Growing Chillies and Bell Peppers from Seed to Harvest
Whether you’re making salads, stir fries or veggie roasts, growing sweet peppers ensures that you have fresh, flavourful, and colorful ingredients to make them look and taste great. But that’s not all. For those who like anything from a light bite to fierce flavor onslaught, chillies are the not-so-secret ingredient to have.
Either way, we’re looking at growing Capsicums – sweet or hot. You stand a chance to save at the same time. After all, peppers, especially the colorful or hot ones, don’t come cheap!
Once you know how, you’ll find that growing peppers can be really easy. Let’s explore the colorful world of capsicums together.
Types of Peppers
Peppers are incredibly diverse in flavor, color, size and shape. It’s amazing to think that all of them are from the genus Capsicum and most of them are the same species. Here’s how they’re classified for practical purposes:
Bell Peppers: These are your typical sweet peppers. The green ones are harvested before ripening. Left to themselves, they’ll ripen to red. Some cultivars ripen to yellow, cream, orange, or even purple.
Sweet and Hot Chilli Peppers: The real diversity kicks in when we move towards the (mostly) smaller-fruited peppers. Some are sweet, some are spicy, and some are terrifyingly hot! Examples include Asian peppers, cayenne peppers, habaneros, jalapenos, hot cherries, banana chilies, and serranos.
Fun fact: there are thousands of chili varieties. Nobody knows for sure exactly how many there are, but 4,000 varieties is considered to be a conservative estimate!
Origins and “Heat” of Peppers
The genus Cpasicum, including sweet and hot peppers, was first grown as a food crop in Latin America. It’s a history spanning over 3,000 years. Like the other foodie treasures from South and Central America, Peppers spread around the world during the 15th and 16 centuries.
The spiciness of capsicums depends on the concentration of capsaicin. The more there is, the hotter your peppers get. It’s measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU) with sweet bell peppers starting at 0 SHU. The hottest peppers in the world today have an incredible 1,641,183 SHU and the average Jalapeno clocks in at 4000–8000 SHU.
Ideal Climate for Peppers
Some plants like it hot, and all the Capsicums fit that preference. There’s a lot of genetic variability, and some varieties will do better in cooler climates than others, however. On average, peppers like daytime temperatures ranging from 70-80°F, and nighttime temperatures of 65-70°F during the night as a minimum.
But, things can get too hot for peppers too. If daytime temperatures are over 90°F, you may find that blossoms drop without forming fruit or that fruits are small and misshapen. If temperatures fall below 60°F, you’ll also have blossom drop. Luckily, peppers are quite long-lived (if there’s no frost) so you can often get a good crop despite this.
If your weather tends towards the treacherous, growing your peppers in containers helps you to move them to the spots where they’ll do best. You can move them to a lightly shaded area during heatwaves, for instance, or protect them from cold during chilly spells. If you have a greenhouse, you can even cut them back and keep them alive during winter.
Ideal Soil for Peppers
Just as the weather should be warm for growing bell peppers or chillies, the soil should be warm too. The ideal germination temperature is 75°F or above. That’s why many gardeners in cooler climates like to start their pepper seedlings indoors on heating pads.
Apart from soil temperature, drainage matters too. Like most other crops, peppers like soil that drains well, allowing for a good balance between aeration and moisture in the soil. Raised beds filled with a well-draining mixture of soil and compost help to solve the problem. You can benefit from this in open soil when you build up your beds with extra compost.
Peppers aren’t too fussy about soil pH, but the ideal pH range is slightly acidic: 5.5 to 6. Is ideal.
As for nutrients, Peppers aren’t gross feeders. A good, compost-enriched soil should be fine for them. But if they seem to be growing slowly, liquid feeding can give them a much-needed boost.
Sun Exposure for Peppers
Like most other food crops, peppers need sunshine. Six to eight hours of full sun exposure is best. However, if you have a greenhouse or tunnel with bright, indirect light, it will suit most pepper varieties. Having said that, the best results come from plants grown in direct sun.
Planting Peppers (Capsicums)
Peppers tend to be a bit slow in the early growth stages, so most people plant them in flats. At the same time, there’s nothing to say you can’t sow them directly where they are to grow – as long as your soil temperatures are warm enough.
Sowing depth is about ¼”, or you can even just sieve soil over your newly-sown seeds until you can’t see them anymore – especially if you’re sowing in flats. If your first node seems too shallow, you can always plant your seedlings a little deeper when it comes to transplanting time.
In your garden beds, you’ll want your plants to be 18 to 24” apart with 3 ft between rows. Build up the rows to promote drainage. Do check for variety-specific information. Some of them have a wider spread while others tend towards a more upright growth habit.
Pots for pepper plants should be 2 to 3 gallons. 12 to 14” pots are ideal. Some varieties will tolerate smaller containers, but what a plant tolerates and what it likes are often two different things!
Caring for Pepper Plants
Watering
Peppers want soil that is moist but not constantly wet. The fingertip test, your best method of checking when it’s time to water, applies. If the soil feels like a squeezed out sponge, it’s perfect, and you needn’t water your peppers just yet.
