Edible Pepper Garden. Rosalind Creasy
Cherry’
Serrano
‘Thai Dragon’
‘Thai Hot’
‘Variegata’
‘Yellow
Ornamental’
how to grow peppers
Peppers are substantial plants and many, including the New Mexico types and bells, need sturdy supports or they tend to fall over in the wind. A path between rows gives access to the plants for weeding, maintenance, and harvesting.
Like every gardener, I must admit I succumb now and then to impulse buying at the nursery. However, like most gardeners who have spent much time growing peppers, I have learned the hard way that my most successful pepper plantings result from planning and doing my homework. So, before I (or you) touch shovel to soil, here are two critical questions that need to be answered:
1. Where is the best place in the yard for my peppers?
2. What are the best pepper varieties for my climate?
When you have the answers to these two questions, you are well on your way to growing a bounty of beautiful peppers.
Planning Your Pepper Garden
Peppers are tender perennial plants, and only a few varieties have the slightest tolerance for frost. Consequently, most gardeners grow them as warm-weather annuals. They need warmth and sunshine and good soil drainage. Find a place in your garden with at least 8 hours of sunlight a day (except in extremely hot areas, where afternoon or some filtered shade is best). Then test the soil to make sure it drains well. Many of the diseases that affect peppers are caused by poor soil drainage because peppers are quite susceptible to root rot. If you think you might have a problem, the section “Preparing New Garden Beds and Adding Soil Amendments” on page 19 gives information on testing your soil for drainage.
Peppers needn’t be alone in their perfect spot. You can add them to a vegetable garden, interplant a few peppers among your ornamentals—particularly your summer annual flowers—or design a new garden. In addition, many peppers do wonderfully in containers or in large planter boxes—which may be necessary if your soil drainage is poor or your soil has fungus or nematode problems.
If you become excited enough to plan a fabulously large pepper garden, there are design considerations, including bed size, paths, and maybe even fencing. Once you plan a garden of a few hundred square feet or more, you need to provide paths, and the soil needs to be arranged in beds. Beds are best limited to 5 feet across, which allows the average person to reach into the bed to harvest or pull weeds from both sides. Raised beds of mounded soil (6 to 8 inches high) are great for peppers because they warm up more quickly in the spring than flat beds do, and they drain well too. Paths through any garden should be at least 3 feet across to provide ample room for walking and using a wheelbarrow. Protection is often needed, so consider putting a fence or wall around the garden to give it a strong design and to keep out rabbits, woodchucks, and the resident dog. Especially tall fences, over 8 feet in height, are needed if deer are a problem because they are great jumpers, and once over, they love to nibble pepper plants to a nubbin, even the really spicy ones!
The number of pepper plants you plan to grow needs thought. Home gardeners don’t need a full flat of jalapeños, no matter how good a deal they get at the nursery. Better to put in two or three plants of a few varieties each year until you find those you most enjoy and that grow best in your garden. With many pepper seasons under my belt, I find that to match the way I cook, and with the number of peppers I give away, I need a minimum of three plants each of pimiento and ‘Anaheim’-type peppers for roasting; a few plants of yellow, orange, red, and lilac bells for colorful salads and soups; a few Cuban and ‘Italian Long’ sweet peppers for frying; a few paprika peppers for drying; three or so plants of jalapeños for chipotle and using fresh; and only one plant each of the blazo serrano, chiltepíns, de árbol, and habanera types because a little heat goes a long way in my family.
Selecting Pepper Varieties
When you choose your peppers, consider not only your dinner table, but also your climate, growing season, sun exposure, and local pests and diseases. You can save yourself much grief by growing the varieties proved best for your region. In the “The Pepper Garden Encyclopedia,” I have noted, whenever possible, the regions where a variety usually does best and where it may have problems. Check also with your local master gardeners’ organization or with the closest university extension service. I realize, of course, that it is often in a gardener’s nature to want to experiment. When you do, it helps to keep good records so that you can repeat your triumphs.
As a general rule, if you are a beginning gardener and looking for sweet peppers with the least problems, choose peppers that produce the smaller fruits because some of the very large bells need optimum conditions to produce well. Some excellent sweet peppers that have been bred for short seasons, such as ‘Gypsy’ and ‘North Star,’ are perfect for beginning gardeners. Gardeners in northern climates and high elevations also need to look for peppers that will tolerate cooler temperatures and/or short-summer growing seasons. Gardeners in hot, humid areas require plants that tolerate diseases, heat, and humidity. See pages 31 and 32 for information on growing peppers under those conditions. Also remember to look at the days-to-maturity numbers and select peppers that will fit into your growing season. (Days to maturity means the number of days it takes a transplant six to eight weeks old to reach a mature green stage. It does not mean from time of seeding. An additional two to six weeks, depending on variety, are usually needed for the pepper to ripen fully.) I always allow leeway because actual days to maturity will vary with the weather. Cool nights, in particular, slow ripening.
Jody Main, my garden manager, shows off the pepper harvest from our 1998 garden.
Certain types of peppers grow better in particular areas. Some of the wild chiltepíns, for instance, are triggered to bloom when the days get short in early fall, and in a short-summer area you won’t get peppers before frost hits. Further, according to pepper gurus Dave DeWitt and Paul Bosland, in The Pepper Garden, “...the New Mexican varieties grow well in the Southwest but not that well in the Northwest and Northeast. Bells and Habañeros do not grow as well in the Southwest as they do in other regions.” In sections to follow, I address the particular challenges of growing peppers in cooler, short-summer regions as well as very hot ones.
If you are lucky, or if you only want to grow a few red bell pepper plants and a generic jalapeño, say, you may be able to obtain your pepper plants locally as nursery-grown transplants. If, however, you become a certifiable “chili-head,” or if you live in a climate that is borderline for peppers, you will need to obtain your plants or seeds by mail order to get a good, much less a great, selection. Fortunately, peppers are quite easy to start from seed. Most seed companies carry a few interesting pepper varieties, but others specialize in peppers and offer a lifetime of choices. See the Resources section, page 102, for numerous recommended seed and plant sources.
Preparing New Garden Beds and Adding Soil Amendments
Let’s assume that you’re hooked on peppers, and planting a variety here and there no longer fills the bill. You now want to grow