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HOT PEPPER GROWING TIPS

REQUIREMENTS:
--Potting soil (if you are in the West, buy "Supersoil" brand, or elsewhere try the Miracle Grow Cactus mix)
--Salad take-out plastic container with clear plastic dome.
--Soil thermometer or Taylor brand indoor-outdoor thermometer.
--Pepper seeds.
--Distilled water.
--Miracle-Grow "Bloom Booster" or Peters Professional "Super Blossom"

Make a "Seed starter solution" of either the Miracle-Grow or Peters Professional, mixing one tablespoon in a gallon of distilled water.

Also, do not use bleach on your pepper seeds and never refrigerate your seeds to start them!

Start with the salad take-out plastic container and punch some drain-holes for water with a fork in the bottom. Fill container with potting soil and sprinkle with the starter-fertilizer solution to settle soil. Plant seeds, spacing 1/2" apart, and cover with no more than 1/8" of potting soil. Water with the Seed starter solution, and use the solution instead of tap water, whenever the containers need to be re-watered. Do not use tap water or well-water on very young seedlings., because the chlorine or minerals may damage the seedlings.

If you want to use other containers, buy some 8 inch-diameter plastic pots and fill with potting soil.

Once seedlings are a few inches tall, transplant seedlings into their own individual 3" or 4" pots, and let plants grow to 6-8" tall.

Work about a teaspoon of bonemeal into the potting soil of the 3-4" pots before you transplant the seedlings into them.

And once transplanted into their own individual pot, start watering with an organic fertilizer, like Alaska "All Purpose Sprayable Plant Food" or Fish fertilizer. Do not continue to use the Miracle-grow or Peters Professional once the seedlings are up.

Everyone always asks "Why??" ---We don't know---It may be that the peat is too acidic, or that there is something naturally in peat that inhibits pepper seed germination? All we know, is that whenever anyone has had problems with pepper seed germination, when the seeds have been proven to have good germination when tested on top of moist cotton--part of the problem has always been peat pellets, or potting soil that was mostly peat. Miracle Grow Cactus mix is low in peat, as is the Supersoil brand.

3.) A high shelf in a heated room. The 80-85°F daytime soil temps for peppers only have to be maintained until the leaves break the soil surface, and then seedlings can be moved to a cooler place with abundant light. If you check high shelves near the ceiling, you might find one where the heat in the room keeps the temp. at the right level during the day. You just need to make sure and keep the seed pots adequately moist, and never allowed to dry out, which may be watering once or twice a day.

GERMINATION SPEED--Regular sweet peppers are very quick to germinate, usually 6-8 days.

HOT PEPPERS always take longer, a minimum of 15 days, but up to 100 days!
--Habaneros always take a minimum of 18-25 days.
--East Indian, Malaysian and Thai hot peppers always take 20-55 days.
--Bird peppers like Pequin and Tepin (the world's hottest) are always the longest: 21-100 days. Daytime heat of 80-85°F and fertilizers will cut the time down to 25-30 days.

Once seedlings appear, remove cover completely and put in a sunny place. Transplant seedlings into individual 3" (8 cm) diameter pots with potting soil as soon as they can be handled, and let grow in those containers until strong. Plant young plants outside when night time temperatures consistently are above 50°F (10°C).

DROOPY SEEDLINGS? Do the seedlings come up, and then suddenly droop and die? That's called "damping off" fungus, which grows on the soil surface when it is kept too wet, and when there's not adequate air circulation. Keep the potting soil on the dry-side, always give good air circulation, and always let the very top surface of the soil dry out before re-watering the seedlings.

FERTILIZERS: Watering pepper seeds with a fertilizer solution, helps speed seed germination, by breaking a natural dormancy that is naturally in some pepper seeds. When seedlings appear, we only recommend using diluted fish fertilizer (available in a bottle at the garden store). The fish fertilizer can be fed frequently, and never burns. We usually feed our plants every 3 weeks during the growing season.

Habaneros, especially, will need calcium many times during the growing season, in the form of bonemeal, a few Tablespoon per plant. Scatter the bonemeal around each plant, and water in. You can tell when you need calcium if the plants stop growing and if young leaves start to pucker---they are running out of calcium to build new leaves.

BONEMEAL is available at any hardware store, and is usually used for roses, and give each plant a sprinkle of bone meal every two weeks during the growing season. We use 4 pounds for 100 plants each time we fertilize.

SPACING IN THE GARDEN: Sweet peppers are usually dwarf, so can be packing in at about 1.5 feet apart. Most hot peppers need about 2-3 feet and the sprawling Manzanos or Rocotos (Capsicum pubescens) need 3-4 feet, but in Florida, Hawaii and Coastal Southern California they are perennial vine-like plants that can be trellised like grapes. The Manzanos when 3-4 years old, and when they are trellised, will produce hundreds of pounds of fruit per plant.

CONTAINER PLANTS. All peppers are perennials and can be grown in 2-3-5 gallon containers of potting soil year-round. Just bring in the plants when the nights drop below 50°F., and put them back outside when the nights are consistently above 50°F .

TIME TO PRODUCE---Once your pepper plants are out in the garden, how long will it take them to produce? Green, unripe fruit is generally produced in 55-75 days after setting plants out into the garden, and red-ripe fruit is 90-150 days.

There are exceptions to that rule, like the Chimayo hot pepper from the high mountains of New Mexico, that starts flowering as a seedling, and will produce fruit in 30 days!

