Peter Piper picked a peck
Peppers are a favorite of ours, and in our 52+ years of gardening, peppers have always decorated our garden with a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors.
Pepper seeds take a long time to germinate, which equates to a great deal of patience. Be sure to start them 8-9 weeks prior to transplanting to your garden bed. You’ll also need grow lights for cloudy days. Peppers love the sunshine.
Peppers can be finicky. While they love the sun, they also appreciate protection when it’s over 80 degrees. On hot summer days with little protection, you’ll see the plants wilting in the sun, but they’ll perk up once again as the day cools.
Peppers require only half the fertilizer of most of the garden vegetables, so fertilize sparingly. They like even moisture, especially when they’re flowering and producing.
If the temperature goes below 60 degrees or above 80 degrees, you’ll see some of the blossoms drop.
Closing out our list of finicky behaviors, peppers are susceptible to blossom-end rot, which is usually caused by a calcium deficiency.
Tip: Use black ground cloth or paper mulch under your peppers. It will attract heat, hold water, and prevent weeds.
We have grown a variety of peppers over the years and have found our favorites. To find your favorite peppers, don’t shy away from trying any variety that catches your eye. A little luck and a lot of patience will afford you a bountiful pepper crop.
Our favorite peppers for grilling or stuffing:
Sweet Big Daddy Marconi: crisp, thick walled, and delicious; ready when the green starts turning yellow, and the more yellow the pepper, the sweeter it is.
Sweet Thunderbolt: grows up to 13” long and is delicious stem to tip; ready when the green starts streaking red, with red peppers providing a sweeter flavor than the green ones.
Our favorite peppers for spicing up a meal:
Early Hot Jalapeno: one of the earliest producing jalapenos and nicely hot, but not scorching; when it starts to turn red, it’s more than ready to pick
Our favorite peppers for salads, Asian cuisines and freezing:
California Wonder Bell: crisp, sweet, and packed with flavor; when it starts to turn yellow, it is ripening and still growing; it’s ready to pick when its more yellow than green.
Sweet Karma Red: sweet, crisp, and thick-walled flesh; pick when the green starts turning to red
Tip: You can tell when most peppers are ready to harvest by touch. Give them a slight squeeze. If you feel or hear a subtle pop, they’re ready to pick. If they’re still hard as a rock, leave them on the vine.
Bell peppers offer you a bit of a challenge, and don’t play the game of touch well at all. Watch the color of your peppers and sample from the vine. Don’t wait until they start to wrinkle. No one likes wrinkles…even peppers!
Keep your peppers picked, Peter, and your plants will continue to produce until the first frost of winter hits.
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Tip from a friend: If you’re planting open-pollinated or heirloom peppers, save your seeds! This is going to give you free seeds for next year’s planting. Read more about seed saving from Happy DIY Home. It’s a fantastic blog!
“Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. ” — Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897
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Do you have gardening questions? Ask our experts in the comments section below. They’d love to share their knowledge with you!
