Anybody here good at growing peppers?

Cafe Society
21

Hot peppers are very easy to grow in my experience - plant them somewhere where they get lots of sun and remember to water them, and they should do fine. I’ve had lots of problems with aphids though, more then anything else I’ve tried growing… I don’t know if they specifically like peppers or it’s just where I plant them or what but it’s something to look out for.

Also, just confirming, if you’re not going to save seeds it does not matter where you plant them. I accidentally planted a banana pepper plant right between some jalapenos and the banana peppers were no hotter then any others. If you save the seeds, you might end up with some interesting varieties though.

Cat Whisperer - you can get fancy with a q-tip and pollinate them yourself, just (gently) jam it into the flower and swirl it around a bit. Peppers have perfect flowers, which means each flower can pollinate it’s self, making it very easy. Or if you’re too lazy for that, just give the plant a shake every day - it does not work quite as well, but it will knock some pollen loose to get you some peppers, and takes all of 5 seconds.

22

Good to know about the pollination. Just for kicks I bought a jalapeño plant at Seedy Saturday. The salsa I made last summer was tasty and I like a little spice so I figured let’s try this…

23

One warning about mildly-hot peppers like jalapenos… do make sure you water them generously. If you don’t they’ll get hotter than hell. We had a year of jalapenos that are so hot we can’t use them–half a seedless pepper in a pot of curry made it inedible.

24

Also good to know! Thank you Sattua.

A lot of my gardening falls by the benign neglect theory, so it seems like these will be a little more work than I usually do.

25

Never had much luck with peppers in pots. They tend to like being planted in the garden in full sun and good drainage, as mentioned.

26

So, can you self-pollinate a single plant or do you have to have more than one plant around? The posts by pagzer and badlyburnttoast are contradictory …

27

You don’t need two of the same pepper plant to get peppers.

28

I’ve been trying to pollinate using a fine paintbrush; it worked once, but it is not a reliable method. Maybe the Q-Tip would work better. Iv’e pollinated tomatoes like this in the past, and they gave it up real easy - peppers play more hard-to-get. :slight_smile:

29

If your pepper plants cross-pollinate, it won’t have an impact on this year’s fruit. This year’s fruit is the ovary. Its genetic makeup is the same as the rest of the plant. The mixed genetic traits are in the seeds contained within the ovary. (Think humans, if you like. The uterus doesn’t have the same genetic makeup as the baby.)

If you save seeds and plant them, you might get mixed traits in the plants that grow from them.

30

Last year my bell peppers were few and far between, the ones I did get were small. My uncle, whose garden is absurdly prolific, suggested that I plant a couple match heads with each plant next year. He says that peppers need sulfur in the soil. I am going to try it.

31

There’s is no need to pollinate peppers with a q-tip. A stiff breeze will do it. Think of hot peppers like they’re 14-year-old boys. They want to procreate. You don’t have to help them.

I’ve been growing hot peppers for years and even developed a line of hot pepper + native Florida fruit jams. In the past couple seasons, I’ve been too busy to do this, but the information hasn’t fallen out of my head.

• In my experience, the hotter the weather, the hotter the peppers.

• Peppers are considered tender perennials. Yes, perennials. If you dig 'em up and keep 'em warm all winter, they will stay green and will start reproducing again in the spring. They go a bit dormant, but they won’t die unless they get frozen. Depending on where you are in the deep SE, you might not even have to bring them inside. In the spring, re-plant them outside and you won’t have to go from seeds anymore. I had a cayenne plant that lived for about four years.

• I got better yield when peppers are planted in the ground as opposed to pots. But if you’re going to do pots (and they’ll do just fine, but the peppers might be a bit smaller), make sure they are at least 2-gallon sized and put a layer of mulch on top to hold in moisture. Some peppers, I think serrano, get really large and bushy. Like 3 feet high. I put those in a 16" diameter pot – the largest I could find. Pots will keep the roots from spreading as much as free-range peppers, so the plants and peppers will be smaller and possibly fewer, but really, not a big deal. I started out with pots on an apartment balcony (and eventually found space on an 11-acre co-op farm :cool:).

• I only watered if it hadn’t rained at least once in seven days. Or if the leaves looked all wilty. So make sure they get a good soaking about 2-3 times a week, whether by rain or your garden hose/sprinkler.

• In USDA growing zone 8B (where I live), you can get three crops of peppers in a given season. The first one will have matured in spring, so those will be fairly mild. The second one will mature in the dead heat of summer, so those suckers will be friggin’ hot. The third crop will be sparse compared to the other two, and mild like spring peppers.

• If you don’t want your peppers to cross-pollinate, yes, keep them far apart. I read 250 feet somewhere, but I don’t know anyone who has that kind of space. I just let 'em mix to see what I got later. I can’t really taste the difference between, say a cayenne and a Thai chili, but I could probably distinguish the heat factor between a jalapeno and a habanero. With respect to flavor, they all sort of taste the same to me too, but I’m a smoker and my palate is messed up. I don’t think it’s that big of deal, especially if you’re going to cook with several different varieties and stick 'em all in the same salsa (or whatever you’re going to do with them). I made things like blueberry-habanero and pear-cayenne jams. Hot is hot, even when mixed with fruit.

