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I used raised beds this year and planting everything very close together. I planted my green pepper plants on the end of the bed with my tomatoes. The tomatoes have gotten huge and now the peppers aren't getting that much light. They still haven't bloomed, but appear to have little buds at the top and at all of the leaf nodes. My question is, can I leave them there and get green peppers, or should I try transplanting? Will they be able to handle a transplant?
I moved one that wasn't thriving in my yard, and have been wondering if it'll do okay (but it wasn't doing okay before, anyway).
I wonder if you could trim back the tomatoes, are they really on top of them or just shading a little? My tomatoes started shading my carrots so I cut a lot of the big leaves that didn't have blossoms. I've heard this could help the tomatoes too, but don't know if that's true? I even cut off some of the blossoms on top, and have heard this will put more of the plant's energy into the tomatoes that are already growing.
Also, forgot to say: everyone I've spoken to around here had trouble growing peppers, they say our Illinois soil isn't sandy enough so they got little peppers that never grew. I thought maybe mine were growing because my husband dumped last year's sandbox in the garden soil, which I didn't appreciate at the time. Maybe it's light, or maybe it's soil? I had two plants right next to each other and one tripled in size but the other stayed the same and turned yellow. Who knows!?!
Well, the pepper plants are on the East side of the garden, and my tomato plants are almost 5 ft. tall. The pepper plants are maybe 18 inches tall(I'll have to go check, that's from memory). I have cut the stems that were growing over them, its just that after noon, they get hardly any sun at all. Plus, I planted marigolds around the outside of the bed, and lo and behold the ones I choose to put there are a good 3-4 ft tall! I didn't think they'd get that big. So, the peppers are just surrounded by very tall things. But, like I said, there appear to be buds on them, so who knows. I've grown peppers once before, but never really paid much attention to them...now I know how this whole thing works(didn't realize you had to have blooms that had to get pollinated to get most veggies...lol). When I did have peppers, they seemed to do pretty good, they got a decent size. But, I have noticed there does seem to be some sandy type soil in my garden. It was a plot the people before us used as a garden, so I wonder if they added some sand.
Oh, and about the tomato pruning...the book I read about the raised bed method said you should prune once a week...I didn't do it. If I had, maybe they wouldn't be so crowded. I asked about pruning tomatoes on here, and got mixed reviews, mainly weighing in on the "Don't Prune" side, so I didn't. But, if you wanted to prune tomatoes, you're supposed to pick the stems that grow between the main stalk and the stems and cut them off. The book I read suggesting doing it once a week.
