Growing red bell pepper
Red bell peppers love warmth, which is why they are most often grown in greenhouses. To get a bountiful harvest, you will have to try and provide the plants with the necessary conditions.
Growing bell peppers from seeds
If you don’t have a greenhouse, the seeds should be sown during the last weeks of winter. Pepper painfully tolerates a pick, so it is better to immediately plant the seeds in small peat pots. The diameter of the pots should not exceed 10 cm, as the root system develops very slowly.
Compliance with agricultural technology allows you to get a rich harvest of red bell pepper
You can prepare the substrate yourself. For this you will need:
- 2 parts of humus;
- 1 piece of land;
- 1 part of the sand;
- some ash.
The seeds must be pre-processed. Put them in hot water, up to +50 ° C, for 5 hours, until they swell. Spread the swollen seeds on a damp cloth and leave in a warm room for 2 days. This preparation allows you to get healthy seedlings faster.
The optimal temperature regime for newly emerged sprouts: during the day – 27 ° C, at night – 11-12 ° С. Watering should be moderate. Waterlogging can cause the appearance of a black leg, but the soil should not be allowed to dry out. For irrigation, you must use warm water, from cold water sprouts may die or be stunted and weak.
Before planting, seedlings need to be hardened in the fresh air, accustomed to sunlight, low temperatures, gusts of wind and rainwater. Dates of planting in open ground – late May – early June. The distance between plants should be 40 cm.
Care consists in regular watering, garter, weeding and feeding. Before flowering, the plant is watered once a week. When the first flowers appear, the number of waterings is doubled.
It is useful to cover the soil with a layer of rotted straw. This significantly reduces the frequency of watering.
If the weather is humid and the temperature is high, it is imperative to remove the stepchildren, otherwise the plant will often hurt. But in dry weather, this does not need to be done, since the side shoots interfere with the evaporation of moisture.
During the growing season, plants need to be pruned several times, removing long branches. Pruning is carried out approximately every 1,5-2 weeks. During flowering, the plant can be shaken to pollinate it well. You can simply spray the flowers with sweet water, this will attract pollinating insects.
Compliance with the rules of care allows you to get high yields of pepper.