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If your pepper plants fall over, the fruit gets damaged and can quickly rot or get disease or pest problems. And the plants themselves can snap, split, and get infected or infested. So, keep your pepper plants from falling over by giving them the right support.
You can support pepper plants with trellises, cages, stakes, ropes, or canes. It’s best to provide support early in the pepper life cycle rather than after the plant gets tall and lanky and starts to bend under its own weight.
Remember, though, that your peppers might not just be falling over because they’re too big or they’re too heavy with fruit. If you notice other symptoms, like pepper leaves turning yellow or pepper plant leaves turning black, as well as a new habit of falling over, you could have a another problem, ranging from overwatering to infection.
Do Pepper Plants Need to Be Supported?
Yes, in most cases, pepper plants need support, just like tomato plants, unless you’re growing a really low-growing or compact pepper variety. As they grow, the branches on pepper plants get tall and leggy and, sometimes even before fruit sets, the plant can’t cope under its own weight, so branches, or sometimes the whole plant, falls over or leans sideways.
And, once the fruits swell, even if you’ve pruned the pepper plants, the added weight from the large peppers ripening on the branches means the plant needs additional support to stay standing.
Why Should You Support Pepper Plants?
Keeping the branches off the ground limits the chance for diseases to infect your plants, it stops the plants becoming too dense and wet, and it keeps the fruit off the ground so it doesn’t rot before it has chance to ripen.
Plus, the support stops branches from breaking under their own weight or when exposed to strong winds. Remember, pepper plants are fairly brittle, and even new branches can snap with just a little stress.
Giving support to all your pepper plants limits the risk of disease. A fungal pathogen can obliterate your entire pepper crop in just a few days if you’re not vigilant. So staking peppers is a smart way to make sure your pepper garden stays healthy, alongside providing ideal pepper growing conditions, like well-draining soil, the right organic pepper fertilizer, and plenty of sun.
When Should You Give Peppers Support?
Whether you’re planting peppers from seed or starts, once they’re ready to plant out in their final location, provide support right from the start, whether you’re using wire tomato cages, wooden stakes, rope, or some other support system.
As the pepper plants grow, you may need to provide additional support or change the existing support configuration.
Starting the support early gives you the best chance of keeping your pepper plants healthy and getting bigger, better harvests. Instead of putting energy into trying to stay upright, your pepper plants can put their energy into root system and foliage growth, and fruit production.
How to Support Pepper Plants
There are a few different ways to support pepper plants, most of which you can construct at home, for free. Stakes, ropes, and even cages can usually be created from supplies you already have. Let’s take a look at a few ways to support pepper plants and stop them falling over.
How to Stake Peppers
Its easy to stake peppers, particularly if you sink the first stake before you plant the peppers. That way, you avoid disturbing or damaging the pepper root system.
Stake pepper plants just like you do with tomato plants. You can use bamboo, untreated wood, metal, or plastic.
Use a stake of around 5 foot. That lets you drive at least a foot into the ground, and have a good 4 foot above the ground, to support even the tallest pepper plant.
Grab some soft natural twine or some tomato ties and secure the pepper plant to the stake at regular intervals. Only tie it loosely, though, as your young peppers need room to grow. As the plant grows, you’ll need to add more ties. And, often, you’ll need to add a few more stakes as the young plants spreads its branches.
Use Cages to Support Pepper Plants
You can use a small wire tomato cage to support peppers, and you can even make them yourself with something as simple as chicken wire or a few well-placed stakes with wire wrapped around to form a cage. If you want to get fancy, you can use this pepper cage tutorial from Joe Lamp’l, which is cheap and simple and made from a cattle panel.
Homemade pepper cages, or store bought ones, are great for supporting peppers and you don’t have to keep going back to tie them on. Growing inside the cage, they can’t escape and sprawl all over the floor.
Just remember, though, that if the gap between the rows of wire is too small on your tomato cages, you’ll struggle to prune, add top dressing or fertilizer, or to harvest the peppers.
Use a Trellis to Support Pepper Plants
Keeping pepper plants upright with a trellis might seem a bit over the top, given that peppers don’t get that tall, but it’s a neat alternative if you don’t want to stake pepper plants or you’re growing them in your yard and want to make a feature of them.
Just like staking pepper plants, you’ll need to loosely tie the pepper plant stems onto the trellis to help keep them growing in the direction you want.
If you didn’t get around to staking pepper plants while they were small, or before you planted them in their final position, adding a trellis above them is a great way of making sure you don’t disturb their delicate roots.
Drive a sturdy stake into the soil each end of the row of pepper plants, then mount a trellis to stakes. The trellis should be fairly deep so that the peppers can be tied to it as they grow, before they get too heavy.
Use Ropes to Support Pepper Plants
Instead of staking pepper plants, you can sink two stakes deep into ground at either end of the row of peppers, then run a rope from one stake to the other. Or, for a stronger, more permanent structure, secure a piece of wood or metal from one stake to the next, but you might need to add a few more vertical stakes to the row to make this secure enough.
Now you’ve got the support frame, it’s time to run rope from the top rope or bar down to each pepper plant. Then, drive a short stick like a bamboo cane into the ground close to each pepper and tie the hanging rope to it. Then, using soft twine, periodically loosely tie the peppers to the ropes. Alternatively, you can wrap the rope around the pepper plant stems as they grow, so you won’t need to use twine at all.
Using a rope setup like this is good for smaller plants as well as big sprawling bell peppers, and works just as well with tomatoes. Yes, you are kind of pepper staking, but the structure is more permanent. Assuming you rotate crops, which of course you should, when you lift the peppers, you can replace them the following season with beans, sweet potatoes, cucamelons, or other vining or climbing plants.
Ropes also provide less firm support, so let the pepper plants move naturally with the wind. This is a good option for varieties that easily snap and should help your peppers cope with heavy wind.
FAQs
Should you stake pepper plants?
Yes, most bell peppers and many chili pepper plants benefit from support, especially once they start carrying fruit. Peppers don’t climb naturally, but a stake, small tomato cage, wire cage, or simple trellis can keep stems upright and stop branches from snapping under the weight of the crop. Support is especially useful for large-fruited peppers, container-grown plants, windy sites, and plants that have grown tall or top-heavy.
Whether you should stake pepper plants or use cages depends on the variety you’re growing, the weather in your climate, and when you decided to add support. Cages are good for windy conditions and larger varieties that produce lots of big fruits and tall branches. They’re also the best option if you let your peppers get established in their final position before supporting them.
Is staking the best way to support pepper plants?
Staking pepper plants helps keep the main stem upright, makes the plant easier to manage, and reduces the risk of branches snapping once the fruit gets heavy. It can also make it easier to water, mulch, weed, and harvest around the plant because the stems aren’t sprawling across the soil.
Stakes are a good option for smaller pepper plants, container peppers, and gardens with moderate weather and little wind. In windy spots, or for large bell pepper varieties with heavy fruit, a cage or wider support may be safer because it supports more of the plant, not just the main stem.
Do pepper plants climb?
No, pepper plants don’t climb because they are not vining plants. They grow upright as bushy plants, but the stems and branches can still snap once they start carrying heavy fruit. That’s why many pepper plants benefit from a stake, cage, or simple support, especially large bell peppers, container-grown plants, and peppers growing in windy spots.