more tiny bells growing on the same California Wonder plant this morning ! Yay! =)

Good deal Steve. My California Wonders have done better than they ever have this year. Even friends and neighbors are amazed as they usually don't do very well for us around these parts. I almost didn't plant any this year, but since they were the first to show up in the nurseries, I couldn't resist.

Here's a tip. Go ahead and stake that branch with all the bells on it. I've had to stake all mine recently to keep from breaking branches. They can grow fast this time of year and all it takes is a bit of wind or a roaming varmint to ruin a good thing.

Yea...they do get heavy. =) I have some bamboo stakes available, awaiting that use. More news...I found 3 babies on my Yellow Bell earlier this afternoon.

My Bells are doing great so far, over 25 peppers per plant the size of golf balls and bigger. My anaheim chillies are dropping every flower as soon as fruit appears. sort of disappointing, eh?

I swear peppers are just persnickety. Mine have been taking turns. The hot bananas looked like they were going to drown me, then they stopped. When the poblanos are setting like mad all the bells were dropping, now the bells are exploding and the poblanos are dropping. I suspect when the bells decide they don't want to set anymore the anaheims will decide it is their turn.

I've never had much luck with peppers, other than one year when I got a monster crop of Thai hot peppers. I tried to grow regular sweet bell peppers and got not a one. I also tried growing Poblano peppers and only got one small fruit.

This year I decided to give it a shot since I decided to expand and add loads of new veggies I never grew before (I know, I know - I have FABULOUS timing lol!!!) so I picked up one, lone sweet bell pepper and two banana peppers. They were last minute additions so I just bought them at the store where I started everything else from seed this year.

I have 2 bell peppers on my one plant now. I'm determined to pick a red bell pepper so I'm going to leave them and see if I succeed! One of the two banana peppers is starting to produce now and I have about 8 peppers growing and picked a few to try, even tho they're still smallish sized. The other plant, however, only had around 3 peppers and all of them had holes "drilled" in the side - don't know the culprit because even tho I continually check the plants, I haven't found a sign of anything other than the mystery holes.

Out of the 4 hot peppers I started from seed, one Maule's Red Hot was eaten down to a stump not once, but twice! It got eaten, was starting to put out some new growth, then that got eaten as well! The other one had the same thing, but the new growth wasn't touched and it's now a good size, however, I don't know if I'll get anything from it. The two Thai hot pepper plants got eaten as well, however, they put out new growth and are now pretty bushy (albiet still on the small side) and are loaded with flowers and I can see a few tiny little peppers starting to form. Again, hopefully we'll have a long, warm fall because I don't know how long it takes for these to form.

All in all, I won't say my peppers have been a failure this year as they've done far better than my first attempts! But I'm still not thrilled. I will try again next year, however. I'm determined to grow every component for my salsa eventually! I have everything besides the onions. Maybe next year I'll actually get every ingredient to actually grow and produce!!

Lisa

Chea...I imagine the weather during next years Spring couldn't possibly be as bad as this year, hopefully...lol...Maybe our plants will grow like/when they're supposed to. =)

Same thing going on with my bell peppers too. I have 3 plants. Only one is producing right now. Have 3 growing on it. I planted in April. About end of May saw my first buds, then peppers & then the darn things fell off!!! :(
Now they are growing again & this time they are holding on. Still have one plant, no blooms...nothing. Think I am going to go out & talk to it with a knife in my hands while doing so. Might frighten it into giving me something. Hehehe! The other plant with nothing on it had one growing. It was about tennis ball sized but the side of it started turning brown for some reason. Picked it off & threw it away.

Have 2 mater plants here almost 8 feet tall! Incredible! Never had one that tall before! Big Boys. I have been supplying maters to the neighbors because I can`t eat enough mater sandwiches to keep up with what the plants are making! LOL!

My California Wonders usually every year, don`t really start to get going good until the time it starts getting cooler. Weird. Then they go ballistic! Oh well. The joys of gardening! :)

hobbiest: Yea...it just has to be the crazy weather this year causing all this. I can't think of any other reason why the same thing would be happening to so many people! I guess the local farmers market stands are somewhat happy though (at least mine is), as they're probably getting a bit more business.

I planted some Cal Wonders. I've had similar problems as everyone has mentioned. Flowers falling off, etc. I have a few small peppers starting to grow and 2 actual larger sized peppers, but I don't know when to pick them. They are about 4 inches tall and only 2 inches wide. Is this the normal size of Cal Wonders? Should I pick them. They've been this size for a couple of weeks and aren't growing any bigger.

hand: If they've remained that size for a few weeks now, you can definitely pick them, or wait another two weeks or so if you want a red one. I'd reccommend picking them green though if you want to give the plant a little energy back to maybe start growing another one or two.

Mine hung on the plant for an extremely long time before changing colors.

I have some that have been on the plant for months now. Some turned from green to purple to orange even. the yellows are the hardest to figure out cause they start out yellow. I picked one after it sat on the plant for probably 7 weeks and it was not ripe. Now I am finding that they get more bright yellow when ripe. I picked 2 the other day and they were yummy on the grill.

I have 8 plants of sweet peppers. I have gotten about 35 large peppers so far. about 10 more will be ready in a day or 2. We make stuffed peppers often so I pick several at a time. I have been growing peppers for 20 years and have noticed that until I pick a few peppers they will not produce heavy. So.... I pick the first peppers on all my pepper plants when they are quite small and enjoy them in other things. I also do this with my Anaheim, Hung Wax, and jalapeno. by this time I can feed the whole neighbor hood with peppers and zucchini (only 1 plant of zuch). Hubby loves the Anaheim marinated and grilled and I love to cook with the hungarian wax and I pickle all the jalapenos I can get my hands on.

Thanks Laurie

I have 8-10 sweet pepper plants myself. First year with the garden. I have picked 4 peppers so far. I have about 6 more on the plants now, but they're growing so slow.

Paul

Seems that most gardeners complaining about sweet peppers, are in zone 5 and 6 (corelation =weather)

Chilie peppers are tough cookies. They can stand heat, draught and produce. I have maybe 30 of them. In the sweet department I have Aneheim and gipsy, no bells. In Asiam farmers market here, they are so inexpensive that I did not feel growing them with pain. Growing bell peppers is pain in the neck. The weather, watering, has to be just so and so(warm days, cool nights). They do not like it hot, they do not like it cold..
Actually zones 6 nd 7 are (should be) perfect for bells. Zones 8 and over are tooo hot. Zone 5 could be a toss of coin. WE have been having low-mid 90s since early july here ATL-GA.
Zones 4 and lower, are probably too cold for the bells.

An update...My Cali Wondeer Bell now has either 4 or 5 growing & my Yellow Bell has about the same! Yay! I may get more bells than I thought by the end of the season. =)

The bell from the pic above (Cali Wonder):
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Some of my wee Yellow Bells:
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laurie143, I read your post and I got thinking. These peppers are taking forever to get full size. They were OK, but I wanted bigger so I was waiting. I decided to go out and cut all of the first to bloom peppers off the plants. Looking at the plants now with not a single pepper on them, I wondered if I did the right thing. It has only been 1 week since I harvested all the peppers. In the past week all the plants are growing bigger. Some even putting out more flowers already. 1 plant in particular has about 5 buds just on 1 branch. I didn't bother to count all the buds, but it is looking very promising after the first batch was harvested. I can't wait.

Paul

mine did the same thing and just started producing yah! their growing so fast!