Grow Your Own Pepper Gardens

Peppers are interesting and easy vegetables to grow in your garden. They have been around for thousands of years and are popular in dishes such as a stir-fry and pastas. They can be prepared by grilling, sauteing or even eaten fresh. Peppers can be grown in almost anyone’s home garden.

Sweet Peppers
Most of the sweet peppers are bell peppers. But there are some that are sweet yet not bell peppers. There are a variety of different bell peppers in many different colors ranging from yellow, orange and red to off-white, purple and even brown. Most of the bell peppers start off as green peppers and can be picked immaturely for green peppers. Non-bell sweet peppers are also available. A very popular non-bell sweet pepper is the banana pepper. This elongated pepper is similar in shape to hot peppers. It is used as a condiment or a popular topping for sandwiches.

As with most peppers in general, a moderately long growing season is needed to grow most sweet peppers. They need approximately 65-80 days depending on the species, or type of pepper. Sweet peppers like full sun and need warm days. Sweet peppers will not likely tolerate any frost no matter how little. Frost will severely reduce production and may kill the plant entirely.

Hot
There are a huge variety of hot peppers ranging from the mildly hot Poblanos to the very hot Habanero. Hot peppers love very warm climates and a long growing season. As with all pepper plants, sweet or hot, they will not tolerate frost well and may be killed or injured enough to reduce production. You can protect smaller plants from frost if you have a frost blanket. Be sure to watch the weather around your last frost date. These dates are only average and the only true indication is patience and a watchful eye on the weather.

Starting the Pepper Garden
For the best results, start your peppers by seed indoors about eight weeks before you can set out the plants. You will need a sunny window and some seed starting supplies. Pepper plants are larger and need a larger container to start out, at least a two-inch pot, preferably more. Buy a germinating mix, or some soilless mix to grow the pepper plants in. This will give the young plants a head start on nutrients needed to maximum production. If you don’t have a sunny window, you will need to supplement the pepper plants with artificial lighting. This can be bought at any home and garden store, department store or greenhouse. The artificial lighting fixtures are usually a flourescent bulb or an aquarium light.

Transplants can also be bought around the beginning of summer at most local greenhouses and home and garden stores. When choosing the plants to transplant, choose ones that look healthy, have sturdy stems and no discoloration in the leaves. Avoid transplants that are already flowering or setting fruit.

Acclimate your transplants to the final planting site. This is called hardening off. You can leave the transplants in their original containers and place them outside as near to the site of final planting. Leave them for a few hours a day, then bring them in at night for the first week or so. Avoid extreme weather days (pouring rain, extremely breezy days). Once you see that the pepper plants have adapted well to the area, you can transplant them into the garden bed.

Care and Maintenance of the Pepper Garden
There are some things you can do to make your pepper growing experience an easier, memorable one. First, if you take care of the soil for the pepper plants, it will give you maximum production. You can use a fertilizer. But it should only be used once before planting and then as a side dressing once the pepper fruit set. Giving fertilizers at these times avoid giving the plants too much. Giving too much fertilizer can burn the plant and can kill or injure the pepper plants.

If you are worried about soil temperature, the use of mulch can help. You may use any mulch but black plastic mulch will work best. This helps maintain the soil temperature at a constant warmer temperature. You could also use a black landscaping cloth in place of black plastic. This will allow the soil to breath and water to escape down to the soil.

Be sure the soil drains well but keeps enough moisture during the hotter months. Make sure the pepper plants get about an inch of water each week during the hottest times of the season. Once the fruit sets, it is important to keep moisture levels constant. The pepper plant will need a little more moisture during this time.

Peppers Abound
Enjoy a pepper garden this year. With a little care, maintenance and love, you can grow an abundance of peppers.