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Want to grow giant, healthy peppers with bigger yields? In this video, you’ll discover 7 simple tricks that can help your pepper plants grow stronger, produce more flowers, and develop larger, juicier peppers.
From proper watering and feeding to pruning, sunlight, spacing, and harvesting, these practical gardening tips are easy to follow—even for beginners. Whether you’re growing bell peppers, sweet peppers, or hot peppers, these methods can help you get the most from every plant.
Watch until the end to learn the common mistake that may be stopping your peppers from reaching their full size!
#GrowingPeppers #GardeningTips #VegetableGardening #PepperPlants #HomeGardening #GardenHacks
Want to grow giant, healthy peppers with bigger yields? In this video, you’ll discover 7 simple tricks that can help your pepper plants grow stronger, produce more flowers, and develop larger, juicier peppers.
From proper watering and feeding to pruning, sunlight, spacing, and harvesting, these practical gardening tips are easy to follow—even for beginners. Whether you’re growing bell peppers, sweet peppers, or hot peppers, these methods can help you get the most from every plant.
Watch until the end to learn the common mistake that may be stopping your peppers from reaching their full size!
#GrowingPeppers #GardeningTips #VegetableGardening #PepperPlants #HomeGardening #GardenHacks
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You planted your peppers in the spring with high hopes, and the plants have come up green
00:05and bushy and covered in little peppers, and you are pleased.
00:09And then they ripen, and they are small, a whole plant hung with dozens of little runty
00:15peppers no bigger than a plum, when what you wanted was those big, meaty bell peppers you
00:22could slice thick or stuff and bake.
00:25And you wonder what you did wrong.
00:27Well, most likely you did nothing wrong at all.
00:31You only let the plant do as it pleased, and a pepper plant left to itself will always
00:37choose to make many small peppers over a few big ones.
00:41But you can change that, and with a handful of plain old ways you can grow peppers twice
00:47the size off the very same plants.
00:50Let me show you how.
00:52Here is the thing to understand before we start, the whole secret that most of these
00:58tips come back to.
00:59A pepper plant has only so much strength in it in a season, only so much it can draw from
01:06the soil and the sun, and it must divide that strength among all the fruit it carries.
01:11So if it carries thirty little peppers, each gets a thirtieth of the plant's strength and
01:18stays small.
01:19But if it carries only eight, each of those eight gets a far greater share and grows big
01:26and thick and full.
01:28Growing big peppers, then, is mostly a matter of persuading the plant to pour its strength
01:34into a few fruits instead of scattering it among many, and of making sure it has plenty of strength
01:41to pour.
01:42Now, let me give you the ways in order.
01:45Quick word before we go further.
01:48My name is Esther Yoder, and the old household ways handed down to me, the kind I am sharing
01:54today and a great many more besides, are far more than I could ever fit into one video.
02:00I have gathered the whole of them into a book, and you will find it at EliasYoder.com.
02:06If today's tips serve you, that is where the rest of what my mother and grandmother taught
02:12me lives, all in the one place.
02:15Now to the peppers.
02:17My grandmother grew peppers big enough to make a meal of a single one, and when I was
02:22a girl and asked her how, she told me a thing that seemed cruel to me then and wise to
02:28me
02:28now.
02:29Sometimes, she said, you must take away to gain.
02:34She meant that you must be willing to pinch off some of what the plant is trying to grow,
02:39so that what remains can grow great.
02:42A mother hen, she said, can raise a few strong chicks, or a great many weak ones.
02:49And a pepper plant is no different, and it falls to you to decide which you will have.
02:55That was her first and greatest lesson on peppers, and it is where we begin.
03:00The first way, then, and the most powerful of all, is to thin the fruit.
03:06It will feel wrong the first time you do it, for I am going to have you pull off good
03:12little
03:12peppers and throw them away.
03:14And every instinct says to keep them all.
03:18But hear me.
03:19When your plant has grown up full and bushy, and is covered in little peppers just forming,
03:25a dozen or more of them and flowers besides, all trying to become peppers, that plant is
03:32trying to do more than it can.
03:34It thinks it can raise all of them, and it cannot, and so it raises them all small.
03:41So, while the little peppers are yet small, no bigger than your thumb, go over the plant
03:47and look them over, and pick out the six to ten strongest, healthiest, best placed ones
03:53to keep, and pinch off all the rest.
03:56Just take them off.
03:58And now, all the strength that would have been split thirty ways goes into those six or ten,
04:04and they swell up big and meaty as you never saw before.
04:10How many to leave takes a little learning by doing.
04:13For a strong plant might carry ten or twelve fine big ones, while a smaller kind can only
04:20manage six.
04:21Start on the higher side, leave ten, and see how they size up.
04:26And next year, you will know your plants.
04:29And here is the good part.
04:31As you harvest those big ones, the plant sends out new flowers.
