Growing Hot Peppers: How to,

How to Grow Hot Peppers

Growing hot peppers bell peppers are one type of vegetable that is difficult to find fresh in most groceries.

Everyone loves to save money and there's no more rewarding way than to grow your own vegetables. You not only get the advantage of the savings, you can grow exactly the type of vegetable you love and pick it through the growing season fresh from the garden. Normally you need to go to a specialty market or purchase these dried or pickled. Growing hot peppers isn't difficult, so if you love them, make sure you either buy a plant or two for your garden or purchase a packet of seeds and start them early enough inside so they coincide with your growing season.

Types of Hot Peppers

There are so many different varieties of hot peppers. Anaheim peppers, also known as California peppers can be very mile or hotter than a jalapeno if you grow the cultivator created for Mexican dishes. Paprika also has a wide selection of varieties, each with their own ranking on the Scoville hotness scale. Other hot peppers include the cherry bomb, the ever-popular jalapeno, Serrano, Cayenne, tabasco, Thai and finally the hottest of them all, the habanera and the Scotch bonnet.

Growing Hot peppers generally take between 70 and 90 days, depending on the variety you select. If you have a shorter growing season, start your plants indoors for the best results. Sow the seeds about three weeks before the last frost of the season. The peppers won't grow well if the soil is cold. You can increase your seedlings chance of survival if you use black plastic mulch or row covers.

Soil

Hot peppers love fertile soil and thrive best when you add fertilizer before planting and then again, once the peppers begin to grow on the plant.

Watering peppers

The secret to growing any type of pepper is not just the climate control, since they tend to die if the temperature drops below 55 at night, but adequate and consistent moisture. Don't allow the soil around your peppers to dry. This doesn't mean you keep the ground soggy, it simply means you need to keep it consistently watered with no dry spells between watering.

Diseases and Pests for peppers

If you smoke, always wash your hands before handling the plants. Tobacco mosaic can transfer and cause damage to your peppers. Aphids are a problem that you might have on your peppers. The aphids also transmit diseases to your peppers like blossom end rot and bacterial leaf rot. You can prevent a lot of damage to your plants by practicing good garden sanitation and providing predator insects like lady beetles and lacewings into your garden.

Harvesting peppers

Take care when you harvest the peppers. Instead of pulling them off the plant, cut them off. Even though you'll find most mature fruit comes off rather easily, it's better for the plant to cut rather than pull. Most hot peppers are red when they're fully ripe, but you can pick them when they're immature also, particularly for recipes calling for green chili peppers.

Preserving Hot Peppers

While there are several methods to preserve hot peppers, the most popular is

Drying them. You can either string the peppers, using them as a decoration while you allow them to dry or pull the entire plant and hang it upside down once most of the peppers matured.

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