Commercial fertilizers like Miracle Grow are convenient and excellent for helping your veggies grow strong and healthy. However, they are often expensive and not always available when you need them. Fortunately, it’s easy to make a homemade fertilizer for peppers to ensure your plants are productive.
Growing peppers at home is relatively simple and an excellent way to produce organic food. However, as much as we’d like to think that nature provides plants with everything they require, sometimes they want a little help. There are thousands of different types to grow, from the mild bell pepper to spicy hot peppers.
Over time, plants leach minerals out of the bed, and potted plants lose nutrition through the garden soil when you water them or during rainfall. It’s vital to fertilize your pepper or tomato plant with plant food or compost throughout the season for optimal plant growth.
- Homemade Fertilizers for Pepper Plants
Homemade Fertilizers for Pepper Plants
Learn what nutrients pepper plants need and when to feed your plants for the best results. Additionally, find out how to make homemade fertilizer from things you already have to ensure you get a bounty of vegetables at the end of the growing season.
How to Fertilize Peppers
The amount of nutrition a pepper plant receives plays a vital role in whether the plant develops flowers and fruits. Learn how to fertilize peppers by providing them with the proper nutrients and minerals.
Pepper plants prefer an equal amount of phosphorus and potassium and slightly less nitrogen if you have rich soil. However, the amounts vary if your dirt is lacking, and it’s helpful to do a soil test. Phosphorus lets the plant absorb the sun’s energy, potassium helps the minerals flow through the plant, and nitrogen promotes vegetation growth.
Organic Pepper Plant Fertilizer
Manure tea is an excellent organic pepper plant fertilizer, similar to compost tea. Manure’s nutrients dissolve easily in water for adding to a sprayer or watering can. Prepare this liquid fertilizer and use it to feed peppers.
Top-off a five-gallon bucket with water, fill a pillowcase with well-cured manure and suspend it in the bucket of water for a week or two. When thoroughly steeped, lift the bag out of the water and allow it to drip before discarding it. Feed your plants with the manure tea by diluting one cup of the liquid with a gallon of water.
Use this simple fertilizer for other garden plants, as well. Mix a DIY fertilizer for tomato plants, squash, cabbage, and a variety of other veggies.
Using Compost to Fertilize Pepper Plants
Compost is a natural pepper fertilizer that utilizes grass clipping waste, food scraps, and other organic materials. Composting is a brilliant way to recycle and the best fertilizer for creating nutrient rich soil for your peppers. It’s also great as homemade tomato fertilizer or herb fertilizer.
One great way to plant bell peppers or even the way to plant poblano peppers is to mix compost into the bed to aerate the dirt and add minerals to enrich the soil before planting pepper seeds or seedlings. Use this strategy when planting Anaheim peppers in containers, too. If you already have established plants to feed, spread a layer of compost over the bed around the plant’s base, the same way you add mulch to retain moisture and keep the ground warm.
Homemade Fertilizer for Peppers to Keep Pests Away
Leftover coffee grounds are the best fertilizer for pepper plants, keeping pests out of the garden. Additionally, they improve soil drainage and water retention and provide your plants with nitrogen.
Fresh and spent coffee grounds are useful as pepper plant food, but fresh grounds are slightly more acidic than brewed grounds and enjoyed most by acid-loving plants.
Work coffee grounds into the dirt around your pepper plants, spread them over the bed like mulch to deter slugs, snails, and cats, suppress weeds or add them to the compost pile.
Using Epsom Salt to Feed Pepper Plants
Epsom salt helps a pepper seed germinate into a pepper seedling, increases chlorophyll production, and encourages a chili pepper plant to develop more flowers. Discover how to fertilize peppers or make your own fertilizer for carrots and potatoes with this mineral salt.
To make a DIY fertilizer for peppers, fill a gallon-sized container with distilled water and add two tablespoons of Epsom salt. Stir the liquid to dissolve the salt and pour it into a sprayer. Mist your plants once a month to give them a boost of magnesium.
DIY Pepper Plant Fertilizer to Prevent Blossom End Rot
Eggshells contain calcium carbonate, a mineral that strengthens a plant’s cell walls, and banana peels promote vigorous root growth. Feeding your plants an organic pepper plant fertilizer with these ingredients helps prevent blossom end rot.
There are a few ways to use an egg shell and banana peel to feed pepper plants, and the simplest way is to apply them directly. Clean and crush the eggshells, cut the banana peels into small pieces, and work them into the soil around your plants. Another way to use these leftover scraps is to make organic liquid fertilizer.
Place the peels and cleaned, crushed shells into a medium pot, pour water over the top to submerge them, and cover with a lid. Allow the scraps to steep for two to three days, strain the liquid into a container, and water your peppers with the solution. This liquid fertilizer is suitable for outdoor and indoor plants.
When Is the Ideal Time to Fertilize Pepper Plants?
Some plants want fertilizer at planting time, while others enjoy regular feeding throughout the season. Learn when to start and stop fertilizing peppers to ensure your chili plants grow abundant flowers and fruits.
Apply pepper plant fertilizer to the soil before planting to ensure your peppers get a good start on the growing process. Hold off fertilizing them again for a couple of weeks after transplanting pepper seedlings.
Early stem and foliage development are essential for the plant to support peppers since the plant stops growing once the fruit sets. Give the plant extra nitrogen about two weeks after planting, before fruit formation to stimulate leaf growth. Decrease the nitrogen and feed your plants again during the final weeks of harvest.
It’s possible to over-fertilize pepper and tomato plants, slowing the process of flowering and fruit-setting. Brown leaves are another sign of too much pepper or tomato fertilizer. To remedy these problems, flush the plants with water to remove the excess fertilizer and water your plants without feeding them for two to three weeks.
All plants need a little extra food now and then, whether you’re fertilizing tomatoes or peppers. Fortunately, preparing an organic fertilizer from organic matter like food scraps and compost is easy. Using natural fertilizer is better for the environment than granular fertilizer.
We hope that making a homemade fertilizer for peppers helps you save money while giving your plants a healthy boost, and we’d love it if you’d share our DIY pepper plant fertilizers with your gardening friends and family on Facebook and Pinterest.