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red chili peppers - no fruit (started from seed)

11 years ago

hello

new york-east coast zone

this spring i started the plants from dry/strung/bird beak sized red hot chilly pepper seeds (southern Italy)

some planted in the ground, and some planted in 5 gallon pots, very close spacing. some of the plants are 3 feet tall and flourishing but hardly any fruit! all get heavy afternoon sun exposure. any ideas on what might be lacking or wrong?

i started the seeds may first which i think was about a month too late? also i heard at the end of the growing season the plants can be hung upside down and stored indoors and planted next year, is this true?

thanks

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Comments (2)

Armageddon
11 years ago
Never herd of that 1 before someone may be pulling your leg as soon as the plant dries out loses its leave i would think its toast but could be wrong i have never tried it might have just gave me a new idea though if i was to bring all my 1000s of plants in and hang them from the ceiling would look like a major jungle would only leave maybe a 2 ft crawl space ...hehe
hookilau
11 years ago
I'm also in NY (long island). I think the possibility for your plants to set fruit this year is done, at least in our neck of the woods. You should've likely seen flowers in July for harvesting now. I have a wee little pepper in a teeny pot that has only now set fruit. I saw flowers about 4-6 wks ago. Anyhow.

I think your problem of too much foliage & very little fruit could be due to too much nitrogen. Barring poor stock that is. If memory serves correctly, high nitrogen will give you plenty of foliage but not necessarily support fruit production. Makes for very healthy house plants, lol.

I *have* heard about hanging plants at the end of the season, but not to overwinter. If you end up with a ton of unripened fruit & the season is closing fast & you're not overwintering, you can hang the plants in a cool shaded place (like a garage). The fruit will then ripen, kinda the same way blushing tomatoes can be picked & allowed to ripen on the counter or the vine, but your plant will surely die.

I'm planning on overwintering this year. This past weekend, I pruned 2 trees really hard. They were about 3 feet high & just as wide in containers. This weekend coming up, I'll dig them out, bare root & plant in a gritty mix. This year is an experimental one as some of my peppers did not produce useful peppers for me, I use 'em for cooking and everyday consumption, so I want 'em hot & full of complex flavor.

Do a GW search for overwintering hot peppers & you'll get pics, info & guidance. My suggestion is to sort out where they'll get the most light first, then pick the best plants, have a backup (air dried seeds labelled WELL, trust me on this) in case one gives up the ghost, cut back hard & leave a couple of leaves, watch & treat for pests (you WILL have them) and water sparingly. Cold & wet sucks for us & them too 8) Good luck!

Antoinette
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Right now temperatures sound perfect for setting flowers and new peppers on the plants. But soon it will be too hot for that. If you plant seeds now you will have to wait for temperatures to cool down before they set new peppers. However, you will have a longer time for the plant to grow big so when it does cool down the larger plant will set a lot of peppers. You will then need a couple of months for them to ripen red. lets say a month to grow big and green and a couple of weeks to a month to turn red. So need to know more about all 12 months of your weather. Technically you should be able to keep your peppers alive for a few years if they do not freeze to death or dry out completely in the heat. I am up north in zone 5 with short season. Basically I start mine early and then get them outdoors and get a few peppers to set. they ripen over the time of higher heat and then set a lot of peppers as it cools down. If you are going into a real hot season I would probably expect better results if planted in the ground and not in pots. Although pots would be good if you are home all day every day to watch them closely and water them at the first sign of drying out. But one miss and they can dry out and die on you. When planting in dry soil it is probably best to plant in a hole. you fill the hole with water and that makes watering much easier. The water does not flow away from the plant. I would definitely plant some seeds immediately. You will learn best by experimentation. I am sure you will have some success. Of course pots have the advantage that you can move them out of the super hot sun. Maybe talk to some people from Arizona where it gets desert hot and they use other tricks to keep things alive over the heat. I think you want to try some chinese and annual peppers at this time to see how different they grow. habaneros vs say some jalapeno or new mexico types. I like to think of it this way. The best place to grow peppers is at the equator up high in a cool mountain. It never freezes but never gets too hot either and the plant can grow for years.
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