Great Bell Pepper Harvest - But Why?

I told you in my last post that we have had success with onions and peppers. The Bell Peppers have continued to be incredible this year. We have Green and Yellow Bell Peppers and now some are beginning to turn red for us. There are so many peppers on each plant!

 

The size of these peppers are much larger than I'm used too as well.

 

In years past, I never got such great peppers unless I used great big plants liquid compost on them like I did the year before last.

You may think I'm bragging about these peppers but I'm not. You see, for whatever reason I usually can not grow very good Bell Peppers. Most of you reading this probably grow peppers like this every year, but I usually only get one or two small bell peppers from each plant.

So what is different this year? Did I amend the soil or use fertilizer? No, but something is different next to the bed that is producing these wonderful peppers.

They are right behind our new chicken coop that has a slanted highly reflective silver roof!

 

Could these pepper plants be benefiting from the reflective rays? I think so, because I also planted peppers from the same batch of seedlings elsewhere in the garden that are performing in their normal lackluster way. Here is a picture of one of them:

 

That is how my pepper plants usually look! Pathetic compared to my bed of bountiful peppers.

This summer has been unusually cool and wet which have not been good growing conditions for tomatoes. Peppers are supposed to do best with heat as well. Do you think it is possible that my peppers are so good because of the chicken coop roof? I guess without conducting soil samples in the two locations we can't be sure that the soil is the same, but I think it is. I really think the only difference is the reflective roof.

Am I crazy?