Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Shading the pepper plants

Tiny peppers are beginning to form on the pepper plants. These peppers are called "Chinese Giant Sweet Peppers".
We've been having some seriously hot days. The pepper plants seems to be suffering the most from the sun (now that the eggplants are gone). They perk right back when the sun goes down but when I came back from work this is how they looked.
Not only is the foliage suffering from the heat, the sun damaged one of the baby peppers.
I was trying to figure out how to shade the plant and came up with the setup below. So now, the peppers don't look all wilty int the afternoon. Hopefully I prevented further sun damage to my peppers!

6 comments:

  1. good job :) Noticed you used a fitted sheet there, I cut one of those up last summer to make a canopy for some of my plants too.
    Don't know if you are renting or have HOA rules, but you might consider one of those shade cloths from Home Depot or similar. The triangle shaped ones are easiest to set up, and you'd get shade for yourself as well ;)

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  2. I hope your pepper plants like their shade! I can't wait to see those Chinese peppers!

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  3. Mary - I have thought about getting shade cloths but I have to figure out how to make the frame for it. I thought about getting a canopy but it seems like a lot for the balcony.

    Holly - me too!TI wish I could have grown more since peppers are quite expensive at the store.

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  4. I'm growing peppers too and your picture of the sun burned pepper looks very much like what happened to the last two that grew on the plant. I thought maybe it was blossom end rot or something. Maybe I need to shade them since more are coming through. I got two so far, but so far all the others look like your picture.

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  5. Andrea - the shading is working pretty well. The pepper plant stopped wilting and I haven't seen any sun damage on the pepper.

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  6. To every problem there is a solution. Good idea! I had to go to Rite Aide and get an umbrella stand and umbrella to help with some more shade.

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