Grow More Peppers Per Plant With These 7 Tips

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Sick of harvesting 1-2 peppers from your bell pepper plants? Want more jalapeños or basketfuls of banana peppers? In this article, I’ll share gardening tips you can implement immediately to get more peppers per plant!

How many peppers should you expect per plant? The larger the pepper you’re growing, the fewer each plant will produce. For example, a typical bell pepper plant may only produce 5-8 full sized fruits in a single season, while a jalapeño can produce 50 or more. But there are many things you can do to maximize each plant’s output.

1. Fertilize Enough

While pepper plants aren’t the hungriest plants in the garden (leave that to the watermelons and tomatoes), they do need a good amount of nutrition. Without enough nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium available, your plants will struggle to produce.

Tip: We’ve had good results with this fertilizer for potted pepper plants.

For in-ground beds, it’s always a good idea to amend the soil with compost or other bulky materials that add nutrients, like rotted manure, leaf mold, or fermented alfalfa. This pre-season addition can sustain the garden for 1-2 months. Then, side dressings with fertilizer mid-season can keep the plants chugging along to produce a big yield.

For container plants, I recommend fertilizing on a consistent schedule, at least once every week or so. Don’t use too high a concentration of liquid fertilizer, but keep the nutrients coming, especially as the plants grow larger.

2. Use A Bigger Pot

Speaking of container plants, are your pots big enough? Peppers need adequate soil space to grow a robust root system. The larger the pot, the larger the potential plant size. We recommend at least 5 gallons for each plant, but for even bigger plants (and yields) go with 10 gallons or more.

We have grown huge, beautiful pepper plants in our ~25 gallon half-barrel. The yield on a single plant in this large container has been over 400 peppers!

3. Space Plants Properly

Spacing your plants properly in the garden has a direct impact on yield-per-plant. Space the plants too closely, and each plant will produce fewer peppers. Space them too far apart, and you’ll end up with vacant soil in between the plants.

The sweet spot for spacing peppers is 12-18 inches between plants. If you want to maximize overall yield, I actually recommend spacing a bit closer. Each plant will produce fewer peppers, but the overall yield should be more. But, if you want to grow large individual plants, 18 inch spacing is ideal in an in-ground setting.

4. Reduce Pest Pressure

Pests can deal significant damage if they get out of control. Aphids in the early spring, beetles in early summer, and stink bugs in the later season all target peppers in our area. In your location, the pests may be different, but the solutions we recommend would be similar.

• Identify any pests as they arrive
• Assess whether you need to intervene – many pests have natural predators that do the work for you
• Hand-remove pests like slugs, snails, caterpillars, cutworms, grasshoppers, and hornworms
• Plant companion plants to attract beneficial insects that prey on pests

Each pest has its own time of year, life cycle, and treatment, so do your best to identify any pests you have and learn to properly control them.

Spraying pesticides should be a last resort. The result is often that the situation gets worse in the end, as you end up harming the good bugs more than the bad guys. Let nature take it’s course, and encourage beneficial insects to visit your garden often.

5. Grow Productive Varieties

Some peppers just don’t produce as many fruits as others. Seek out cultivars that are specifically bred for productivity. I have found that certain hybrid varieties (like the Banana ‘Goddess” and Jalapeño ‘Goliath’) produce much more abundantly than common varieties.

You’ll have to do your own research and testing to discover what works best in your climate. However, we did write an article about peppers to grow for a bigger harvest here. Any of these would be a great place to start!

6. Harvest Regularly

If you’re growing jalapeños, poblanos, bell peppers, or banana peppers, you’ll want to harvest regularly to keep the plants productive. The reason I’m singling out these varieties is that they are commonly picked before they ripen.

You can allow any of them to change color, but by harvesting while they are green, you encourage the plant to begin producing the next round of fruits early. The result is a larger overall harvest from each pepper plant.

7. Extend Your Season

Lastly, you can get more out of your plants by giving them more time to grow. This can be done on either end of the season: In spring by planting extra-early, or in fall by protecting from cold.

• Spring – Most growers plant pepper seeds 6-8 weeks before the last local frost date. This is a great, standard time to plant peppers for most growing zones. For a bit of extra season, you could start 1-2 weeks earlier than this and transplant into larger containers before the plants move outdoors. This way, your seedlings will be larger when they get to the garden, giving them a bigger head start towards the first harvest.
• Fall – In fall, cold weather threatens to halt a pepper plant’s production. With potted plants, bring the plants indoors on any nights below 50°F. This will keep the plants producing for longer. For in-ground plants, you can try covering the plants with a frost blanket or floating row cover on any nights that will be close to freezing. This could save the plants and keep them going for another 1-2 weeks.

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I hope this article helps you get more peppers from your plants. I love seeing hard work pay off in the garden. Best of luck this season!