this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Hot Peppers
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Is it hot in here or is it just the peppers?
Pepper Recipes curtesy of Mike Hultquist
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Side note re: blossom end rot... how regularly do you water? I've found that a regular watering schedule (every 1-3 days, depending on temperature) has eliminated all of my BER problems without needing calmag. A lot of BER (IMHO way more than people realize) is because of irregular watering interfering with nutrient uptake. In these cases, adding more nutrients is not very effective; there's already enough nutrients present, but the plant simply isn't able to process it.
I found this to be even more of the case for tomatoes. Even with calmag, my tomatoes suffered significant BER unless I watered them every day or 2.
You are almost certainly right about irregular water being the most likely culprit. That said, I know of one person last year that had their peppers on an automated watering system and still developed BER. For me, the minimal cost to add in calmag outweighs the risk of losing a portion of my annual harvest.
With pepper plants, I always watered when they started to wilt. When I grew in pots, that was about once per week when they were small, up to every other day when the root mass has filled out the entire pot and summer was in peak heat. Only started growing in ground last year and am trying to get a feeling for a water schedule now.
When I switched to in ground is when I started to struggle with BER from watering. I think it was because they didn't start to wilt until 5-6 days after watering some weeks, and really needed to be watered more regularly than that
And yeah, you're absolutely right that there's no real downside to using calmag. I just point it out because sometimes it isn't enough to fix BER, but it tends to get a reputation as the Ultimate BER Solution:)
Agreed. I’m hoping to get my garden set up on an automated soaker hose at some point to rule out any irregular watering issues. Will keep that in mind that they might need more frequent water now than I’m used to providing.