so...i was discussing it in my post about our first harvest. no peppers or tomatoes are coming. the pepper plants are blooming (and have been since early may) but even though i see wee peppers there, nothing happens and they go away. i bought them (the peppers)...some bells, some jalapenos and some sweet.

the tomatoes i sprouted from seeds planted april 19. we're zone 7B. they are about 2' tall now and are caged. i lost some leaves to the hail last week but overall the plants are ok. zero flower...not even the hint of a bloom trying to come out. no buds...and of course no fruit.

peppers....this is the patch of peppers:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y121/snugglbond/peppers.jpg

this is what i mean by you can see small peppers once the blooms lose their petals but this goes away after a day...it's just not there. this is a bell if it matters.:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y121/snugglbond/thebestthepeppersproduce.jpg

one of the other peppers (another bell) so you can see the blooms but no fruiting:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y121/snugglbond/anotherpepperplant.jpg

tomatoes (romas if it matters...i loathe tomatoes except when in salsa or cooked in sauce so i am only growing romas):

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y121/snugglbond/cagedtomatoes.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y121/snugglbond/tomatoes.jpg

there are no spots on the pepper leaves...that's the lighting this morning. the spots on the tomato leaves are from the hail damage the other day.


watering...some say too much water, others say not enough. i have no idea. it has rained every day for a week so that is out of my hands. before that i'd water it for 15-20 min every other day. is that enough or too much? like i said...the rest of the garden is prolifically producing (zukes, cukes, peas, beans are about to harvest...onions and garlic look to be growing well) so i am only having a problem with the peppers and tomatoes, which i understand are related.

in the first photo of the peppers, you can sort of see how close they are to the beans...that mass of green in the back are green bean bushes.

Ok... first off, your tomatoes don't look big enough to produce flowers. Tomatoes that are flowering in the pots at Home Depot are forced. They are not supposed to flower yet. This force flowering may look great when you buy them, but once you get them home, more than likely these are the only flowers you will get for months because they were forced to produce sugar and fruit before they would have naturally.

When it comes to your peppers, I have no idea what could be making them die after the flower falls off. I will look that up. With the tomatoes, I would just relax and see what happens in a few weeks. You are in a similar climate to me, and my tomatoes JUST started flowering at all. Most don't have any flowers at all. So there is hope, and there is time. :)

Val

forced? i didn't even know that could happen! i wonder if that is the problem with the peppers...they had blooms when i bought them in may!

should i be pruning the pepper blooms off? i can't find info that tells me.



and...i can't find info anywhere that tells me if that darker part is ok (at the base of the flower stem where it branches off the main stem.)

thank you! i'm glad to know the tomatoes are probably just too young still.

I have always had that purple part before my blooms on my peppers.

As for forcing making them not produce, I don't think so... but at the same time, in zone 7 it isn't quite time to have pepper and tomato flowers. At least not this year. Although I have never had great success with peppers. lol... so I don't know. I don't eat enough of them to have them on high priority in the garden. Tomatoes on the other hand, I have ONE that has flowers. I went out and looked after I read this. So yes... too early. No worries there. :heart:

Val

:smooch:

where are you located? (generally)

I am in Western WA... Olympia actually. Which is zone 7a. :)

I am in Western WA... Olympia actually. Which is zone 7a. :)

that's amazing that we could be in such similar zones.

Whats funny is that out of all of western wa I am in the only 20 mile area of Zone 7... the entirety of western wa ASIDE from this area is in Zone 8 (10* ahead of us, so the growth pattern is a bit faster and the last frost date is 10 days earlier on average)... weird huh? It has to do with me being at the bottom of the sound, the air from which flows my way, keeping the area cooler and yet more temperate at the same time. Even 30 miles south isn't effected like we are. And on the coast is kept warmer... this stuff is so fasinating, don't you think?

I would love to find a way to make money stuff like this some day.

Val

that is fascinating. i'm in a really weird part of north georgia...we're on the cusp of 7a, 7b and 8 depending on the year and the climate that year i think we can go any way. we tend to stay mostly 7b/a but on warm years 8 creeps up...