- 2 days ago
🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach: https://eliasyoder.com
If your bell peppers stay small, thin-walled, or produce disappointing harvests, you may be missing one crucial step. In this video, you'll discover the simple growing technique that helps pepper plants develop stronger roots, healthier foliage, and large, thick-walled peppers packed with flavor. Whether you're growing in raised beds, containers, or a backyard garden, these practical tips can make a noticeable difference.
We'll cover the best soil preparation, natural fertilizers, watering schedule, spacing, mulching, pruning, and common mistakes that prevent peppers from reaching their full potential. These easy-to-follow methods are perfect for both beginner and experienced gardeners looking to grow bigger and healthier bell peppers naturally.
🌱 In this video you'll learn:
• The secret to growing thick-walled bell peppers
• How to prepare the perfect soil
• The best natural nutrients for pepper plants
• Watering and feeding tips for maximum harvests
• Common pepper-growing mistakes to avoid
• How to keep plants healthy all season long
If you enjoy practical gardening tips, don't fo
If your bell peppers stay small, thin-walled, or produce disappointing harvests, you may be missing one crucial step. In this video, you'll discover the simple growing technique that helps pepper plants develop stronger roots, healthier foliage, and large, thick-walled peppers packed with flavor. Whether you're growing in raised beds, containers, or a backyard garden, these practical tips can make a noticeable difference.
We'll cover the best soil preparation, natural fertilizers, watering schedule, spacing, mulching, pruning, and common mistakes that prevent peppers from reaching their full potential. These easy-to-follow methods are perfect for both beginner and experienced gardeners looking to grow bigger and healthier bell peppers naturally.
🌱 In this video you'll learn:
• The secret to growing thick-walled bell peppers
• How to prepare the perfect soil
• The best natural nutrients for pepper plants
• Watering and feeding tips for maximum harvests
• Common pepper-growing mistakes to avoid
• How to keep plants healthy all season long
If you enjoy practical gardening tips, don't fo
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Have you ever wondered why one gardener pulls great big thick-walled bell peppers off his plants,
00:06heavy peppers that near fill the hand, sweet and crisp, while yours stay small and thin and
00:12papery and disappointing? It is not luck, and it is not that he has some gift you lack.
00:19It is that he does a few plain things you were never told to do, most of them before the
00:25plant
00:25ever goes in the ground. I am going to give you every one of them today, start to finish,
00:31and none of it is complicated, and none of it costs much of anything. A bell pepper is a fine
00:37and generous plant, once you understand it. Folks think it is finicky and hard, but it is not.
00:44It only wants a few things done right, and then it will hang itself full of thick, sweet fruit
00:50until the frost. The trouble is never that peppers are difficult. The trouble is that nobody ever
00:56told you the handful of things that actually matter. So let me tell you. My name is Elias Yoder,
01:03and I farm here in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, and I have grown peppers my whole life, the sweet
01:09bells and the hot ones both, and I have learned that the pepper rewards the man who gives it a
01:16strong
01:16start more than almost any other plant in the garden. Get the beginning right, and the rest
01:22near takes care of itself. My grandfather had a saying about it that I have never forgotten.
01:28He would say, a pepper is made in the hole, not on the vine. What he meant was that the
01:36whole future
01:36of that plant, whether it gave you a bounty or a handful of sad little things, was mostly decided
01:43in the few minutes when you set it in the ground, by what you put in the hole with it
01:48and how you
01:49settled it in. Everything after was just tending what you had already begun. I have found it true
01:56my whole life. The man who is careless at planting spends all summer trying to fix what he did wrong
02:03in one careless minute in the spring, and he mostly cannot. So we are going to take our time at
02:10the
02:10planting, you and I, because that is where the peppers are truly made. Before I go on, I will
02:17say this once and then leave it be. I gathered the whole of it, all these old ways of growing
02:23your own
02:24food, into a book. You can find it at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you want
02:32it,
02:32it is there. I will not mention it again. Let me start where the trouble usually starts,
02:38which is the moment of planting out your young pepper plants, for this is where most folks go
02:44wrong before they have even begun. The first thing is a small kindness that makes a real difference.
