The Trusty Gardener-Starting Pepper Seeds
Looking Forward to Sweet and Hot Peppers
By now I’m sure that many of my fellow gardeners out there have started seeds. Spring has sprung. It’s gardening time. Well at least indoors. What have you started? Tomatoes? Peppers? Onions?
Every season I have my go-to vegetables that I start from seed. Always tomatoes. Tomatoes galore. Always Sweet Spanish onions. And sometimes peppers. Some years I just buy my pepper plants. Sometimes I experiment with starting my own. This year I decided to give it a try again.
Recently I planted pepper seeds, hot and sweet. Starting with the hot, this year I found an interesting hot pepper mix to try. 12 varieties. Plant and see what happens. To me this is fun, to see which ones you end up with. The big surprise.
Are you ready? For the long list? Well here goes. This mix contains Caloro, Cayenne Thick, Cayenne Purple, Cayenne Yellow, Firecracker, Hungarian Hot Wax, Jalapeno Mild, College 64, Red Cherry Large Hot, Serrano Tam, Small Red Cherry, and Pretty Purple.
These vary in hotness, the hottest being the Pretty Purple, Firecracker, and College 64. A large range of Scoville Units. Depending on how adventurous you want to be.
I planted these using the Jiffy© 10 mini-greenhouse, a favorite of mine for starting seeds. Complete with 10 peat pellets, these work well. Tiny individual pots. Just add water, and the peat pellets turn to soil, ready to plant. The peat is encased in a netting that you have to move back a little on the top to expose a good planting surface. Then just add seeds (about 6 seeds per pellet), and cover with a thin layer of potting soil depending on the recommended seed planting depth. Finally use a spray bottle to wet the top layer of soil and place the plastic lid on.
Of course, labeling is important since sometimes each peat pellet can be a different variety. Make sure you label well. Place the container in a warm location. A sunny area is not necessary until the seeds sprout. I recently have set up my portable greenhouse, and as temperatures warm I will place the container in the greenhouse during the day to warm the soil, which will speed up germination. At night, however, I will bring it inside to keep the soil warm since the nights are still cool. Warmth is the key to successful germination.
I will write a separate article on my greenhouse. It is a useful tool for starting plants. It’s amazing how quickly it warms up as soon as the sun comes up. It creates a microclimate that plants love, allowing them to thrive. A mini tropical paradise
I also planted sweet pepper seeds. I chose Burpee Gypsy Hybrid for my sweet pepper variety. This is a frying pepper that is also good for salads. They grow to be about 4.5 inches long by about 2.5 inches wide. As they ripen they turn from yellow to orange to red. These types of peppers are also known as snack peppers since they are smaller in size.
I may also grow some larger, bell-type sweet peppers. I will probably purchase these as plants at the end of May or early June, to place directly into the garden.
Stay tuned for updates on the pepper, onion, and leek seeds I have planted, and also the vegetable seeds I planted using the Winter Sowing technique.
Teaser Alert
Coming soon, a story regarding planting Heirloom Tomatoes!
