I can never find poblano or anaheim pepper seed packets, so yesterday I got this crazy idea to just buy the peppers and use the seeds in them to start my plants. Will this work?
It depends on the variety. If they are a hybrid variety, the seeds may or may not produce fruit that resembles the parents.
I think you’d be better off ordering some open-pollinated seed varieties (just Google open pollinated poblano and you’ll find sources). You can save the seeds from open-pollinated varieties and they will “breed true.”
Probably not. Most commercial peppers are hybrids and will not breed true, if at all.
I’ve successfully grown peppers from the seeds of store bought jalapenos. Also, bell pepper seeds are a minor nuisance in my compost since they keep sprouting in there and contaminating my beds when I add in new soil.
I have some seeds from 1) a red store-bought bell pepper and 2) a store-bought Hatch chile that was half-colored when I cut into it i.e. not all the way green anymore.
Both are relatively fresh seeds, from over this winter. Will try them both soon, now that the weather is warming up nicely. ::thumbs nose at Dopers north of the Mason-Dixon line::
Dunno too much about how much hybridization will help or hinder the seed-saving, since a gardener friend once mentioned that the nicest, biggest red tomatoes she ever grew came after she let her son take a small firecracker to an ovverripe plain supermarket tomato. (The young son in question eventually grew up to become Mr. Horseshoe, by the way.)
Bell peppers from the store are generally F1 hybrids. You’ll usually get a mix of nice fruit producers and a stubbier but hardy plant that doesn’t produce much.
Bells are easy enough to grow, even in pots, so you might as well start a few and see what happens. If you get good results, you can collect the seeds from your best plants. By the way, red bells and green (and other colors) are all the same plant, so your peppers will come in green and change color on the vine. I have 7th or 8th generation pepper plants that got started from store-bought fruit. I’ve also successfully raised jalapenos and red chiles from store fruit. (Plus other plants that aren’t peppers.)
The seeds are pretty hardy, I just stick them in an envelope after letting them dry out for a week or two. If you’re interested in developing some sort of super plant, then order seeds. But if you just want to play around, there’s no reason not to try the seeds you have.
slightly off topic- soon to be Mrs.YouDown has taken to gardening. On a lark we took seeds from a store bought apple and planted them. Of the three planted seeds one actually sprouted. In ten years we may have a fruit bearing tree. I’m curious to try our luck with some pepper seeds.
Sure, although my attempt with dryed Gaujillo peppers appears to be a bust this spring, my other peps are coming up.
This page offers some advice I’ve found useful:
Yes, but they’re easier to take care of if you grow them in a pot.
Glenn Beck recommends a hybrid-free seed bank which will be more valuable than gold when everything goes kittywampus now that Obamacare has passed.
Truly a lark. Apples never seed true. The vast majority of the time you will get smallish sour apples good for cider and not much else. The only reliable way to get a known sweet eating apple tree is by grafting.
Glad to see it wasn’t just me. 
I hope you have better luck with your peppers than I did. Yesterday I cut open a jalapeno and there was a big caterpillar inside. Seems something has laid eggs in the things and they hatch and eat the pepper.
This thread is obviously of interest to me for that reason.
it’s important to note that whilst it’s true that seed saved from hybrid crops cannot be expected to come true to variety, there are lots of cases where this doesn’t really matter. for the amateur and beginner gardener, that element of unpredictability can be a lot of fun - and for some vegetables, the crop may be reasonable whatever it happens to look like.
i’m expecting my tomatoes not to cpme true - not sure about the chilli peppers as i bought them from a market gardener - and with squashes, pumpkins and gourds, the plants are so promiscuous anyway that open-pollinated varieties are probably no more predictable than the offspring of an f1 plant.
sadly, with apples (mentioned upthread) it’s most unlikely that they will grow a worthwhile fruit - professional raising new varieties typically discard tens of thousands of candidate seedlings for each new variety that makes the grade. seedling apples will typically bear some resemblance to their parent but will often be smaller, sourer or harder - and may not crop reliably.
Yes, this is right. Push You Down, before you waste several years in anticipation just go down to the nursery and buy a tree of the type apple you want that has been grafted to another type rootstock. All you are going to end up getting from the seed you planted is a sour ‘what the hell is this?’ apple. And talk to the nursery staff about getting two trees of differnet kinds of apple. Some apples will produce better if pollinated by a different type.
You will get good apples in a few years with a grafted tree.
Aren’t most green peppers “green”?
Unless they’re red, orange or yellow…
ETA: To clarify, some people call bell peppers “green peppers”, even if they’re other colors.
Really! Should I just germinate them in garden dirt? I’d planned on using Jiffy starter mix and a peat pot. This is mainly how we bought them last spring.