Disclaimer Check with your certifier or the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) that any products mentioned here are included in the OMRI list of approved products, as the list of approved products changes annually. Also, follow all label instructions carefully when using any product. Mention of a product does not imply endorsement by USDA, the SARE program, or the author. Exclusion does not imply a negative evaluation.
Soil preparation
Where phytophthora (phytophthora capsici) is an issue, rotate away from this land. Biofumigation has shown some effectiveness to reduce incidences.
Spread lime as needed to increase both the pH and Ca levels. Dolomite lime will also increase Mg levels. Spread gypsum when calcium levels are low but pH is correct.
A fertilizer company can add OMRI-listed potassium sulfate to compost if it doesn’t have enough K to meet the crop’s needs. If this isn’t possible, spread the correct amount of fertilizer and incorporate it before planting. Alternatively, you can side-dress it during cultivation. Divide the recommended rate of the soil test in half if side-dressing.
Most vegetable crops remove little P, but at times your soil test result will call for additional P. Unfortunately, there aren’t short-term options for an organic grower to increase the available P levels in the soil. Through the use of animal-based fertilizers, P will build up to a level in the soil that is sufficient for all vegetable crops.
Incorporate compost and plant peppers on high raised beds covered with plastic mulch. Infrared transmitting (IRT) mulch will help warm up cold soil for your earliest plantings.
Common recommended fertilizer rates1
Nitrogen
Phosphorus
Potassium
pH
150
0-200
0-200
6.0-6.4
1Rates are for New York and are from Cornell University’s Nutrient Guidelines for Commercial Vegetable Production (2019). Check the Cornell website for updated guidelines, or consult with local experts for recommended rates outside New York.
Popular bell pepper varieties are X3R Red Knight, Sweet Sunrise, King of the North, King Arthur and California Wonder.
Popular sweet specialty peppers are Carmen, the Lunchbox series, the Cornito series and Shishitos.
Popular hot peppers are Bastan (poblano), Ancho (poblano), Jalafuego (jalapeño) and Cherry Bomb (hot).
Greenhouse guidelines
EZ Seeder seeding plate #16
Germinate seeds in a germination chamber unless you can keep your greenhouse warm both day and night. Germination improves greatly at optimum temperatures.
Cell pack tray
Germination temp
Growth temp
Hardening off
Notes
288
80°–90°
80° day; 60° night
Withhold water
Put plug trays on a wire mesh bench to encourage air pruning.
Number of successions
There’s usually only 1 main planting. Some growers like to spread their risk and plant peppers twice. When transplanting peppers into the field in a season with relatively cold conditions, the second crop produces much better.
Signs to watch for and what to do
When true leaves have developed, repot into 38-cell trays or 3- to 4-inch pots. Choose the size that allows you to hold the plant until the transplanting date. Bigger pots mean bigger plants with more time in the greenhouse but also more work to transplant in the field.
Keep the temperature around 80° during the day and 60°–65° at night for best-quality plants. When temperatures drop too low, premature flowers form that you’ll need to pick off.
If necessary, feed plants with an OMRI-listed fertilizer to keep them healthy.
Transplant readiness indicators
Harden plants off by moving them outside during the day, exposing them to some direct sun and wind.
Make sure the plants have enough root ball to hold the pot together.
Transplanting tips
Transplant in the field when soil temperature is above 65° and before plants get too big. Plants that are lush don’t perform well in the field.
Planting peppers early—before the soil is above 65° and when nights are cold—can set them back. Only plant when they can get off to a successful start.
Since peppers are a tropical fruit, IRT plastic mulch is the preferred material to help warm the soil for early-planted crops.
The following tip is useful when you have harvest lanes, where every 8 or 10 beds are separated by a grass strip: Mark a 4-foot “walking break” on the plastic mulch every hundred feet and don’t plant anything in that 4-foot strip. This will make harvesting easier by allowing you to easily pass through the crop when removing buckets. Instead of carrying the buckets of peppers to the headland, one can walk through the crop (instead of over) to the left or right and place the buckets in the harvest lane to be collected by truck or other vehicle.
Water wheel transplanter
Rows
In-row spacing
Planting depth (inches)
Notes
1-2
12 inches
As deep as the plant goes
Cultivation procedures (without plasticulture)
Ideally, control weeds when they’re in the white thread stage. The tools you use will depend on whether the plants are well established or not.
When plants are established, use precision cultivation tools such as a finger weeder in combination with side knives for best weed control. Alternatively, if you want very slight hilling, use spring hoes in combination with side knives. These tools will eliminate small weeds effectively.
When plants aren’t established, precision tools can uproot them. So, use side knives or sweeps only.
Hand hoe or hand weed between plants.
Cultivation procedures (with plasticulture)
After transplanting, cultivate once or twice between plastic with a rolling cultivator or Spyder. Cover the wheel tracks with rye straw at a rate of 3 lbs. per foot. (One 600 lb. round bale covers 200 feet of wheel track.) Increase this amount when using an early cutting of orchard grass because hay breaks down much faster than straw. Over time, hay and straw mulch will release a significant amount of K and other beneficial properties like silicon, contributing to long-term soil health. Mulching also protects crops from soil splashing. This reduces soilborne diseases and time spent cleaning produce after harvest.
