Growing peppers is pretty simple and they are very forgiving plants. Many people when starting their garden journey try out tomatoes though I’ve had an even easier time over the years with peppers. They do really well in containers and also do well in the garden. Follow these tips below and you will have a good pepper growing experience.
How To Grow Peppers: The Ultimate Guide
If I could only choose one plant to grow, it would be some variety of pepper. They are almost always a must in my garden and a lot of my early starter funds for my early gardening came from selling fig trees I cloned and rare hot peppers.
I’ve learned a bit about them over the years and had a couple reach around 5 years old as they were overwintered and brought back out every spring.
This pepper plant care guide article should give you the information you need to have some thriving plants. You’ll learn all about the planting process up to harvesting.
INFORMATION ABOUT PEPPER PLANTS
Pepper plants are a popular veggie and one of my favorite things to grow. They belong to the nightshade family just like tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, and lesser known ground cherries. I would argue out of all the different nightshades that peppers have the best all around ease of growing and drought resistance.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF PEPPER PLANTS TO GROW
Peppers have a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and heat levels. You ever take a peak at a seed catalogue and you will be spoiled for choice as there are so many types to choose from.
Peppers have a wide variety of colorations to choose from. You can grow white, orange, yellow, red, green, purple, and some have several colors. Then from there you might want a mild snacking pepper that is sweet with no heat, or maybe you want to experiment with some of the super hots.
Some of the plants can be kept very compact as well and make attractive container plants.
Here are some of my favorite varieties …
- Bell (sweet)
- Sweet banana (sweet)
- Candy Cane Sweet Pepper (sweet)
- Poblano/Ancho (mild)
- Thai Peppers (hot)
- Cayenne (hot)
- Jalapeno (hot)
- Ghost (super hot)
- Habanero (super hot)
HARDINESS OF PEPPERS
Many people like to grow peppers over one season and let them die off in winter. Peppers can be kept as a perennial plant though in colder regions they need some protection during winter months.
If you are in zone 10, you can grow them as perennials without much fuss. When I lived in zone 7 I would pot them up and cut them down to a twig to let them overwinter in an unheated garage. They would “sleep” and start perking back up around spring.
Now being in zone 4b without any of my old tools. I have a couple plants being farmed indoors. Even indoors under lights they are putting off flowers.
What is nice about keeping them alive is that every year as they get bigger they put off bigger harvests of peppers.
HOW DO PEPPERS GROW?
Pepper plants first grow up from a seedling with tons of leaves and then at some point they put off flowers. You need flowers to be pollinated and then you will see the baby peppers start to appear.
If flowers do not get pollinated, they simply fall off. Normally the wind and insects disturb them enough to do this process on their own but some people like to use a small paintbrush and touch the insides of the flowers to spread pollen.
WHERE TO GROW PEPPER PLANTS
Pepper plants are a well manner crop where you can plant them in containers or in the ground and have about the same production. They do like full sun for max growth and they do like a decent watering on occasion.
PEPPER PLANT CARE INDOORS
Peppers do pretty well indoors. You want a warm room where the temperature isn’t going to get chilly. You also need to give them some good light with some grow lights set for 12 hours on each day.
Some people try to place them in a window though usually find the light is inadequate so they see bad growth habits with the peppers and zero flowers.
Even when indoor growing peppers they go outside when it starts getting warm in spring. I wait until all the cold snaps and frost is past where the nights are about 50-55F consistently.
Before permanently leaving them outside they have to adjust to the outside conditions and harden off.
GROWING PEPPERS OUTDOORS
When it comes to outdoor growing the only demands a pepper has is a lot of sun, rich soil that drains away well, and plenty of space. The roots don’t like to be wet and a plant will get unhappy very fast when kept in flooded conditions. The other main consideration is making sure the days are warm as peppers are a heat loving plant.
They perform well in containers in any sort of sunny location like a deck or a balcony.
WHEN TO PLANT PEPPERS
As mentioned above, peppers like their soil and air a bit warmer. You want your night temps around 50F and you want to be sure that all the winter cold is over with. When I was in zone 7 the ideal planting time was early April. Now that I’m in 4b I can’t seem to get my heat loving plants outside safely until early June.
You don’t generally want peppers trying to scoot by in cold temperatures. Their growth will drop and if the conditions get too cold it will harm the leaves and stem. Way too cold and you will kill off the roots.
HOW TO PLANT PEPPERS
Planting peppers is very similar to planting a crop like tomatoes. You want to source your seedlings either grown yourself or acquired from a garden store and you plant them very deeply just leaving the crown at the surface. The stem will put off more roots and strengthen the plant.
