Garden Mama Growing

Truth be told, I was at least five years into my gardening journey before I was able to successfully grow a pepper and more like seven years to get a good yield. When I first started putting seeds in dirt I didn’t really know what I was doing and how to finesse each type of seed for optimal germination and production by starting them at the right time and in the right conditions. Peppers are especially tricky because they need to be started in March, well before it’s warm enough to plant them outside in late May, so you do need to have an indoor growing setup with lights. They also have a longer germination period than most other types, often at least two weeks before you see a sprout, and that can feel like a long time if you are also planting them alongside tomatoes which can germinate in less than a week. What is also especially tricky for these heat loving plants is to keep the soil consistently moist. While the steps below are a bit more work than I put into most seeds, it is well worth it for a healthy crop.

Try the Baggie Method to Grow Prolific Peppers

Step 1: Prep the Baggie

All you need is a box of snack size zipper seal baggies, a roll of paper towel (select a size is ideal), a little water and your seeds. You will want to *moisten* the paper towel but not oversaturate it. The best way to tell if you have too much water is give the paper towel a squeeze before adding the seeds. A permanent marker is perfect for labelling what variety you have in the baggie.

Step 2: Wait and Watch

Put the baggie somewhere that it will have consistent warmth AND you will remember to check on them daily. I had a bad habit of forgetting about them and sometimes the root systems would be so developed by the time I remembered that I couldn’t properly transplant without causing serious damage to the tangled up roots and had to start over. Ideally you want to catch them when the root is just starting to poke itself out and not more than an inch.

Step 3: Transition to Soil

Transplant your sprouts into a seedling tray. I never used any kind of special “seed starting” soil mixes and found that ProMix All Purpose Mix (found in most hardware stores) worked great. I would use a chopstick or pencil to poke a hole and ever so gently guide the root into the cell. This is a 72 cell tray which I used for all my peppers and tomatoes. Be sure to keep the lights on even before they sprout because once they do, they reach for the light which can make for leggy seedlings if they don’t have a good light source.

Step 4: Transplant to Nursery Pots

Don’t plan to keep those little sprouts in those cells for long. By mid April they should be ready for an upgrade to larger 4″ nursery pots, so be mindful of how much space you have to work with before you get to this point. I was lucky to have a greenhouse that they were subjected to earlier than most gardeners would recommend, but they still came out healthy.

Step 5: Find their Forever Home

Be careful with your plant babies when it is time to plant them. While peppers certainly can be planted in the ground, they are a tropical plant and they LOVE THE HEAT. You will need to harden them off by gently introducing them to the outdoors for a week or two before they go in the most full sun spot in your garden. If you have a greenhouse though, they did great in 2 gallon pots with regular fertilizing throughout the summer.

When I finally got it right, peppers were great producers that I used in my daily cooking, canned in hot sauce and salsa and diced up for dehydrating to toss into soups and stews through winter. Among my favourite varieties to grow were Jalapenos, Sugar Rush Peach, Lemon Drop and Black Hungarian for hot peppers and King of the North or Italian Pepperoncini for sweetness. You can find some of them mentioned in my last post 10 Canadian Seed Companies I Would Order from Again.

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