02:51Before you set your young plants in the ground, give their roots a good drink. Take a bucket of
02:57water and stand the root balls of your seedlings in it for a quarter hour or so, until the roots
03:03are
03:03soaked full through. A young plant moved from its pot into the ground suffers a shock. We call it
03:10transplant shock, and it can set the plant back by weeks while it struggles to recover. But a plant whose
03:17roots go into the ground already drunk full of water takes hold quicker and suffers far less. So soak the
03:25roots first. It costs you nothing but a few minutes and a bucket of water. And while those roots are
03:31soaking,
03:32take the time to look your plants over close. Check for any damaged or yellowed lower leaves,
03:38any sign of bug or trouble, and pinch off any dead or sickly leaf you find. A poor leaf only
03:46drains
03:46strength from the plant, and you want all that strength going into new roots and new growth,
03:52not into propping up a dying leaf. It is a good moment to catch a trouble early, before it goes
03:58into
03:58the ground with the plant. Now here is a thing you must know, and it runs exactly opposite to what
04:05you may have heard about another plant. You do not plant a pepper deep. Now I have told you before,
04:12and it is true, that a tomato you plant deep, burying a good long stretch of its stem, because a
04:18tomato will
04:19grow new roots all up and down that buried stem. But a pepper is a different creature, and does not
04:25do that.
04:26Bury a pepper's stem deep, and it will not root along it. It will only rot and invite fungus and
04:33trouble
04:34at the buried stem. So heed the difference. Deep for the tomato, shallow for the pepper.
04:42What you do with a pepper is dig your hole and set the plant so the first true leaves sit
04:49just above
04:49the soil line. You bury a little of the lower stem, just enough to steady the plant and coax a
04:56bit of
04:57extra root, but no more. And here is a small thing that matters. Do not leave a bowl or a
05:05hollow around
05:06the stem, for that will catch water and pool it against the stem and rot it. Keep the soil level
05:14around
05:14the plant, or even mound it up just slightly, so the water runs away from the stem and not toward
05:21it.
05:22A small thing, but it saves a deal of grief. Now, before I set that plant in its hole,
05:30I work a couple of things down into the bottom of it, and these two make all the difference. And
05:36you
05:37have heard me speak of them both before, because they are old friends by now.
05:42The first is wood ash. If you keep a fire, you have this for free. Only be sure it is
05:49ash from
05:50plain untreated wood, never painted or treated lumber, which carries poison. A spoonful of good,
05:59dry wood ash worked into the bottom of the hole. Wood ash carries the mineral that builds a pepper's
06:06fruit up big and thick-walled. Short that mineral, and your peppers come out thin and papery,
06:14that very disappointment I spoke of at the start. Wood ash also carries lime, which guards against a
06:22trouble I am about to warn you of, and it sweetens ground that has gone too sour, which peppers do
06:29not
06:30care for. If you have no wood ash, use bone meal instead, or use both. Bone meal, which is just
06:39ground
06:40bone, is rich in the feeding that drives strong roots and good flowering and fruit set. A spoonful worked
06:49into the hole gives those young roots what they need to spread and take hold fast.
06:56Now hear how you put these in, for it matters. You work your ash or your bone meal down into
07:04the soil
07:04at the very bottom of the hole, mixed in good with your hands, not just sprinkled on. And then, and
07:12this
07:12is important, you put a thin inch of plain soil over top of the amendments before you set the plant
07:20in,
07:21so the tender roots are not sitting right down against the concentrated feeding, which can burn
07:27them. The feeding is there in the root zone, waiting for the roots to grow down into it, but not
07:34in hard
07:35contact with them the first day. Then, set your plant, fill in around it with your soil, and firm it
07:43gently with your hands. Not packed down hard like you are making a brick, but firmed enough to close
07:51up any hollow air pockets, for air pockets let the roots dry out and die. When you are done, give
08:00the plant
08:00the gentlest tug. If it shifts easy, firm it a little more. It should sit snug and steady in the
08:08ground.
08:10Now, let me warn you of the heartbreak that ruins more peppers than any disease, and teach you to
08:17prevent it, because prevention is the only cure worth much. It is called blossom end rot. You will
08:27know it by a dark, sunken, rotten spot on the blossom end of the pepper, the bottom end, often while
08:34the
08:34pepper is still green and growing. It starts small, a brown spot, and it spreads and ruins the fruit for
08:43eating. And here is the thing folks get wrong. It looks for all the world like a disease took hold,
08:51but it is no disease at all. It is the plant unable to get enough lime up into the fruit.
09:00And here is the
09:01part that surprises people. Your ground may have plenty of lime in it, and you can still get this
09:07rot, because the trouble is often not that the lime is missing, but that the plant cannot draw it up.
