Growing Peppers

Growing peppers are a finicky plant to grow but well worth the effort.

They come in a variety of colors and taste. There are even chili peppers that can spice things up a bit. There are the bell, frying, cherry, jalapeno and chili varieties to grow in your vegetable garden.

There is the cayenne plant, which if I understand correctly, is the hottest food substance there is.

Generally speaking, the smaller the fruit, the hotter it is.

As kids, our neighbors used to have a plant. It grew little berry-like fruits, but they were hot when eaten.

We had this game to see who the toughest was. You had to take three of the peppers and eat them. We would pop them in our mouths and run for the water.

The only catch, I was not chewing them. I swallowed them. Not sure if anyone caught on.

Growing peppers like the hot weather. They can be started inside and transplanted to your vegetable garden. Once it warms up, your local hardware store will have some you can buy and transplant.

Once the soil is warm, you can plant seeds directly into the ground. They like a warm soil or the seeds will rot.

When direct sowing plant pepper sends two to three inches apart. Then thin to twelve inches apart. Rows should be spaced about 18" apart.

When growing peppers in my vegetable garden, I will plant one at the back of the raised garden bed and one at the front. This should give me room for a lot of plants.

They like to have a pH balance of 5.5 to 7.

The fruits will need some sort of shade from the sun. One author suggest that they be planted by corn to get that shade. But in our city garden, we will not be planting corn.

However if we space them as suggested above, they should be able to protect each other.

These plants are in the same family as tomatoes but they are more sensitive to cold. If the plants are healthy and have blossoms but never fruit then it is probably too cold for them at night. To help with this, try covering them.

When growing peppers, keep in mind that green fruits are actually immature fruits. These can be eaten whenever they fit the need you have. To mature them, leave them on the vine until they are their mature color being red, yellow, orange and so on.

They are good for about two weeks in the refrigerator. They can also be dried or frozen, but will not taste as good as when they are eaten fresh.

If there is a freeze then, like tomatoes, they are no good. If a frost is expected, cut the whole plant and hang it up in a warm place and they will continue to ripen.

If you have been to the store lately, then you know that one fully, ripened bell pepper is about $1.25 each. I love them but I cannot afford to buy them at this time. So I am hoping for a good harvest.

Peppers come in various types. Some are hot, some sweet, some small and some large. They come in various colors from green, yellow, red and orange just to name a few. I have planted a variety of them in my garden.

6-03-09

Most of my pepper plants I started indoors did not do well when I tried to get them out of the transplant pods.

But I did directly sow some and they are looking good now.

My pepper plant did not do well in the Topsy Turvy but it may have been due to the temperatures. I will try again next year and see what happens.

9-21-09

For awhile are temperatures were so high here that my pepper plants shut down. They did not produce and they did not grow. Then we received some rain and cooler temps and they started growing and producing again.

The video below talks about this.

For more on Peppers visit Growing Cayenne Peppers, Growing Chili Peppers, Growing Bell Peppers, Growing Banana Peppers, Growing Sweet Peppers and Growing Peppers from Seed.

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