To: LEAH ROZHON
Subject: Green Peppers
LR>Has anyone ever heard of putting matches in the ground around the roots
LR>of pepper plants?  My mother-in-law claimed the sulpher made them grow
LR>bigger and better.  I just use miracle-gro myself.  I get big plants but
LR>few peppers.  My neighbor, OTOH, plants the same variety and gets small
LR>plants with *large* peppers.  And they're plentiful.  These are
LR>California Wonders.  Any thoughts on this?  Thanks!
  I've done it. Ruined a nice bunch of pepper plants, too. Sulpher is
  good only in alkaline ( sweet) soils. It acidifies the soil; so adding
  it to an acid soil (like mine) makes things worse for most veggies
  that like near neutral pH (7.0).
  Dick Raymond recommended this method, only he added the matches at
  the bottom of the planting hole and put some soil on before setting in
  the peppers. So I experimented, only with a double row. One half got
  the matches, the other half didn't. This was as fair a test as I could
  devise. Unfortunately, the "match" side all died within days; so I
  replanted more peppers on the same spots. These failed to thrive. I
  sent a letter off to Dick, and he was interested in my conclusions. To
  wit, my soil was acid enough.
  But the big clue is in your "big" plants. It sounds like you are
  overfertilizing your peppers, which is entirely too easy to do. Don't
  give them ANY fertilizer until they are flowering strongly. IOW, don't
  plant them just after spreading 6 inches of old manure where you want
  to raise peppers. As you have already surmised, you'll get a lot of
  leaf growth, but not enough peppers.
  Unless your soil is extremely deficient, you can get away w/o any
  fertilizer at all in your pepper patch. But you can't get away w/o
  warmth and water. In very hot climates, mulches are essential. In
  colder areas, black plastic mulches or raised beds will aid heating,
  but watering will have to be deep and frequent in a dry year. This
  applies moreso to big bell peppers - the hot ones get hotter if kept
  on the dry side.
  I hope this starts you off to a successful pepper year, Leah. :-)
                   ...Sandra...
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