09:15And the great cause of that is uneven watering. Lime travels up into the plant carried along with the
09:24water. So when the watering goes feast and famine, soaked, then bone dry, then soaked again, the water
09:33movement is jerky and broken, and so the lime movement is jerky and broken, and the fruit does
09:40not get its steady supply, and it rots at the end. That wood ash or bone meal you worked in
09:46at planting
09:47puts a reserve of lime right where the roots can reach it, and that goes a long way. But the
09:54other
09:54half, and the half that truly seals it, is watering the plant steady and even. Which brings me to the
10:01finest trick in this whole video, because here is the other trouble with watering a pepper. A pepper hates
10:09to have its leaves and stem wetted. Wet leaves are an open door to all manner of fungus and blight,
10:17and rot, and I have seen whole pepper patches ruined by disease that started from nothing but watering
10:24over the tops of the plants, the water carrying the sickness from leaf to leaf. And watering over
10:31the top is wasteful besides, for much of it runs off or dries away before it ever soaks down to
10:38the
10:38roots, and it bakes a hard crust on the soil top. So here is the old way, and it is
10:45one of the oldest
10:46watering methods known to man, older by far than any hose or pipe. You take a vessel, an old pot,
10:54or a plastic tub, or even a bottle, something you were going to throw out, and you poke a good
11:00number
11:00of small holes all around its sides and bottom, ten or fifteen holes, enough that water seeps out slow
11:08and steady, but does not just gush straight through. Then, right when you plant your pepper, you sink that
11:15vessel into the ground beside it, close to the roots, but not so close you tear them, with just the
11:21top
11:22rim left sticking up above the soil so you can find it and fill it, and so the dirt does
11:27not wash in.
11:29Now, when it is time to water, you do not sprinkle the plant at all. You pour your water straight
11:35down
11:36into that buried vessel and let it fill, and it seeps out slow through all those little holes,
11:43down deep into the ground right at the root zone where it is wanted, over hours, gentle and even.
11:50The surface of your soil stays dry. The leaves stay bone dry, so no fungus. No water runs off or
11:58wastes,
11:59and the roots get a deep, steady, even drink every time, which is the very thing that prevents that
12:06blossom end rot. The old peoples of the dry countries watered their gardens this way with buried clay pots
12:13for thousands of years, and it works as well today out of an old plastic pail as it ever did
12:20out of
12:20fired clay. There is a wisdom in it deeper than it first appears. A buried pot of that kind waters
12:28the
12:28plant near according to the plant's own need, for when the soil around it is dry, it pulls the water
12:35out faster, and when the soil is already damp, it draws slow, so the plant is watered more in the
12:42heat
12:43and less in the cool without you having to think on it at all. It is as close to a
12:48plant watering itself
12:50as you will ever manage. My grandfather used a cracked old crock for this, one too broken to
12:57hold water in the kitchen, but just right sunk in the ground, for a crock that leaks slow is exactly
13:03what you want here. So do not throw out that cracked pot. It has one fine job left in it.
13:10And there is a
13:11fine bonus to it. You can tell when your plant needs water just by feeling down in that buried vessel.
13:17If it is dry, it is time to water. If there is still damp in there, wait a day or
13:24two. It takes the
13:25guessing clean out of watering, and both too much water and too little are great troubles for peppers,
13:31so that is no small thing. And one more good thing comes of watering deep this way instead of sprinkling
13:38the top. When the water goes down deep, the roots follow it down deep, and a deep-rooted plant is
13:45a
13:45strong plant. It stands the heat better, it stands a dry spell better, and it holds itself steady in the
13:52ground under wind and under a heavy load of fruit. A pepper watered only on top grows shallow, lazy
13:59roots near the surface that dry out and stress at the first hot day. Water deep, root deep. That is
14:07the
14:08rule. Now here is a feeding worth knowing, but I am going to be honest with you about it, and
14:14not
14:14oversell it the way some do. Once your peppers begin to flower and set fruit, some plants benefit from a
14:20little Epsom salt, which is a plain cheap thing you likely have in the house, sometimes used for soaking
14:26a sore muscle. Its true name is magnesium sulfate, and the magnesium in it is the thing that helps keep
14:34a
14:34leaf good and green and working. A plant short of it goes yellow between the veins, while the veins
14:40stay green. And if you see that yellowing on your peppers, then a spoonful of Epsom salt dissolved in
14:47a gallon of water, given every couple or few weeks through the flowering and fruiting, will often bring
14:53the green right back and help the plant work strong. But hear me, only reach for it if you see
15:00that
15:00yellowing that says the plant wants it. Do not just dump it on healthy plants because you heard it
15:07was a magic trick, for it is no magic trick, and too much of any one thing throws a plant
15:13out of its
15:14balance. A plant fed right in the first place, in rich soil with your ash and bone meal and compost,
15:22may never need it at all. It is a helper for a plant that shows a want, not a secret
15:28potion that makes
15:29miracles. I would be a poor teacher to tell you otherwise. Two more things before we finish,
15:37and both are easy. The first is mulch, that blanket of straw or leaves laid over the soil around your
15:45plants, which you have heard me praise before, and I will praise again here, for it holds the moisture in
15:51the ground even and steady between waterings, and even watering is the very thing that keeps the blossom
15:58end rot away. A mulched pepper is a pepper watered more evenly whether you meant it or not, so mulch
16:06them.
