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Sweet pepper is one of the most common vegetable crops. It is hard to imagine a garden without this heat-loving plant. In our conditions, pepper is grown exclusively by seedlings, and the choice of variety or hybrid depends on climatic conditions. In greenhouses, you can plant any variety suitable for greenhouses. There you can meet all the requirements of this whimsical plant for temperature, watering, lighting. Open ground, on the other hand, implies a careful selection of varieties, hybrids and the choice of a place for growing peppers.
Today we will talk about its proper planting, tell you when to plant pepper in the ground. If everything is done correctly at the initial stages, then it will be easier to care for it, and we will harvest a good harvest.
Features of growing pepper
Pepper came to us from Mexico and Guatemala, which determines its needs:
- short, no more than 8 hours daylight hours;
- moderate need for moisture;
- light fertile soils;
- increased doses of potassium fertilizers.
Pepper is a rather whimsical crop. It may happen that you can only plant the variety you like in a greenhouse. For regions with a cool climate and short summers, only low-growing early-ripening varieties with small or medium-sized, not too fleshy fruits are suitable.
Planting seedlings in the ground
We will assume that we have chosen the right varieties and successfully grown seedlings. Now it remains only to transplant the pepper into the ground and wait for the harvest.
Site Selection
You can not plant pepper after other nightshade crops – tomatoes, potatoes. They suffer from similar diseases, they are annoyed by the same pests that often hibernate in the ground. To choose a place for planting pepper, you need to take into account that this crop needs a short daylight hours – it is impossible to get a good harvest on a site lit throughout the day.
The pepper must be protected from strong winds. It can be planted along plantings of fruit shrubs or trees, part of the daylight hours covering the plant from the sun and giving protection from the wind.
If you plant a little pepper and do not plan to allocate a separate area for it, you can place bushes along the rows of tomatoes – then it will not be attacked by aphids.
Soil Preparation
Light fertile loams with a neutral reaction are suitable for pepper. Chernozems can not be specially prepared for planting this crop, it will be enough for those fertilizers that you apply to the hole when planting. But if the soil has been worked out, it has not rested for a long time, it would be useful to make it per square meter. m a bucket of well-rotted humus.
- On heavy clay soils per sq. m area for digging contribute 1 bucket of humus, peat, sand, 1/2 bucket of rotted sawdust.
- The peat area before planting pepper in open ground is enriched with 1 bucket of humus and 1 bucket of turf, clay soil can be.
- Before planting, 1 bucket of peat, clay soil and rotted sawdust, 2 buckets of humus per 1 square meter are added to the sandy soil before planting.
Of course, it is best to prepare the soil in the fall, but it is not forbidden to do this in the spring, only no later than 6 weeks before planting the pepper in the ground, otherwise it simply will not have time to sink.
Terms of planting
You can not plant pepper in cold ground. It should warm up well and have a temperature of at least 15-16 degrees, in addition, the threat of repeated spring frosts should pass.
If you plant peppers in open ground when it is still cold, the seedlings may die, you will have to buy new plants on the market. Not only that, all the work spent on growing seedlings will go to waste. You cannot be sure that you will buy the right variety.
Although the rooted pepper is able to withstand a short-term drop in temperature to minus one degree, at 15 it stops developing. No one, especially in the northwest, can guarantee that after a few warm weeks the weather will not worsen and the temperature will not drop. Be prepared for this, build arcs of strong wire over the bed with pepper in advance. At the slightest threat of frost on the ground, cover the landing with agrofibre, spunbond or film. The shelter is opened during the day, and returned to its place at night.
Planting plan
The distance between seedlings planted in the ground is very important for pepper, it will definitely affect the yield and condition of vegetables. It must be remembered that this plant suffers greatly from excessive lighting. With some thickening of plantings of pepper, the leaves protect the fruits from the rays of the sun, protecting them from burns. But with a very dense planting of plants, loosening and weeding the soil will be difficult, the fruits will grow smaller than they could, and besides, overly thickened plantings provoke stem rot.
Remember that each hybrid or variety of pepper has a certain nutritional area, when planting seedlings, follow the instructions given on the seed bags. This makes sense if you are buying certified planting material from trusted manufacturers.
General recommendations for planting peppers are as follows:
- Plant seedlings at a distance of 35-40 cm between bushes, one or two plants per nest, the interval between rows is 70 cm;
- It is convenient to plant pepper in open ground in two lines – two close rows are at a distance of 30 cm, between plants 20-25 cm, the next pair is 70 cm from the first. With this planting, there is only one plant per hole.
Planting seedlings
In hot sunny hours, planting pepper is unacceptable – it is better to do this in the late afternoon or on a cloudy day. Water the plant well the day before planting. Dig holes so deep that the seedlings, along with a clod of earth, fit freely there.