YOUR PLANT MAKES FLOWERS BUT NO FRUIT? Most hot peppers and some sweet peppers require insect pollination to form fruit. If the proper insect is absent, or if the local insects are not attracted to your pepper flowers, you may see the plants flower and never set fruit. This is especially true for the blue-flowered Capsicum pubescens, the Manzanos or Rocotos, or hot peppers grown in a greenhouse.

Pollen is produced on the stamens, and usually ripens between noon and 3 PM every day. Take a moistened water-color paint brush, and pick up some pollen on your brush and transfer it to the other flower centers. You can get close to 100% fruit set with hand pollination.

HOW MANY FRUIT will each pepper plant produce? The yields vary according to variety, but here's some examples of high yielders that we've measured, number of fruit per plant:

Centinel Sweet-------------78
Corbaci Sweet--------------92
Cherry Large Hot-------50-100
Elephant's Trunk-----------50
Espanhola-----------------100
Fresno--------------------100
Tabasco---------------400-500
White Bullet™ Habanero--1,000
Tepín-------------1,000-1,500

Pepper Seed Cleaning.

NEVER EVER DRY your fresh peppers fruit before you removing the seeds, if you want to have the best quality seeds for planting. The moisture that is inside the pepper pod, especially the thicker podded varieties like Guajillo, Ancho, etc. can damage the seed quality as the pod dries.

USE FRESH-RIPE FRUIT FOR SEED, and take the seeds out of the fully-ripe fresh pods. Dry the seeds in the sun for a few days, taking them indoors at night. Or dry the seeds near a heater on a paper plate. If you have several varieties, write the names of each pepper on the paper plates.

If you are working with hot pepper, always wear rubber gloves! If you are working with only a few peppers, just take a sharp knife and cut them in half, and scrape out the seeds. I usually take a wide-mesh screen to remove any flesh that may still be attached to the seeds (about 1/4") and push the seeds through the screen, usually leaving any of the pepper flesh behind.

If you are working with a lot of peppers, use a blender. The rule-of-thumb is that it takes 50-200 pounds of fresh peppers to make one pound of cleaned seeds. Cut off the stems (calyx) and cut the peppers in half. Add peppers to fill the blender about 1/3 full, and then add water until the blender is 3/4 full. Blend just a few seconds to break up the pods. When you stop the blender, the pepper pulp will float along with the immature seeds, and the viable seeds for future planting will sink.

If a substantial amount of the seeds are still mixed with the blended pulp, then dump the pulp into a five gallon bucket, only 1-1.5 gallons and add water to the top, let sit for 30 minutes to let the good seeds settle, and carefully pour off the pulp. The good seeds should be all at the bottom of the bucket. Continue to keep adding water and pouring off the pulp until you get clean seeds.

You can drain off the floating pulp and use it for salsa, freeze it, etc. Add more water to make any remaining pulp float, and skim that off, then pour the seeds into a strainer, and dump seeds onto a paper plate for drying. Make the layer of seeds on the plate only 1-2 seeds deep, and put out in the sun to dry, and stir every hour.

For larger quantities of seeds, like pounds, pour seeds from the bucket into the strainer and let drain for 20-30 minutes, then pour into a box top lined with 10-15 sheets of newspaper with a few layers of paper towel on top, and put in the sun to dry.

Change the newspaper and paper towel after the first hour of drying, then every day thereafter. Arrange the seeds in furrows, about 1" apart, and recut the furrows every hour the first day of drying, then several times a day thereafter. Check the moistness of the newspapers underneath the seeds, to indicate when fully dry. Then store in manila envelopes for a few weeks at room temp indoors, before putting into plastic bags or jars for long-term storage.

If you are cutting or blending a lot of hot peppers, buy a 3M "8210 N95" respirator at the hardware store, because it will save your lungs for your old age. Don't rely on one of those paint or dust masks. For hot peppers you need the NIOSH approved one with the sponge rubber around the nose.

Pepper Seed Storage:

Most peppers will only keep their viability at room temperature for 3-4 years. The exception is the Capsicum pubescens group of Manzano and Rocoto peppers which have black seeds and thicker seed coats, and can last 4-6 years.

There's several ways to keep your pepper seeds longer--but first I'll list the fastest ways to kill your peppers seeds:

TOP 3 FASTEST WAYS TO KILL PEPPER SEED GERMINATION:
1.) Store them at room temp. in any of the following places:
(a.) Near the floor or less than 3 feet off the floor (where moisture condenses).
(b.) In an unheated building or outside (shed, etc.)---no moisture control.
(c.) In a cupboard or drawer, that doesn't get good air circulation.
2.) If storing seed refrigerated or frozen in a jar or a plastic zip lock ("Hefty") bag, and open the container before the seeds reach room temp. when they are still cold, moisture condenses on seeds.
3.) Store them in plastic or a glass jar, and you don't have a way to tell if there is moisture still in the seed, at least a strip of newsprint.

Jars and plastic zip lock (I personally like the Hefty Freezer brand) are great but you need to put a slip of newspaper in with the seed. If you pull out the newspaper, and if it is not crispy-dry, you need to dump out both the newspaper and the seeds out onto a paper plate to dry in the sun, to drive off excess moisture. Or you can purchase some "indicator silica gel", and put that in with your seeds to absorb moisture.

Label and date your seed stocks. Properly dried seeds in jars or Freezer zip locks even at room temperature will probably give an extra year to your seed's life, and refrigeration may keep your seeds for 5 years or more.

REMEMBER--All peppers are perennials, and make nice house-plants if grown in potting soil in 2-3 gallon plastic pots, and taken indoors when the nights drop into the 40s. Move plants outdoors when nights go back into the 50s. Plants will live for several years that way, most will stop growing in the winter and lose most of their leaves, but will leaf back out in spring.

Updated March 4, 2008