16:07And the second is sun. A pepper wants good full sun to make its fruit, a fair long drink of
16:15it through
16:15the day, so give it your sunniest ground. It is a warm country plant at heart, and it loves the
16:22heat
16:22and the light, up to a point. In the very fiercest heat of high summer, in the hottest parts of
16:29the
16:29country, a pepper can actually drop its blossoms and quit setting when it gets too brutally hot, and there
16:37a bit of afternoon shade in the worst of it can help. But for most folks, most places, the trouble
16:44is too
16:45little sun rather than too much, so plant your peppers where the sun falls longest.
16:51And the last thing, and folks forget it, is to give your peppers room. Do not crowd them. I know
16:59the
17:00temptation to pack as many plants as you can into a small patch, but it never pays. Peppers want air
17:07moving freely around them, for crowded plants with stale, damp air between them breed disease.
17:15Set your plants a good foot and a half to two feet apart, with a couple feet or more between
17:20your rows.
17:22That gives each plant room to spread, lets the air flow through and dry the leaves and keep the sickness
17:28off, lets the sun reach the lower leaves that feed the plant, and makes it far easier for you to
17:35get in
17:35there and pick without trampling everything. Give them their room, and they reward you with better
17:42growth and heavier fruit. Crowd them, and they shade and choke each other, and you get little from any of
17:49them. And once your peppers begin to come, pick them regular, do not let them all hang and hang.
17:57A pepper picked encourages the plant to set more, the same as I told you of the cucumbers, for the
18:04plant is forever trying to make its seed, and a picked fruit sends it trying again. You can pick a
18:11bell pepper green and crisp, or leave some on to ripen red and sweet, whichever you favor, but keep them
18:19coming off the plant, and the plant keeps making more. A plant left loaded with old fruit slows and quits.
18:27A plant picked steady bears you fruit right up to the frost. Let me say a plain word about who
18:35profits
18:36from you not knowing all this, and as usual, it is no dark scheme. It is only that every one
18:43of these
18:44things cost you next to nothing. A bucket of water to soak the roots, ash from your own fire, and
18:51a bit of
18:52bone meal. An old pail you were going to throw out sunk in the ground to water for free. A
18:59spoon of epsom salt
19:00now and again, room between your plants, which cost nothing at all. There is no product to sell in any
19:07of it,
19:08and so no one advertises it, and no one teaches it, and the knowing thins out year by year while
19:14folks
19:15go on buying peppers at the store, thin-walled and dear, never guessing their own plants could give them
19:22better for almost nothing. The money runs toward the store and away from the garden, and it always has.
19:30Not a scheme, just the plain shape of things.
19:34So there is the whole of it, plain and in order. Soak your seedling's roots before you plant them.
19:41Plant them shallow, not deep like a tomato, with the first true leaves just above the soil,
19:47on level or slightly mounded ground. Work wood ash and bone meal into the bottom of the hole,
19:55capped with an inch of plain soil so it does not burn the roots. Guard against blossom and rot,
20:02with that lime in the ground, and with even, steady watering. Sink an old, holed vessel beside each
20:10plant, and water deep through it, keeping the leaves dry and the roots deep. Give a little epsom salt,
20:18only if the leaves yellow, and ask for it. And give every plant its room to breathe. Do those things,
20:26and you will pull peppers off your plants, so big and thick-walled and sweet, you will hardly believe
20:33they came from the same seed that gave you those sad little papery ones before. Tell me down in the
20:41comments what county you garden in, and whether you have been troubled by that blossom end rot,
20:46for I suspect a good many of you have, and never knew what it truly was, until now. And if
20:53you have
20:53an old watering trick of your own, or a way with peppers your family kept, put it down there, so
21:00we
21:00can all learn it. Next time out here I want to show you how to build a proper compost pile
21:06the old way,
21:07layer upon layer, so that you make your own black crumbly gold to fill these holes with, and feed these
21:15hungry plants, and never have to buy a bag of anything. That rich compost is the foundation
21:22under every single thing I have told you today. But for now, remember this. A big sweet pepper is not
21:30a mystery, and not a matter of luck. It is only a plant given a strong start and steady care,
21:38the few
21:38plain things it asks, and no more. The people who built this country with their hands knew
21:45that, and we are only just starting to remember it.
Comments