04:36And you simply keep it thinned to that same number all season.
04:40So it is always pouring its strength into a few, and always giving you big fruit.
04:46It is the single greatest thing you can do, and it costs you nothing but the willingness
04:51to pinch off what you do not need.
04:54The second way is close kin to the first, and it is for your young plants.
04:59Pinch the early flowers and fruits off the little seedlings before they are big enough
05:04to bear.
05:05For here is a trap so many gardeners fall into.
05:09You set out your young pepper plant, only a foot tall and still small.
05:13And it puts out a flower, and then a little pepper, and you are delighted and let it grow.
05:19But that little plant has not the strength yet to make a good pepper, and grow itself both.
05:24And so it puts all it has into that one early fruit, and stays a runt.
05:30And you get one small pepper off a stunted plant all season.
05:34Far better to pinch off those first early flowers and fruits while the plant is young, and make
05:41it wait so that it puts its early strength into growing big and strong and leafy first.
05:46Then, once it is a good, large, bushy plant with the strength to bear, you let it fruit.
05:53And it gives you many big peppers instead of one small one.
05:57Make the plant grow up before you let it become a mother.
06:00It is the same wisdom as the first.
06:03The third way is to give the roots room enough.
06:06For a plant starved of root room is starved of everything.
06:10A pepper gets all its water and all its food through its roots.
06:14And if those roots are cramped in a little pot, or crowded in poor thin ground, the plant
06:20simply cannot take up enough to make big fruit, no matter what else you do.
06:24So if you grow in the ground, give each plant a good, rich, deep bed with room to spread
06:30its roots.
06:31And if you grow in a tub or a pot, as many of you do, make it a good big
06:36one, several
06:37gallons at the least for a big bell pepper.
06:39A little pot will give you nothing but little peppers.
06:42For the plant can only be as big as its root room allows.
06:46Room for the roots is the foundation the rest is built on.
06:51The fourth way is to feed them, and to feed them the right thing at the right time.
06:56Even in good ground, a pepper plant by the middle of the season has drawn a great deal
07:01out of the soil.
07:02And about midsummer, when it is in full bearing, you may see it flag, the leaves paling or yellowing,
07:09some flowers or little fruits dropping off.
07:12That is the plant telling you it is running short, and it wants a feeding.
07:16And here is the thing to know, for it matters greatly.
07:19A fruiting plant wants potash above all.
07:22That is the thing that drives the flowers and the fruit.
07:25And it does not want too much of the nitrogen that drives the leaves.
07:29Too much rich nitrogen, and you get a great bush of beautiful leaves and few peppers.
07:34It is the potash that fills out the fruit.
07:37So my way, and my grandmother's, is to feed with the things rich in potash.
07:42A scattering of wood ash from the stove worked in around the plants is one of the finest
07:46things there is for fruiting, rich in just the potash they want.
07:51A good compost or well-rotted manure dug in around the base in midsummer feeds them steadily.
07:57And a comfrey tea, made by steeping comfrey leaves in water, is wonderfully rich in potash,
08:03and just the thing to water them with once they are fruiting.
08:07One or two such feedings through the season is plenty.
08:10Do not overdo it, and go light on anything heavy in nitrogen once they are fruiting,
08:15or you will get the leaves and not the peppers.
08:18Feed them the potash, and feed them at midsummer when they flag,
08:22and they will keep making big fruit to the end of the season.
08:25The fifth way is the sun.
08:27For the sun is the plant's very food, the strength that pours into those fruits.
08:32A pepper wants all the sun it can get, planted in the sunniest spot you have.
08:37In the shade it makes big soft leaves, but small plants and small fruits, for it has
08:43not the energy to do more.
08:45So give them full sun.
08:46But here is a care that goes with it, for the big peppers have a weakness.
08:51Their shoulders can sunburn, what the growers call sunscald, where the strong sun beats
08:57down on the exposed side of a fruit and burns and blisters the skin.
09:01The old way around this is a pretty one.
09:03Set your pepper plants a little closer together than you might other things, so that the plants
09:09and their leaves shade one another's fruit through the hottest part of the day, especially
09:13when the sun drops lower and comes in from the side.
09:17Full sun on the plant, but the leaves shading the shoulders of the fruit.
09:21Plant them companionably close, and they guard each other.
09:25The sixth way is to water them evenly.
09:28And this is a steady, quiet thing, but it matters.
09:32A pepper that is let go bone dry, wilting and drooping, and then drenched, and then let
09:38go dry again, is a stressed plant.
09:40And a stressed plant drops its flowers and its little fruits and makes small peppers.
09:45What it wants is even, steady moisture, the soil kept evenly damp, never a swamp and never
09:53a desert.
09:54So water deep and regular, do not let them go to the wilting point in the heat, and keep
10:00good drainage so they never stand in water either.
