Contents
Pepper is traditionally considered not the easiest crop to grow, although this opinion has developed mainly due to its relative thermophilicity. Adult pepper plants are quite resistant to low temperatures, but young ones really need a minimum of + 18 ° C for good growth and development; at lower temperatures, plant development stops. At the same time, peppers tolerate heat well, which is why the culture is quite common in the southern regions of Our Country. Nevertheless, in greenhouses and film tunnels, peppers can be grown in almost all areas up to the very north. But with any method of growing, you always want the fruits to be really large and sweet. Therefore, you can’t do without top dressing of peppers, especially if the soils are not the most fertile.
When to feed
The fruiting period is the final one in the cultivation of peppers and, of course, the most important and responsible for the gardener. Almost everything that could be done has already been done and it remains only to wait for a good harvest.
But pepper is a rather demanding crop in terms of nutrition, and if you plant them in ordinary unfertilized soil, then top dressing comes to the fore with such cultivation. Therefore, it is more reliable to take care of the composition of the earth in advance in the beds where you are going to grow pepper. The best place for pepper beds is former compost heaps. If they are already occupied, or their number is not enough, then it is necessary to add at least a bucket of compost for each square meter of ridges, before planting pepper seedlings on them.
Assuming that this was not done, then the pepper needs regular feeding with organic and mineral fertilizers every two weeks. But by the time the first fruit ovaries appear, you need to be extremely careful. The use of mineral fertilizers is undesirable, since there is a high risk that they will accumulate in ripening fruits. Nevertheless, if peppers are greatly retarded in growth, there is a clear slowdown in the development of fruits, and spots of different intensity and color appear on the leaves, then, of course, they need to be fed.
Signs of nutritional deficiencies
It is not always easy to determine what peppers lack to ripen a normal crop, especially since sometimes some nutrients are present, on the contrary, in excess.
- A lack of nitrogen always manifests itself in the lightening of the leaf blades, and the lightening affects the entire surface of the leaf along with the veins and begins, most often, from the lower leaves. But nitrogen, as a rule, is no longer needed by peppers during the fruiting period. Much more common is an excess of this element, which leads, first of all, to the impossibility of assimilation by pepper of such an important element as calcium, which is responsible for carbohydrate metabolism. And, therefore, many other elements also begin to be poorly absorbed.
- From a lack of phosphorus, old leaves acquire a bluish-brown hue and become black when dried.. Phosphorus deficiency is usually rare during the fruiting stage, but can occur after the first fruiting wave, when the pepper bushes are slow to bloom again. Phosphorus excess is very rare.
- Potassium deficiency usually manifests itself at the stage of budding., but may appear, as well as a lack of phosphorus, after the ripening of the first wave of pepper fruits. The leaves curl around the edges, and a light border appears on them. In the future, browning and dying off of the tips occurs. An excess of potassium, as well as nitrogen, leads, first of all, to the non-absorption of many other elements: calcium, boron, zinc, magnesium.
- Calcium deficiency is indicated by young pepper leaves that curl, turn pale and die.. The apical buds of the shoots are also damaged.
- The lack of magnesium and molybdenum appears mainly on acidic soils., while boron, iron and manganese deficiencies increase in alkaline soils where excess nitrogen and lime have been applied.
Top dressing necessary during fruiting
Summing up all of the above, it can be noted that, regardless of the top dressing operations carried out in previous periods, pepper bushes need complex top dressing at the moment when the first fruits have reached the state of technical maturity.
In order for them to acquire the saturation of the shades assigned to them according to varietal characteristics, and also in order to continue to lay and ripen new fruit ovaries, pepper bushes need additional feeding.
In this case, you can choose from several options.
1 option
Top dressing is prepared from weeds growing in your area: dandelion, clover, nettle, coltsfoot, wheatgrass and many others. Fill any metal or plastic container ¾ of the volume with all of the above herbs and fill with water. You can also add one liter jar of wood ash to the container for 10 liters of liquid. All this is covered with a lid and infused for 7-9 days. One liter of the resulting liquid is diluted in a 10-liter watering can and pepper plants are watered with this infusion instead of water.
2 option
This feeding option can be prepared from a mixture of potash and phosphorus fertilizers in combination with a complete set of trace elements, preferably in a chelated form. For 10 liters of water, you need to take one tablespoon of superphosphate and one teaspoon of potassium sulfate, as well as one tablespoon of any set of trace elements. The consumption of fertilizer liquid when feeding pepper bushes is about one liter per plant.
3 option
It is the simplest, but no less effective way of feeding than the previous two. It is necessary to buy potassium humate in a special store, preferably with a set of trace elements. Usually it is sold in the form of small bags, weighing about 10 grams. This is a completely organic fertilizer, which, in addition to the effect of top dressing, has an additional stimulating effect and improves soil properties. One bag is diluted in 200 liters of water and peppers are poured under the root with the resulting solution.
Perhaps no other help will be needed for the peppers.
Feeding rules
It is better to carry out top dressing procedures in the morning, so that all the moisture on the leaves and soil surface from the fertilizer solution has time to completely go away by the evening temperature drop.
The soil must be moist before fertilizing. Therefore, abundant watering is a necessary procedure before feeding peppers.
Some time after watering, it is advisable to slightly loosen the surface of the soil in order to provide oxygen to the roots of the pepper.
Using folk remedies
Since everything you feed pepper during the fruiting period will necessarily affect the internal composition of its fruits, and also its taste characteristics, many people prefer to use exclusively folk remedies during this period, which can quite effectively replace traditional mineral supplements.
For example, dried and crushed banana skins contain a sufficient amount of potassium. They can be used along with wood ash in place of any potash fertilizer. In addition, the ash also contains a certain amount of phosphorus.
Many useful trace elements are found in milk and dairy products, such as whey. If you dilute one liter of any dairy product in 10 liters of water and add 15-20 drops of iodine, you can get an excellent top dressing for peppers, which also has a protective effect against pests and fungal diseases.
Finally, it is during the fruiting period that peppers can be fed with yeast. To do this, it is enough to dilute 10 grams of dry yeast in 10 liters of water, add 2 tablespoons of sugar and insist for several hours. It is necessary to add a few handfuls of wood ash to the infusion, since the yeast has the ability to “eat” potassium and calcium from the soil. The resulting solution is diluted in a ratio of 1:5 and peppers are poured over them instead of ordinary water.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many ways to feed peppers during fruiting and get an excellent harvest, which will also differ in amazing taste and usefulness.