Pour a tablespoon of chlorine-free potash fertilizer (it is not tolerated by peppers) or special pepper fertilizer according to the instructions into each planting hole. To protect against pests, potash fertilizer can be replaced with a handful of ash or crushed eggshells. If the humus was not introduced for digging the soil, throw it directly into the hole at the rate of 1-2 handfuls under the root.
Fill the hole with water, as soon as it is absorbed, proceed to planting. Carefully remove the seedlings, being careful not to destroy the earthen ball and thereby damage the fragile root. When planting pepper in open ground, it should not be buried; plant seedlings in the same way as they grew in a pot.
Compact the soil around the pepper, immediately tie tall varieties to the pegs. If possible, immediately mulch the planting with peat – this will prevent the land from drying out and will prevent the growth of weeds.
If you live in regions with a cold climate, it makes sense to cover the ground with a covering material.
Care after landing
Pepper care begins immediately after planting seedlings in the ground. This culture is extremely demanding for care, especially for nutrition and watering. If, when planting in the ground, you poured fertilizer into the hole, then for the next two weeks, during which the seedlings take root, you can forget about feeding. But mistakes in watering, committed at first, are fraught with low yields, and sometimes even death of plants.
Podzazhivanie
A certain amount of planted pepper will not necessarily take root, so the dead plants must be replaced with seedlings left for this purpose. Fallouts happen for various reasons, but the damage caused by the winter scoop and the bear is in the first place.
Sometimes the number of dead plants is from 10 to 20%, and if we do not replace the fallen peppers with others, the yield will decrease significantly. In addition, with a significant number of missing plants, the shading that we achieved with a dense planting will disappear. This can lead to sunburn of the ovary, especially the very first fruits.
On light sandy soils, with drying winds and prolonged drought, which is accompanied by heat, the death of peppers can occur as a result of wilting. This happens especially often in the southern regions and with elongated seedlings.
Watering
When growing peppers in the ground, the importance of irrigation is difficult to overestimate. It is impossible to give universal advice on when and how to water a plant. In the Kuban, pepper is an exclusively irrigated crop, but in regions with a large amount of summer precipitation, it can be grown without them at all.
The restorative ability of peppers is much inferior to tomatoes, and it takes a long time to root. Even a minimal violation of the irrigation regime and a change in temperature can cause a delay in survival and in some cases lead to the death of the plant. Most often, gardeners make mistakes when the soil is moist.
The first time the pepper is watered when planting in the ground, there is no need to rush with the next one. If the plant wilts a little on a hot sunny day, do not rush to pour water on it – this is not dangerous and is not an indication for immediate moistening. If the leaves look up early in the morning and evening, water early.
To correctly determine the need for irrigation, watch the plant and determine the degree of soil moisture.
In order to determine the humidity, take a handful of earth from a depth of about 10 cm and squeeze it tightly in a fist:
- The soil is dry if the lump crumbles after you open your fist.
- If water oozes through your fingers, the soil is waterlogged.
- The lump remained lying in your palm and did not lose its shape. Throw it on the ground. If it crumbles, it may need to be watered soon. If a lump has spread like a cake, forget about moistening the soil for a while.
Peppers should not be watered a second time until they are well established. This will happen when the upper leaves darken first, and then the lower leaves. When growth appears, we can assume that the pepper has taken root. After planting, the roots are restored on average 10 days.
At the beginning of the growing season, watering is rarely given, their number depends on precipitation and soil composition. It must be remembered that on light sandy soils, irrigation is carried out more often. Pepper’s need for moisture increases with the onset of fruit ripening.
At none of the stages of development, this crop should not be allowed to get wet – the leaves will turn yellow, the flowers and ovaries will fall off, the plant will get sick. On heavy soils, after overflowing, pepper often does not recover and dies.
Loosening
Row spacing is carried out not only to destroy weeds, but also to retain moisture. In order to reduce evaporation and reduce the number of irrigations, soil loosening is carried out after each. Sandy soils are treated to a depth of 5-6 cm, clay soils to a depth of 10 cm.
It is important to handle the soil carefully, since pepper has superficial roots that are poorly restored. Any damage to them leads to a long delay in the development of the plant.
Feeding
A plant cannot do without top dressing. For them, organic and mineral fertilizers are used, and the latter are best used with special ones intended for pepper.
The first top dressing is given the next day after the first loosening, when the pepper is well rooted, the next – after the formation of ovaries begins.
Nice and not so good neighborhood
If you are not a farmer who is able to allocate a separate field for each crop grown, you will have to choose the pepper of your neighbors. It will grow well next to onions, spinach, coriander, tomatoes and basil. It is not recommended to plant peppers next to beans, fennel, or in the place where beets grew before. Moreover, this is not superstition, but the result of serious research, under which a scientific basis has been laid.
Conclusion
Planting pepper seedlings is no more difficult than any other. Among the indications of what to do next, the list of what not to do prevails. Let’s take care of the plant correctly, grow a good harvest and provide ourselves with tasty and vitamin-rich products for the winter.