10:03Even watering keeps the plant calm and working, and the calm plant holds its fruit and sizes
10:09it up.
10:10A good mulch around the plants helps hold that moisture even, and saves you some of
10:15the watering the sides.
10:17And the seventh way is the simplest of all, and yet folk get it wrong every year.
10:23Have patience, and do not pick too soon.
10:27It is so common, especially for new gardeners, to see a good sized pepper and think it is done,
10:33and pick it, when it was still growing and would have got half again as big had you left it
10:38another week or two.
10:40This is easy to mistake with the green peppers especially, for a green pepper looks the same
10:45green whether it is half grown or full grown, so you cannot tell by color that it is done.
10:51So learn to watch your plant close, day by day, and see whether the peppers are still swelling
10:57or have truly stopped, and leave them on until they have reached their full size before you
11:03pick, and only then take them, or let them go on to ripen red or yellow if you want to
11:08if you like.
11:09Half the small peppers folk complain of were simply picked too young.
11:14Patience alone will grow you bigger peppers.
11:17And beyond all these ways, there is the plain matter of what you plant to begin with.
11:23Some kinds of pepper simply grow big, and some grow small by their nature.
11:28So if it is big meaty peppers you are after, choose a kind known for big fruit from the start,
11:34and give that good big kind all the care I have named, and you will have the finest peppers
11:40you ever grew.
11:41Now think a moment about why so few folks grow a proper big pepper anymore, and buy the sad,
11:48thin-walled things from the store.
11:50It is worse than a plot, for no one had to arrange it.
11:53There is money in selling you peppers the year round, and in the bags of special feed, and
11:59none at all in teaching you that thinning the fruit, a scatter of wood ash, full sun, and
12:04a little patience will grow you peppers twice the size for nothing.
12:09So the plain old knowing, the pinching and the ash and the waiting, just stopped being
12:14handed down, because no one profits by the telling.
12:18My grandmother grew peppers you could make a meal of, and somewhere between her garden
12:23and ours, we were taught to buy them thin in a plastic tray.
12:27The mending of it is a little courage to pinch, and a little patience to wait.
12:31You thin your fruit to a few, and let the plant pour its strength into those.
12:36You pinch the early flowers off your young plants, and make them grow up first.
12:41You give the roots room and rich ground.
12:44You feed them potash at mid-summer with ash and compost and comfrey.
12:48You give them full sun with the leaves to shade their shoulders.
12:52You water them even, and you wait until they are truly full-grown to pick.
12:56And you grow big, meaty peppers off the very same plants that gave you runts before.
13:02That is how it comes home.
13:04One pinched fruit, one scatter of ash at a time, the growing of your own food back in
13:10your own hands.
13:11So here is what I would ask of you.
13:13This season, be brave and thin the fruit on just one pepper plant, down to a handful the
13:19way I showed you.
13:20And leave the rest as you always have.
13:22And then come back and tell me in the comments how the two compared.
13:26How much bigger the thinned plants' peppers grew.
13:29For I do love to see a body proved by their own garden.
13:33And tell me too, while you are there, your county and the age of your house.
13:37For the growing seasons and the sun differ so from place to place.
13:42And the old places so often have the good ground and the room for a proper garden.
13:46And I learn from every one of you how the growing goes where you live.
13:51And if your own mother or grandmother had a way with peppers I have not named here, tell
13:56me that most of all.
13:58For that is how this goes.
13:59We share what we were given.
14:01I read every comment and I learn from you the way the old women learned from one another
14:06across the fence line.
14:08One garden and one season at a time.
14:11Next time I will show you how to keep your pepper harvest through the winter.
14:14The drying and the freezing and the stringing up of peppers so that a summer's crop feeds
14:20you clear through the cold.
14:21For a big harvest is only half the work and the keeping of it is the other half.
14:26There is a right and an old way to grow and to keep near everything a garden gives.
14:31And almost none of it comes from a store.
14:34But this season you start with the thinning.
14:37You pinch your fruit down to a few and let the plant feed those.
14:41You make your young plants grow up before they bear.
14:44You give them room and ash and full sun and even water and you wait until they are truly
14:50grown to pick.
14:51And you will understand, as my grandmother taught me at her own pepper row, that sometimes
14:56you must take away to gain.
14:58That a plant has only so much strength and it is yours to aim it.
15:02And that the big meaty pepper you wanted was always in the plant, only waiting for you to
15:08let it grow.
15:08The garden tended the plain old way is the one that remembers how the old women grew peppers
15:14big enough to make a meal of, with nothing but a little courage to pinch and a little
15:19patience to wait.
15:20And that is a thing we are only just starting to remember.
15:23And that is a thing we are only just starting to remember.
15:23But I think every day is almost every day.
15:23getting to put my parents in my heart.
15:24I think that's really kind of a feeling.
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