rebecca - Can you supply any more clues? Are the plants producing flowers? You say that the plants look great, do you fertilize, if so how often, how much and what kind? What's the weather been like, has it been real hot? More information will be needed for other members to try and correctly answer your question.

Greg
Southern Nevada

blocky sweet peppers are bad up north. Better to grow chile peppers. For some reason sweet peppers do not usually do well up north. chile peppers always do well. I gave up long ago on trying to grow the green sweet type peppers.

You will also find yields in better years to be terrible on the sweets and huge on the chile.

My advice is to grow what works and dump the ones that do not grow for you. This is what I finally did after years of fighting it. Besides chile peppers are 100 times better.

All our hot peppers are doing great. All peppers did great last year but this year the bell peppers aren't doing anything.

Ok to answer questions, the weather has been extremely hot this summer (over 90's for weeks), with little rain. However we have water regularly.

No the plants aren't even producing flowers. We fertilized with fish fertilizer. I can't tell you how much or how often because my husband takes care of fertilizing. I know he's doing it the same as last year and like I said, last year we had a good crop. I can find out when he's home.

It's just been strange because we're not the only ones. I've heard several people with the same problem but not all. My neighbors that are pretty close to us are having a great year. I was thinking it was the weather. Guess I'll just have to run down the road and buy some from the Amish. They have tons, just want too much money for them.

They don't seem to produce much when it gets really hot. I have that problem down here during the really hot parts of the summer. If you can get them to set before the heat kicks in then you can grow them out. As soon as it starts getting cooler in the evening, they start flowering again and fall is always a good crop for me. Hang in there they should start soon.

I am on the other side of the country, but I'm having problems with my peppers. We had a really long, cool spring.

I usually at least get some bells, but the walls are thin and the plants don't usually have many leaves. This year, the plants are gorgeous, but I haven't gotten any peppers yet. My growing season is just about over so I'm not holding out much hope.

Hope you get a few anyway. I'm not fond of the hot peppers so there's no point in growing those.

"The plants look great, just no peppers" -- sounds like maybe your husband overfertilized.

The weather here in SE Michigan has been perfect for peppers -- it was warm and wet to get them off the a good start, and now is dryish, so they aren't rotting. Some things were NOT happy this year, but my peppers are awesome and very happy.

Ok well I'll hold out hope that now that the temps are cooling down, they'll start producing. Our growing season is almost over so hopefully something happens soon.

Notolover-I'm not a fan of hot peppers either. I can't even touch the plants without having a reaction. My husband loves them though.

We've had an extremely cool Summer this year, and Pepper production has been good. If anything, I crowded too many plants into each SWC container. Instead of 6 next Season, I am only going to put 4 plants in each EarthTainer:

{{gwi:35455}}

Raybo

I think that there is a general consensus that the bell peppers didn't do nearly as well this year as they did last.

I'm in Central Illinois and last year between eight California Wonder pepper plants, I had over 50 pounds of peppers! This year I may be lucky to have five pounds of peppers thus far off of eight plants.

There has also been several other posts on this forum of other people having the exact same issues with peppers this year - so you definitely are not alone.

Here is a link that might be useful: BsnTech Gardening Blog

Same here, green bell pepper plants produced (finally)long, twisted peppers. I planted the same variety I usually do and always got a great crop.

Yep, another bad bell pepper season here. I had good success with them the past two summers, but this year they didn't grow a single pepper until recently. Now I've got a few small bells on each of the 4 plants I have. I hope they mature before the season ends.

I think it must have been because the beginning of summer was so incredibly hot. It is still kind of hot here, but since late July it has been at least normal hot, not a ridiculously blazing heat wave like it was earlier.

My marconi golden, regular cubanelle and nardello peppers did much better though. I also got a nice crop of pepperoncini and little dickens. This was my 1st time growing little dickens, and really enjoyed them! I definitely will grow them again.

As far as hots, I got a small crop of jalapenos and thai dragon, though nowhere near as many as last year. I'm still waiting for a poblano though. There is only one teeny tiny poblano growing - even worse production than the bells.