• I never fertilized or did anything special aside from mulching and watering when needed. I used your basic Miracle Grow potting soil for veggies. I’d amend the soil with that if planting in-ground, or use only that if planting in pots. When I was working my rows at the co-op farm, we composted (and watered). That was it. One gardener had a vermiculture project going on, so he shared his worms with everyone.

• I like at least six hours of full, blazing sun a day. So do my peppers.

• Occasionally, you get tomato hornworms. Tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers are all part of the nightshade family. This means whatever eats one will eat the others. Tomato hornworms are really creepy little critters – green worms with a spiky horn on their butt ends. I’d pick 'em off and toss them in my garbage can, which meant they’d bake to death in the sun. (I can’t smoosh stuff, even if it’s trying to eat my peppers.) You can get bt (bacillis thuringiensis), which is a bacteria in powder form, that you sprinkle on the plants, and which is completely organic and rinses right off. It’s sold under the brand name “Dipel” dust. No need for artificial pesticides on food you’re going to eat, if you get hornworms. Inspect the undersides of leaves every couple days. If you see something being chewed on, keep looking until you find the little critters. They can eat a whole plant in a day or two. The plants WILL come back if this happens, just cut them back and pull off any forming peppers to let the plant spend its energy regrowing foilage. I never got aphids on my peppers, but I had ladybugs, praying manti, and several other aphid predators in my yard. :: shrug :: For aphids, I mix up a spray bottle with 1 part dish soap and 10 parts water and spray 'em off. Works just fine. I think I’ve gotten whiteflies too, same solution.

• The good news about peppers is: I think benign neglect works out pretty well; just watch for hornworms. The other good news is: it’s the only thing I’ve been able to grow that squirrels and birds don’t beat me to the crops. I went all murderous rage on a squirrel that ate my pineapple before I got a chance to harvest it, damn tree rat. Grr. :smiley:

32

Even better, some pepper plants will keep producing all winter long if you put them in a sunny and warm enough spot. A jalapeno I had in a pot gave one extra harvest before going dormant, while a potted “super chili” hybrid I had just kept spitting them out all winter long at around the same rate it did while outside in the sun.

33

My pepper would have produced all winter long (with an added grow bulb) if I could get it to pollinate properly.

34

Thanks for all the input guys and gals.

Finally got the planting areas cleared out and the stuff I need gathered up. Will be planting this week.

Bad news is my habenero seedlings are rather puny at the moment. So, I wanted to get some commercial ones. But haven’t had any luck finding any local ones at the store either.

Good news is one Co-op I checked at had the “worlds hottest pepper”, but only one (I think it is a Carribean Red). Twice the heat of a hab. I told my SO that from now on I would be sleeping with that one special plant at night to protect it :slight_smile:

Also, my neighbor just got two beehives, so things should pollinate pretty well (and beehives look like something else fun to get into).

35

Try to find African Bird’s Eye peppers. They are tiny little things, but pack a wallop that burns like the fire of 10,000 suns.

Also, a cautionary tale. Once I was processing about a million peppers to make pepper jam. (WARNING: TMI ahead.) I was wearing rubber gloves. I got to a good stopping point and decided to use the restroom before finishing up the canning process. So I stripped off the gloves, washed my hands, twice, and headed into the bathroom. At the time, I was using tampons that do not require an applicator; the applicator is your finger. I needed to change my tampon so I pulled one out, unwrapped a fresh one and jammed it up there.

:eek:

Turns out, capsaicin soaks through rubber gloves! This is really important information if you are planning to handle your delicate bits within a few hours of handling peppers. Had I any brains at all, I would have put on a new fresh rubber glove before the tampon operation, but no. I thought I’d washed my hands sufficiently.

I couldn’t move for about 30 minutes. Had to just sit there on the couch and wait for the burn to ebb away. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Wear rubber gloves when handling peppers, change them out frequently, and whatever you do, do not use OB tampons on the same day you chop peppers. This post has been a public service announcement. :wink:

36

Bump!

So my plant seems to be happy. It’s growing nicely in its pot and has one flower with lots more buds on it!

How grows others?

37

This will be my first year to try peppers. I always have to do container gardens since I live in an apartment, the folks around here (Washington state) tell me that peppers need lots of sun. And the nursery I bought mine from suggested a dark pot since it will help hold warmth.

I’ve had my peppers for a week and I use grow lights on cool nights and drizzly days (we’re about 7 degrees colder than we’re supposed to be for this time of year). Anyway, they look as if they’re already getting little flowers soooo…seems to be working.

I wish I could do the hotter peppers, I love them, but my stomach does not. :slight_smile:

38

The slugs are eating my Caribbean Hots. The banana and poblanos are doing fine. They went into the ground as seedlings on Mother’s Day. I don’t expect them to flower until next month.

My tomato and pepper bed taken this Tuesday. The tiny little guys are the Hots. I’m concerned they may not make it, they are being eaten so much.

39

For peppers (hot or sweet), I like to give them a bump of magnesium by spraying them with a solution of 1 TB epsom salts to 1 quart water. You can also scratch some epsom salts into the soil but I find the spraying works well. The plants turn dark green and set fruit like crazy.

40

Up here in the wintry north, I place black landscaping fabric on the soil and punch holes in it to plant my peppers.

It really heats the soil up quickly and the peppers love it! I already have a good amount of fruit set and its early June!