A local organic supply around here is big on glacial rock dust--it contains a wide range of micro-nutrients. Their whole point is that soil building amendments mainly just make good soil structure, and you need extra soil nutrients to make nutrient-rich veggies. Dunno how that affects yield, but I'll bet they'd say you'll get more peppers too.

Some claim that competition makes a plant produce more fruit. That evidently is one of the claimed benefits of red or green mulch.

I'm gonna try the first thing this year and always seem to do the second thing just out of poor garden planning. We'll see, as always :-)

A note in Dave Dewitts "The Pepper Garden"

The fruit load of a plant is determined by the size of the rootball, size of the stalk and the amount of foliage.

An article on UCONN, re: weeds and peppers, Any weed within 2ft of the plant will reduce fruit load.

Bottom line, try a bigger pot..

All points made seem reasonable. Just to add to emphasize Groovy's comment about picking early; by picking a plant of unripe peppers you'll typically see a flush of new flowers within two weeks. That resurgence of new peppers will usually be 2-3 times the original fruit set. I never picked flowers from the plants but often picked sections of rows clean of unripe peppers (for sales) and those plants always are quick to load with much more fruit. Maybe you have no use for the green peppers but as the fruit ripens so do the chances of insect or disease ruining the fruit.

The ornamental peppers that we grow for potted plant sales mimic that trait repeatedly. In order to have a nice display of multicolored peppers on those plants we will routinely trim groups of peppers, removing all fruit so that those plants will have new peppers in a few weeks to the future. The regenerated peppers are always more plentiful than the number removed.

There are other mangement practices that have less of an impact on production. Planting peppers outside when it is too cold will often delay initial plant growth more than if you wait another few weeks. Also, hold back on sidedressing fertilizer until after the plants set fruit; some call it stressing the plant. But don't let insects or disease do the stressing for you.

Is the pepper flavor better if you pick it ripe rather than green?

The flavor, heat(hot peppers) and nutrient content will be quite different Honu. A ripe pepper will be sweeter and less bitter. The seeds will be fully developed adding to the heat for hot varieties.

Many or the nutrients are higher in the ripe pepper. Most notable is vitamin C. A ripe bell can have 4 times the vitamin C content of an orange.