Many of us can’t get enough of hot peppers.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could sometimes indulge in fresh peppers straight from your own home garden. It turns out you can, but growing peppers isn’t necessarily the same as growing any other fruit or veggie. The easiest way to grow peppers from seed is to start indoors. You’ll want to do this about eight weeks before the expected last frost.
Fill up most of a small pot with a seed starting mix, then lightly spray the soil with a spray bottle.
Take two to three pepper seeds, and plant them about 1/8 of an inch deep. Spray them again a few times. The soil needs to be moist, but not too damp. Place the pots on a windowsill where the seeds can get eight hours of sunlight a day. You can also use a grow light. The room needs to be around 65-70 degrees. Remember to spray the soil twice a day until the plant is about three inches tall. If you have any small plants after this time, snip them down to the soil line with scissors so the healthier plants can thrive. Next, transplant the seedlings into a larger indoor pot. The soil should be no higher than where the base of the plant meets the roots. Again, spray the soil with water a few times, then spray it once a day several times until around the last expected frost. Keep the temperature and sunlight constant.
Next, it’s time to move outdoors.
Over the span of about two weeks, slowly introduce your plants to the outside by putting them out for two hours, then an extra hour a day until they’ve been outside for six straight hours. After the last frost, dig eight-inch-deep holes, about a foot to 18 inches apart in full light. You can also try adding a six-inch layer of mulch around the plant once it’s in the ground. Water lightly in the morning or evening every day until you harvest your hot pepper scale crop sometime in mid-summer.