Peppers don’t require lots of space and need to be spaced around 12-18″ apart. My larger peppers and my overwintered peppers required more space of about 25″ apart as the plant would get very large when mature. For the most part they work well in garden spaces with limited space.
PEPPER PLANT CARE INSTRUCTIONS
In order to have bountiful pepper harvests, you have to get the pointers down. They aren’t a hard thing to grow and often for new gardeners I would say they are easier than tomatoes for a lot of people. Follow some of these tips and you will have a good start.
WATER
Peppers are very forgiving of dry or drought-like conditions. In the garden it won’t be uncommon with having more problems with them being overwatered than underwatered. They don’t like so sit in overly wet soil. Soil should be regularly damp but still a bit on the dry side.
You can usually tell when peppers need more water as the intense sun will make their leaves start to droop. Truly they need regular consistent watering at the same time as having the soil be well draining.
If you don’t give them regular water you will notice lackluster growth, slower fruit development, and possibly abnormal growth and fruit development in general.
My watering method of choice is usually a soaker hose that can drip the water right down below at the mulch and soil level. My old system was a soaker hose that ran all through my garden and was set to a timer.
SUNLIGHT
Pepper plants are usually very fond of full sun and usually the more light you can give them then the better they do. It is possible to grow them in slightly shady conditions but they never max out their full growth potential.
If possible peppers should get over 8 hours of sun day to day. In shady yards you want to put them in a spot where they can get as much direct sun as possible.
SOIL REQUIREMENTS
The best soil for peppers is a fast draining, heavily composted, and very nutrient rich soil. They will do poorly if the soil is too wet all the time or if the area floods during rains quite frequently. As with most plants they love worm castings.
Peppers are pretty versatile though and they can tolerate some acidity in their soil. I used to use old coffee grounds to seed start peppers and tomatoes and they were the two experiments that would sometimes do alright.
It should be noted they don’t prefer acidity though and you can tell if the plant is being negatively impacted as their leaves will yellow and their growth rate will be absurdly slow.
If you notice weird garden growth it helps to have a home pH kit to test soil acidity. You can then use soil amendments to neutralize things like a bit of garden lime.
FERTILIZER
Pepper plants are heavy feeders much the same as tomatoes and eggplants. They like regular fertilizing and every time I notice a lag in growth in established beds I blast them with a bit of organic bone meal and worm tea. Though even just a dash of compost or worm castings can do the trick if you are on a budget.
If you have a some money to spare, you can buy these slow release granules that are either general vegetable fertilizer or the specialty stuff they sell for tomatoes.
PEST CONTROL
I usually don’t have too many problems with pests on my peppers. The only routine problem I’ve had was aphids. Though oddly the aphids usually didn’t affect the peppers when planted in the garden. Both infestations I had was when they were indoors and under lights. Other problems you might encounter are mealybugs, whiteflies, gnats, spider mites, and hornworms.
If you have bugs you can get a good organic insecticidal soap. I used to make my own spray with mild liquid dish soap mixed with water. You just need a little bit of soap to the water. For more persistent aphid attacks I might bust out the neem oil. Neem oil is good on plants where the goal is the fruit as it leaves a residue on the leaves that is a little oily.
DISEASES
While I’ve had very little trouble in the way of diseases or ailments when growing peppers, it can happen. A common plight all gardeners end up fighting is powdery mildew.
Peppers might also end up with something like bacterial leaf spot or blossom end rot (which they usually get when growing tomatoes).
To prevent blossom end rot you need to ensure the soil isn’t calcium deficient and water regularly.
With the powdery mildew you need some sort of fungicide.
PRUNING
Peppers are very hands off for the most part. You do not have to prune them. But the fruits will grow larger if you pinch off new flower development when they are holding fruit. Instead of diverting the energy to new fruit they seed the growth to the fruit they already have.
Some people also like to remove their first sets of flower to favor more plant growth if they want the plant larger before it starts to fruit. Peppers also like to send out suckers. Suckers are tiny growths that appear between the stem and the leaves. Many people like to cut these off. I like to use a small fruit pruner to clip them out of small spots.
Peppers can also grow a bit out of control and you can prune them down to keep their growth compact.
HARVESTING PEPPERS
Peppers are nice because they can be harvest at any point. They don’t have to be fully ripe in order to harvest though it might affect the flavor some. Their flavor and spicy level will increase the longer they are left to ripen.
Different peppers ripen at different speeds. When you are satisfied and want to harvest you use your garden pruners to cut them off. Sometimes their attachments are pretty strong and I’ve accidentally torn off a whole branch before just trying to get a pepper or two removed.
Growing peppers is easy once you try it a few times. I hope this article has given you an idea on how to successfully grow peppers. Follow these article pointers, and soon you will have huge harvests of peppers in the garden!
