Homegrown Peppers

Posts Tagged ‘Pepper Seeds’

Planting pepper seeds is pretty easy.  Sure, all you need to do is put the pepper seed in soil, cover it and water it, but there are a few more steps along the way that can up the germination rate of your pepper seeds.  Let’s take a quick look.

Seed-Starting Medium

I can’t remember the last time I planted a pepper seed outdoors, directly into the soil.  The germination rate is really poor that way, and seed-starting medium (“soil”) is a much better bet.

Go to your local garden center and locate some seed-starting soil.  You can use straight sphagnum moss (finely chopped) or sphagnum and vermiculite combined, if you can’t find a ready-made seed-starting medium.

Do not use gaden soil directly; there are too many bacteria, spores and whatnot in it; fine for older transplants, not so great for seeds.

Containers for Planting Seeds

You’ll see in the two videos that I’ve used plain paper cups (“Dixie cups”) for my containers.  Cheap and easy to find, you can poke holes in the bottom for drainage, and when it comes time for planting, the cup tears away from the soil very easily.

Planting Pepper Seeds Videos

Here are two videos I made on planting pepper seeds.  The first one goes over supplies; the second is the actual technique.  And after the second video, I’ll list where you can get some of the supplies online, if you can’t find them locally.

Enjoy!

And here’s part 2 of how to plant pepper seeds.

Pepper Growing Supplies Online

First check your local garden center; depending on where you live, they may have most or all of what I used. If not, here are some places online where I have bought my supplies.

Earthworm Castings: Gardens Alive! and

Windowsill Greenhouse: and Amazon

Pepper Seeds: Seed Saver’s Exchange, Tomato Grower’s Supply, and Amazon

Fish Fertilizer: Amazon and

You can probably find most of this at your local gardening center, but if you can’t (I’ve always had to order my earthworm castings online), you have some places you can check out.

I decided to try the Redskin pepper, even knowing my track record with bell peppers hasn’t exactly been stellar.  But I have to admit to being impressed with Redskin.  Finally, a bell pepper that actually produces for me in South Florida!

Planting Redskin Pepper

I had to plant this versatile pepper from seed, as there were none in the local garden shops.   The plant started out a little spindly at first, but started growing nicely once in the garden.

Given my luck with bell peppers, I planted 4 Redskins, hoping at least 1 would produce some peppers.  Whoa!  They all are producing nice little bells.

Now Redskin doesn’t grow as large as traditional bell peppers, but it’s a great “personal size” snack.  My peppers are around 4″ long and maybe 2.5″ wide.  The taste is quite pleasing, even when green.  And speaking of color, this pepper is red when fully ripe.

Low-Growing Pepper

This pepper is a low growing pepper — wider than it is tall.  This makes it fantastic for growing in containers!  In fact, I have 3 of my Redskins in containers and only one in the ground (and yes, they do grow a bit taller in the ground).

For someone who traditionally cannot grow bell peppers, this one is thriving and gets an “A” in my book!  Looks to me like I will have plenty this year.  So if you’ve been having problems growing bell peppers, this is one variety I recommend you trying.