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Annuum easier to cultivate than Chinense?

DeadLegs

DeadLegs

So back in LATE march I planted about 13 seeds and I'm a COMPLETE beginner but I'm totally hooked. Out of the 13 I ended up with six plants that have made it through to now. Five are Jamaican Yellow Mushroom and one is your run of the mill store bought Hab.

Now here's the part I'm baffled on. All five of my Jamaican Yellow plants are now just busting at the seams with pods. My hab plant, however, is flowering beautifully, but after only a few days of the flowers blooming, they turn pale and fall off. The plant gets no more or less water than the Jamaicans and no different fert treatment. Any ideas?
 
it has been my experience that annums are more forgiving than chineses. I thought it was my climate, but who knows. You should be in prime location to grow either.
 
Flowers aborting is commonly caused by too high temperature, especially at night. Different varieties have different temperature tolerance, so probably your plant having problems would like it to be a bit cooler. If you get a little cool spell I bet you will see some pods.
 
My Chinenses, which I overwinter, seem to start putting out pods either in the spring or fall. if they put out flowers during the hot summer months, they all seem to abort. My Fatalii is now throwing out pods, but its in the shade and our temps have been cooler due to the monsoon clouds, my other Chinenses thew out pods pretty good in the spring but they were overwinters growing indoors. Annuums always go from seed to pod during the growing season really easy for me.
 
There may be nothing you can do when it's hot but I find a greatly ramped up watering schedule and more nitrogen fertilizer helps. Many annuum have smaller leaves and lose moisture slower than chinense, and most get a head start sprouting and ripen the peppers faster so that may make them seem easier but it's just a time factor plus a higher watering rate to make up for the leaf size difference (when present).

Are they all in the same soil? I've a hab here that got pretty stunted early on by overly compacted soil, I reduced watering but it didn't seem to help much so I concluded that it was holding too much fertilizer and flushed the plant out thoroughly with tap water twice then adjusted down the watering schedule lower than originally, as well as fertilizer. I should add that the plant started out as a runt, was one of the last I transplanted due to its small size so whether or not anything I did mattered.... all I know now is it looks healthy but a lot smaller than the others, like it's a month younger than it really is.

Is the hab plant a healthy size, seems to otherwise be growing normally? If so, the side effect of not growing pods is it can put the energy into more stems and leaves so when it cools down some, there are a lot more nodes to start blooms from. You'd then have a larger, later harvest.
 
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