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pepper spacing

thepodpiper

thepodpiper

how much room would you give your plants if you were planting many peppers in the ground? I am trying to get as many as i can in the space that i have alloted for peppers. I want space so that i can get pics of the plants and be able to pick pods without any problem. I have drawn up a kind of blueprint of my garden and have left 3' rows and two feet between plants, now initially I was going to give 3' between plants but that would have left out to many plants. The Orange squares are the peppers and right now I only have room for 240. Each square represents 1'.

DCP_1579.jpg


Dale
 
Dale,

We set tomatoes out every two feet with 34 inches between rows and they were not staked. Last year I went 18 inches between plants and 2 feet between rows and that was enough room. My pepper plants (habs, jalapenos and Hungarian Hot Wax) did not get as big as the tomatoes.

Mike
 
If you follow Pam's steps to insure pure seeds, you have to leave enough room to get in there and put the tiny condoms on each and every bloom.......

;)
 
I think that's about a good amount of room Podpiper, but I myself use the use a 3x3 area for my plants and here's why:

This is about a week after 1st planting:
rows.jpg


A little later on:
seaofgreen.jpg

It was beautiful, but honestly the plants were wrapping into each even with 3 ft between them! So I'm sticking to this size, that way it don't get too crowded and possibly cause problems.
 
thepodpiper said:
IGG, are you drunk already?

Dale
Click to expand...

Sadly, not yet. I usualy spaced my plants 8 inches apart and they were loving that. But between rows I would say 3 feet is sufficiant for picking space. But it also depends on the type of pepper.
 
Pepp3rfreak, Is your spacing 3' between the plants and three foot rows? The rows look wider than 3'. planting them on hills seems to have been a plus those plants look great.


IGG, I thought you were joking when you said 8" :lol:

Dale
 
thepodpiper said:
Pepp3rfreak, Is your spacing 3' between the plants and three foot rows? The rows look wider than 3'. planting them on hills seems to have been a plus those plants look great.

Dale
Click to expand...

Thanks! Yeah, maybe the space between the rows is a little more 3ft, but definitely no more then 4 ft, as I make the trenchs between the hills the width of my tiller which is 20". I would never go any smaller then 3 feet between the rows personally, as I'm a big clutz as it is at 6'5" 260, and always end up breaking branchs off picking through the pepperz..:(
 
Wow pepperfreak...you must have had very nice harvest last year.
Those plants look very impressive.
 
pepp3rfreak, did you mulch the plants with something? it kinda looks like it in the top pic and how did you get the hills to look so uniform. I have about 600' of hills to make and I have to tell you I am not looking forward to it. and thats just for the peppers. Seriously though i have not made up my mind if I want to put them on hills but it sure seems like it would be worth it. I am also working on a design for drip irrigation and am not sure if planting on hills would be a good or bad thing useing drip irrigation?


Dale
 
Thanks guys! Yes I had a pretty good harvest. Come near the end of the year I couldn't even walk between the rows as the plants were growing out of control. I couldn't pick them as fast as they would produce, and I even had a couple neighbors and forums friends over to help:) It's too bad I didn't get started until a little late though as I only got about 3 pickings off my Naga's. This year I'm ready though, and will be getting my babies outside in just about 2 to 3 more weeks and I can't wait!!!

I make the rows with a garden rake, and I'll use my tiller to go between the rows so that it'll just fit, this way I can run it through the rows every other weekend to help keep weeds down and also to help the soil airate and keep from getting rock hard. Around here you have to make the rows or you may loose your plants in a rainstorm as the ground has clay underneath and the rain takes awhile to soak in, so small flooding happens quite easy. I have some pics of flooding happening in the garden somewhere, haha, I even have one of my wife trying to go through the garden and she's sunk almost to her hips in mud, I try and keep the top 2 feet tilled real good so it gets like quick sand with rain.

As for mulching the plants kinda stuff, I just use some humus and cow crap in the beginning of the year, and some occasional fish emulsion. I've experimented with a couple other organic things but I can never really tell any difference from using them or not, so I just stick to the same routine.

Pod, I wish you the best of luck in your pepper quest this year, you have quite a Huge task at hand!! Make sure to wear a back belt and have plenty of good adult beverages at hand as your going to need it :)
 
Pepp3rfreak, yes it is going to get crazy around here in about 6 weeks last year I had about 70 plants in the garden and another 60+ in pots but I did not have 30 tomato plants and 16 different kinds of melons. I think I may raise some of the rows that are furthest from the sun and do a comparison to how they do vs the ones not in raised rows. I really do not want to raise 600' of rows. Making the 88 ft trellis along the fence was hard enough and then throw on 21 tons of compost all hand shoveled. You know for some strange reason I'm enjoying it though.

Dale
 
Pepper freak...how did you get your habs so bushy? Right now mine are still under lights, but they are not branching, now I see they have buds on the top. Do I need to pinch them off? or, leave it as they are.

thanks,
 
Sanj said:
Pepper freak...how did you get your habs so bushy? Right now mine are still under lights, but they are not branching, now I see they have buds on the top. Do I need to pinch them off? or, leave it as they are.

thanks,
Click to expand...
Snip the top part of th eplant off and it'll cause th plant to bush out much more. It's called "topping" a plant.
 
Yes, some call it topping. I used to do if for some of my 'special' plants, it make them grow lower, and more stems for more buds, oops, I mean peppers. I don't do this anymore though, as I just let the plants grow however they want. As for being bushy, I'm not too sure if they are any different then others that also grow outside, but I know indoors they don't do near as good without the true radiation and nutrients from the sun. One thing that may help is I use cages for every plant, this gives support for the plants, which may hinder their stem/root strength, but, it may give the plant the ability to use it's energy to gorw bigger instead of stronger?

all I know is I give every one of my plants the most close of care, hell my wife gets jealous of the attention I give my plants, as I think I fondle them and talk to them more then I do her :) Every night I come home I go through each plant making sure dead leaves are pulled out, no spiders/ants/bugs are infesting them, and make sure no stems are getting bunched/bent. I use only the purest water I can get, from birth I use nothing but distilled water and when in the ground filtered rain water. I add in every 4th watering a small amount of fish emulsion..

I'm going crazy with anticipation for this years growing!!! I've roto-tilled the garden for the 7th time today and next weekend I'm building the rows for the next coming weekend for transplanting!


sorry, I have a buzz and rambling, like most nights :)
 
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