I agree with you in toto. This year is indeed terrible for my hot pepper harvest. Last year, I had ten plants of Bydgis flowering and fruiting profusely by this time.

This year, my sannams have very few flowers. Though the leaf and stem growth is beautiful.
But very cool summer is just terrible for the crop.

NJA

We had a cold June, and my peppers didn't grow much at all, but shot up in July with the heat. If you didn't get the heat/warm nights/warm soil that may be your problem.

It's been a rough season throughout the country...
even here in California there've been some set-backs.

Traditionally, we plant tomatoes and peppers April 28th.
But I didn't get my peppers in the ground until May 5th.

Then, the months of May and June proved cool....so, while
my plants flowered profusely, nary a bud would set.

When things were just starting to look good, some juvenile
deer got into my garden and ate my pepper plants in half -
a second-year Hungarian, and two first year Thai chilis.
The runt of the two Thai chilis was chomped down to about
six or seven inches tall. The entire plant is still pubescent as
result and hasn't produced its first flower yet.

A month later, we were back on track.

And now things are looking good.

Josh

Yea. Definitely a bad year for bumper crop of Pepper. Especially bad since I'm growing all the Peppers in pots and it's been raining hard all summer long. Yellowish and just not too happy. I get some peppers, but I was really expecting much more.

I am personally having a great year with my peppers, my habaneros, red chili, ring of fire cayenne and naga morich are all massive and I have harvested 4 large crops of habs from just 2 plants.

I envy those having a great year for peppers. Ours look pathetic. June was chilly and July never had one day that it reached 90. Hopefully August will be warmer but I'm not sure how well the plants will catch up with growth and peppers.

Jackie

I have had a heck of a time this year. First, the cold wet weather had things running really late, then, bugs, then rabbits.....My plants have just started taking off in the past month. Getting lots of pods, now (on most plants, a few are still lagging), but, like others, wonder if they will finish out before cold weather hits again...

I feared it would be much worse than it turned out to be. With all the rain in NY in June...the entire month- my intitial plant growth was stunted. But July was great and they shot up- peppers are looking good.

I am having a so so year for peppers. It's been cool for the summer with a week here and there with warm temps.

Plant growth started slow, but took off in bursts. Fruit set has been spotty. Some varieties (sweet and hot) are doing fair, others are kind of sad. In most cases the plants are fine, but the yield to date is lacking. None of the 3 habeneros are doing well. They all have zero fruit or a few very small fruit even though plants are large. Others such as jalepeno types are doing better.

Really not much can be done about the weather/season which is why I try to diversify and plant a variety. Usually something does well enough to save the season. Of course I am in Wisconsin and few confuse the state with ideal pepper growing turf ;)

out of the 132 plants I planted this year; 54 of them either haven't grown much at all, seemed like they had some sort of disease, have had peppers that bugs got to, have died or grew OK but no peppers at all.

Makes me almost want to convert my entire basement into a Hydroponics room...

It seems pretty common that the z4/z5 has not had a great year from the little sample group in this thread. It's been a rough one this year for sure!

I live in NE Alabama and am having an average or above average year for peppers. I envy all the talk about cool summers. It has been a hot summer here so my peppers have had no problems.

Here in Indiana it hasn't ben too bad for me. June was a bit cold, but July and Aug heat has really helped out. I will just be harvesting a little bit late in the year. What we can hope for now would be an extended fall.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Pepper Guy's Blog