• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Home Garden Joy
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Start Here
    • Seed Starting
    • Composting Basics
    • Vegetable Gardening
    • Growing Fruit
    • Growing Herbs
  • Recipes
    • Canning and Food Preservation
    • Vegetarian Meals
    • Salad Recipes
    • Soup Recipes
    • Dinner Recipes
    • Dessert Recipes
  • Books & Classes
    • Classes
    • Books
    • Books for Christian Herbalists
  • About
    • Advertise
    • Awards and Accolades
    • Privacy Policy

Peppers, Peppers, Everywhere! How to Grow Peppers

April 18, 2014 by Jeanne

Learning how to grow peppers isn’t difficult. Peppers are hot weather vegetables. Once they get going, they produce quite an abundance!
how to grow peppers

Peppers are very easy to grow in the organic vegetable garden. They freeze well, and canning them is also easy whether you have a water bath canner or a pressure canner. I grow a huge amount of peppers every summer just so we have plenty to turn into my signature pickled peppers; they’re sweet, garlicky and spice all at the same time, and I love piling them on salads. I’m not a sandwich person, but others have said they taste great on sandwiches, too.
how to grow peppers

How to Grow Peppers

Peppers really are a hot-weather plant. Start them indoors from seed 8 to 12 weeks before the frost-free date for your region, but make sure it is really and truly warm outside before moving the plants outdoors, and even then, make sure you take your time to harden off the seedlings. You can also purchase plants at the nursery and garden center.

  • Peppers need full sun, and rich, well-drained soil.
  • They prefer a pH of 5.5 to 6.5, slightly acidic.
  • You can grow peppers in the ground or they do very well in large pots or containers for those who live in apartments or who have limited sunlight. For many years when I lived on Long Island, the garden was shaded by mature oak and maple trees growing on the neighbor’s property. The only truly sunny spot I had was the deck in the back of the house. So I grew my entire vegetable garden in large pots, and peppers were one of the most prolific and productive plants. Once they get growing and the hot weather sets in, they really take off!
  • Space them at least 18 inches to 36 inches apart. Some people stake them, or tie them to stakes, but I never have. I grow large green bell peppers; other kinds may need support.

Peppers come in a variety of flavors, ranging from sweet to so hot your mouth is on fire. They also come in a variety of wonderful colors. “Carnival” is a seed blend I love growing because it contains sweet bell pepper seeds in yellow, orange, red, purple and green. They’re so pretty on the plate or canned that it brightens a salad anytime you use them. They are also good for stuffed peppers, sausage and peppers and other pepper recipes.
“California Wonder” is my favorite sweet green bell pepper variety; reliable, outstanding large green bell peppers and a fairly regular form that makes it easy to make stuffed peppers.  I do not grow hot peppers such as jalapenos or Hungarian spicy peppers, a favorite around where I now live in Virginia, but these also seem to do well in our zone 6b climate.Peppers need light fertilizer, so a simple 10-10-10 garden fertilizer or compost works just fine for their needs.
Peppers do suffer from tobacco mosaic virus and a few insect problems. Cut worms love them, so set collars around seedlings after transplanting. Other than that, see the list of problems on the Cooperative Extension paper on growing peppers. 

how to grow peppers

Pickled peppers – a great treat!

post signature

Jeanne
Jeanne

Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.

Tweet
Share
Pin
Share
0 Shares

Filed Under: Vegetable Gardening Tagged With: how to grow peppers

Previous Post: « Grow Onions in the Home Garden
Next Post: Quality or Quantity in the Vegetable Garden »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jo

    April 18, 2014 at

    My mother was once given a plant which thrived indoors and she got lots of peppers (sweet) from it. She gave it to me later and it didn’t like me one bit.

Trackbacks

  1. Pepper Problems or When Peppers Go Wrong says:
    August 31, 2015 at

    […] peppers go wrong…pepper problems? My peppers grew into weirdly shaped vegetables this […]

  2. Starting Peppers from Seeds – Home Garden Joy says:
    January 25, 2018 at

    […] Pepper plants can be grown from seeds, which I’ll tell you about here, or you can purchase plants at your local garden center and transplant them into the backyard garden after the danger of all frost has passed in the spring. Peppers are warm weather plants and cannot tolerate a frost of any kind, so do not plant them outside until you are sure the weather is warm enough for them. […]

Primary Sidebar

Learn Gardening!

writer Jeanne Grunert

Hi, I'm Jeanne Grunert, master gardener, gardening book author, herbalist, and writer. If you're new to gardening, welcome! I make it simple and easy for you to grow a gorgeous garden and cook with the fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs that you grow.

Let’s Connect!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • YouTube

Featured

logo of the american horticulture society

Home Garden Joy was featured by the American Horticultural Society on #plantchat.

My Books on Amazon

cover of plan and build a raised bed garden

Visit my author page on Amazon to find all of my fiction and gardening books.

Herbal Academy Teachers

Footer

peach tree cuttings in a pot on a windowsill

Propagating Peach Trees from Softwood Cuttings

We decided that propagating peach trees from softwood cuttings was the way to go when we couldn’t find the variety we wanted at the store this past week. The best eating peach we’ve ever grown here at Seven Oaks Farm is “Red Haven.” It was recommended by our neighbor, a man whose family has farmed…

Read More

soul in a yellow mug against pine panelling

Made From Scratch Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe

This is the best made-from-scratch chicken vegetable soup recipe you’ll ever taste. It’s a favorite of my family and I’m betting it will quickly become a favorite of your family’s, too. As part of my ongoing quest to test and taste every recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook 100th Edition, I’ve made the Vegetable Soup…

Read More

A loaf of bread on a plate

Water Bread – Recipe Review

Once you make water bread, you’ll never eat store bought white bread again. In fact, you won’t be able to look at a loaf of “white bread” from the market and consider it bread, in any sense of the word, after you’ve taken a bite of the real thing. Hot. Crunchy crust. Tender, flaky, soft…

Read More

lemon on a lemon tree

Can You Grow a Lemon Tree from a Seed?

If you’ve ever wondered can you grow a lemon tree from a seed, the answer is yes, you can. But it takes patience and time to coax the tree into producing fruit. In the meantime, you’ll have to tend a tree that wants to grow into six, seven or more feet tall. Here’s the story…

Read More

Copyright © 2022 Home Garden Joy on the Foodie Pro Theme