When you do water, make sure that the water penetrates the soil. If it’s well-drained, the water will soon settle down to the perfect balance your plants want.
Feeding
Capsicums need rich soil to grow strongly. If your soil is a rich, organic mixture with well-composted manure, you may not need to apply extra fertilizer. If you think it may be a little on the poor side, you can enrich it with a balanced fertilizer prior to planting.
You can apply a relatively high Nitrogen fertilizer about three weeks after planting out. Your next feed, four to six weeks later, should be lower in Nitrogen and higher in Potassium.
However, balanced liquid feeding is the safest option. The nutrients are instantly available, but leach out quickly, so you can adjust nutrition as you go.
Once your plants are ready to flower, you don’t want too much Nitrogen in the soil. If there’s lots of free Nitrogen available, your plants won’t produce as many flowers and fruits. In most gardens, it’s best to taper off the Nitrogen once your plants are ready to enter the flowering stage.
Pruning and Staking
It’s not absolutely necessary to prune bell pepper plants, but if you remove side shoots, the plant will focus its energy on the main shoot. You’ll have fewer peppers, but better quality fruit.
With chili peppers, you might decide to go the opposite route, encouraging lots of side shoots and lots of fruit. This means pinching out the growing tips above the first two or three sets of true leaves. After that, it’s a matter of watching your plants, pinching out dominant shoots until you get a nice, bushy plant.
As the end of the warm season approaches, you can remove fruits and flowers that won’t have time to mature before the cold weather sets in. This keeps the plant focused on nourishing the fruits that will have time to ripen.
It isn’t always necessary to stake peppers. If you’re growing small-fruited varieties, they may be fine just as they are. Varieties with bigger fruits are likely to need staking because the sheer weight of the crop can cause them to topple over.
Watch this video to find an amazing way I have learned to support peppers for bumper harvests.
Pests and Disease
Peppers aren’t particularly prone to pests and diseases – as long as you’re growing them in the right conditions. In fact, you’re likely to avoid most fungal problems as long as you don’t overwater your plants and have sufficiently well-drained soil.
You can reduce your chances of having trouble with insect pests by implementing crop rotation, spacing your plants so that there’s good air circulation, and avoiding overfeeding. You can also try garlic sprays to repel insect pests.
Watch out for aphids, whitefly, thrips, psyllids, and red spider mites. You might also encounter leaf miners and certain types of caterpillars.
The best organic methods to control these include hand-picking insects or damaged parts of the plant, soapy water mixtures, and even just spraying the plants down with a strong jet of water.
Harvesting Chillies and Sweet Peppers
Pick chillies and sweet peppers when they’ve reached the best level of ripeness to suit your tastes. If you pick chillies and sweet peppers when they are green, they’ll have a distinctive sharp flavor.
Chillies won’t be as hot when they’re green, so if you’re aiming for maximum spiciness and heat, you may want to let them ripen. You can try (cautiously) tasting them to figure out what stage of ripeness suits you best.
It’s possible to pick chillies by hand, but cutting them is the best way to minimize the risk of damaging your plants. You don’t need to cut them off flush against the stem. In fact, it’s best to leave a little stump of stem behind.
Prolong fruiting by snipping off all the chillies that are ready. This keeps the plant producing new flowers and fruit. If you have too many, you can dry them, freeze them, or make sauces and preserves.
Preserving Peppers
Freezing Hot and Sweet Peppers
You don’t need to blanch your fruits, and you needn’t cut chillies up unless you want to. You will want to cut up your sweet peppers, however. There’s no real art to this. Prep them as you would if you were planning to use them right away. Spread them out on a cookie sheet to freeze, and then package them up for later use.
Pickles, Preserves and Sauces
There are thousands of recipes for chili and sweet pepper sauces, pickles and preserves. Pickling is a lot easier than most people think it is, so don’t limit yourself! As for sauces, they’re a real favorite and can easily last six months and possibly more. Just be sure to sterilize your bottles and prolong storage time by keeping your sauces in the fridge.
When working with hot chillies, it’s a good idea to wear gloves as this will remind you not to touch your face – you really don’t want those juices anywhere near your eyes or sensitive skin. Some hot chillies will even cause your fingers to feel the burn. Another cautionary tale relates to the gasses chillies give off when they’re being cooked. Stick to small batches and open cooking pots, ovens, or microwave ovens with care!
Drying Chilies
You can keep chillies for up to two years if you dry them. You can dry chillies by stringing them up by the stems and hanging them out of direct sunlight in a warm place. Once they’re properly dry, store them in an airtight container.
There are also lots of shortcuts for drying chillies: slice them and dry them in the microwave, air fryer, or oven – but beware those capsaicin gasses – they can be eye-watering!
How do you use dried chillies? You can grind them up as a spice, or rehydrate them and use them in your favorite recipes.
Conclusion
It may take a little trial and error to perfect your pepper production, but it’s easier than you might think. Find the right sowing time, use fresh seeds (old ones produce stunted plants), and get your feeding program right for your growing conditions.
Remember to keep a gardening journal detailing everything you did and what results you got. That way, you’ll be able to replicate your successes and perfect your program to match your garden’s conditions.