Frost, disease and insect protection
Mix Streptomyces lydicus (as in the product Actinovate SP) and/or an extract of giant knotweed (as in the product Regalia) in a water solution and drench the complete tray before transplanting to prevent many soil- and foliar-borne pathogens, and to build immunity against them. Wear protective clothing and gloves when handling these products.
For early plantings, use floating row covers to protect against frost, but remove them once the danger of frost has passed. Use 10-gauge wire to support the row cover, since abrasion against the cover will damage the plants.
You can prevent cutworms by spraying the soil with the beneficial nematode Steinernema carpocapsae. Once the pest is in the crop, control the population by spraying the crop with Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki, or spread a baited product containing spinosyn, like Seduce, around the plants.
Corn earworms are a problem in peppers when they fly in from sweet corn during the second generation—usually around the third week in July, depending on your location. Control them with frequent releases of the predator Trichogramma ostriniae once the second generation has hatched. Release them at high numbers for this to be effective. A spinosyn-based product like Entrust isn’t very effective as it’s more difficult to get direct contact with the larvae. Eggs often hatch on the fruit, where the larvae create an opening that causes the fruit to prematurely ripen and then rot.
Pepper maggots are a new issue and are often undetected until the customer opens the fruit. Damage is most visible on glossy varieties like hot cherry peppers. Starting to spray with a neem-based product like Neemix every seven days when you first spot signs of damage seems to provide some control. This is usually around mid-July, depending on your location.
Other cultural practices
Irrigate frequently for optimum yield and plant health. Frequency depends on soil type, evaporation, precipitation and the particular needs of the crop.
Double cropping and/or cover cropping
Remove plastic and drip tape soon after the last harvest.
Work under any harvest remains to avoid insect or pathogen buildup, and plant a cover crop. In the northern United States and Canada, you can follow summer- and early-fall-harvested peppers with a cover crop of oats and peas in September, or rye and vetch planted at later dates. Adjust accordingly in other regions.
Harvest, Green and Red Bell, and Hot
Yield
An average of 2 ½ lbs. per row foot of marketable peppers, but this depends greatly on the variety
Standards
Harvesting1 10 buckets or 150 lbs. per person, per hour
Tools and supplies needed
⅝-bushel or ½-bushel buckets
1Harvest rates don't include the time required to transport crops from the field to a wash and pack shed or storage facility.
Ready-to-harvest and quality indicators
Peppers are firm and large. A sign of being ready is when the peppers cannot be easily squeezed between the fingers. Harvest readiness isn’t measured only in size but also in the thickness of the walls. It depends on the market if you allow a pepper to turn color (for higher value) or if you pick them green. Some peppers are only picked red (like sweet Italian peppers) and some are only picked green (like Poblano).
Only harvest peppers that are free of blemishes. Pick damaged peppers and remove them from the field to avoid disease buildup.
Harvest procedures
Count out the number of buckets you’ll need to harvest. For example, 1 bucket of green peppers yields approximately 35 peppers or 15 lbs., and 1 bucket of sweet Italian peppers yields 60 peppers. If you need 750 green peppers (or 320 lbs.), you need to lay out 21 buckets.
Move full buckets to the harvest lane as you fill them. When all the buckets are full, pick them up with a tractor or truck.
Two people harvest from the same bed, each taking 1 side of the row. Watch for rot, which might on the outside look like a small blemish but is usually more substantial on the inside. Most rot on organic farms is caused by the European corn borer. As the worm bores a small hole in the top of the pepper, water is able to penetrate the pepper, which causes secondary bacterial rot. Therefore, look for a small pinhole on the top of each pepper to detect possible decay.
Mark the spot where you stop harvesting with a bright flag so that you can begin there the next time you harvest, because it might not be obvious when you return.
Washing procedures
Wash hands and rinse boots before entering the wash-and-pack shed, and cover up field clothes with a bib. If a long-sleeve shirt contains soil, remove this as well.
Planting in a plastic tunnel or in plastic mulch (with adequate mulch-like straw in the wheel tracks) will keep the peppers clean from mud, so washing may not be necessary. Sort and pack peppers in a well-lit packing shed. You can discover many blemishes during this process.
If washing is necessary, use a rinse conveyor washer or use a brusher washer. Add a sanitizer like hydrogen peroxide and peracetic acid to the water in the circulation tank of the rinse conveyor vegetable washer. Use the guide How to Wash Produce Using a Peracetic Acid Solution to establish how much sanitizer solution to add to water. Make sure you use the appropriate pressure on the nozzles to avoid crop damage.
Under no circumstances dunk peppers in cold water, as this can create cross-contamination of pathogens that are absorbed through the skin of the fruit.
Harvest in buckets and fill up in regular 1 ⅓ bushel boxes, either by count or volume.
Packing for delivery
In regular 1- or 1 ⅑-bushel boxes at 28 lbs. or in ½-bushel boxes at 14–15 lbs. See the International Federation for Produce Standards for the correct PLU code. Add the prefix 9 for organic crops.
Storage
Store peppers at 45° and 95–100% humidity. Peppers are sensitive to ethylene exposure and chilling injury. Peppers (especially the breakers, which are peppers just turning color) start to develop water loss and surface pitting when they are stored below 45° for over a week. Chilling injury is cumulative, so short exposure to colder temperatures is generally not harmful. Ripe peppers are ethylene producers and also sensitive to ethylene exposure. Allow for good air exchange.
This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.