Nope a great season here Even better than last year the freezer is full of green bells, and I have had fresh peppers since the last of June
funny thing is all my experimental peppers are the ones that grew. All the plants I purched from the store were diseased good thing I planted them separate from the rest. I had to dispose of them.
So here is what grew great for me. I have four each of these
Sweet banana
Red bell from food store, Canadian green house type
Yellow bell from food store, sweet like a citrus fruit Canadian green house type
Giant reed bell from food store, came from Chile, super big Winter pepper I would think this one was not a greenhouse pepper. I bought when it was summer down there.
My Rock garden peppers are out producing my square foot garden hands down I think the temperature stays moderated in there from the rocks and bricks I have no proof of it and no studies to go by. Eliot Coleman is the only author who I have read about using rock mulch for peppers

Curt

Rebecca,

I live 30 miles southeast of Cleveland and have similar yield issues with hot peppers, green peppers, and tomatoes. Plants were doing fine until mid-July. They stopped producing flowers. My garden is in the sun all day long and I believe it was too hot during the day and not cool enough at night.

Basil, Swiss Chard, lettuce did great compared to the above vegetables.

They ran kinda late, especially the Baby Belles that are usually ready before the first tomato. But this has been the worst year i've ever had for BER pepper-wise,surprisingly, tomatoes not-so-much, and that could be just the weather, and the fact that i was late (really late) mulching, and put the peppers in a more marginal spot than i might have liked.

I planted lots of baby, sweet and hot varieties, so i have all i need, but i do hate seeing so many wasted fruits.

I had the same problem here in Maine. I'm not sure if I over-fertilized, or if it was the very hot/dry weather we had most of the summer. I'm just now starting to see some flowers, so I am hoping there will be time for them to fruit before frost. I've only had about 8 peppers out of 18 plants, so I am NOT happy!!!

My bell peppers haven't done to well either. I did get a few but they just aren't producing more. I also have a type of Bulls Horn and Gypsy Hybrid that are doing extremely well. Maybe I'll have better luck with the bells next year.

All i grow is sweet peppers (various types) and mine have done great this year. I've frozen a lot.

The key for me is to grow in pots. 5 gallon works fine. Fertilize now and then and water...

It's a mystery to me. In the community garden where I have a plot, one friend's bell peppers have been early, prolific and large. Another friend's have produced practically nothing.

Other crops for both gardeners, all of us as a matter of fact, have been exceptionally good this year. The weather got warm early and has been consistently hotteer than usual until this week.

Jim

Did you have a hot summer in Ohio? That may be why.

Like Raybo mentioned, our NorCal summer had been cool, until this week. So peppers did great. There're more sweet peppers than I can eat, which is rare compared to past years.

This week it's been over 110 degree in my backyard. That'd give the peppers a break until the weather cools down this weekend, which will be 30 degrees lower.

This was my first year ever growing peppers.
DH and I started 8 different kinds from seeds and we got them in the ground late (I believe it was the 1st or 2nd week of June and they were spindly little seedlings with 2 sets of true leaves). while my neighbors started picing peppers from their store bought plants weeks ago I just harvest the first of our peppers last night.

We have a ridiculous amount of banana peppers, the green peppers are coming in slowly but surely (I have at least 5 peppers on each plant and more flowers than that). I noticed the Casablana (I have no idea what that is) and the Anaheim Chilis are starting to set fruit. The poblano's have flowers, but aren't setting fruit quite yet.

I think the pot that I have the jalapeno and the habanaros in are too smal - the plants are puny so I don't think I'll get any off of them. But like I said, I think that's more to do with the pots then anyhting else.

I have not fertilized at all (compost was added when we made the garden this spring) and we mulched with grass clippings to keep the weeds down. But the plants have grown healthier and happier then I ever expected.

That's not to mention the tomatoes that have TAKEN over! I have to tie them back off the peppers so they could keep going!