Peppers: Bring On the Heat

When it comes to peppers, it doesn’t matter whether you prefer them mild and sweet or spicy and hot. During their time in the garden, they all like it hot. And that can make them a challenge to grow successfully along the coast, where summertime temperatures tend toward the mild side. You’re bound to have better luck if you garden in warmer canyons or inland valleys.

But it also helps to know what’s ideal overall, and then work to re-create those conditions in your own plot.

First, peppers are native to Central and South America, in areas with warm soil, warm days and warm nights. A narrow range of temperatures at all three stages—germination, fruit set and ripening—is key. Proper soil and irrigation come into play as well.

Germination

Pepper seeds are most cooperative when temperatures rise above 77°. Much below that, and they’re stubborn at best. Some experts advise maintaining an even soil temperature of 80° to 85°, day and night, by placing a standard, waterproof heating pad beneath the flats or shallow pots that you start your seeds in. Once the first leaves pop up, you can take away the pad.

Alternatively, you can bypass the germination phase by buying transplants in six-packs or four-inch containers. However, the number of varieties available locally pales in comparison with the hundreds of different kinds—from sweet, blocky bells and pimentos to some of the hottest peppers on Earth—that seed catalogs and online companies offer.

Fruit Set

Right about the time your transplants are due to go into the garden, our entirely too reliable May gray and June gloom can bring your plants to a screeching halt.

It’s OK if nighttime temperatures drop as low as 55° and daytime temperatures hover in the mid-60s to low 70s.

But when your plants get ready to flower, hope for a warming trend. Nights between 60° and 75° are perfect. Above or below can cause the blossoms to fall off. Likewise, in the unlikely event that daytime temperatures hit 90°, fruit set will halt. Still, the blossoms may hang on, then get back to work once temperatures drop back to the 80s.

Provided your plants hold onto enough blossoms to set fruit, they will be at their best with temperatures in the mid-70s to mid-80s during the day and 60s at night for the rest of the season.

Tricking Mother Nature

If the weather doesn’t cooperate by providing sufficient warmth, there are two easy steps you can take to heat up your peppers.

First, plant them in the sunniest, warmest, south-facing location in your garden. If that’s just south of a light-colored wall, all the better, as the light color will reflect sunlight back onto your plants.

The second is to lay down black plastic before you plant. While I detest the use of plastic in the garden, it does capture heat and keep the soil warm beneath crops. To avoid plastic, use dark-colored mulch. But unfortunately, it’s not nearly as effective as the dreaded plastic.

Soil, Care and Feeding

While you can only fret about the weather, you can control the soil and ongoing care of your peppers.

Know that peppers are fussy about soil. They don’t like sand and they don’t like heavy clay. Loamy, light and fertile is just right.

Prepare the bed by shoveling in copious amounts of fine-textured, well-aged compost. You’ll have added enough when the soil smells fresh and you can easily sift it between your fingers. Toss in a few handfuls of bone meal to supply calcium for good measure.

Space your plants at least two feet apart. Shape watering basins around each if you’re planning to hand-water. Or plant them in rows on hills with furrows, then run drip irrigation tubing in the furrows.

If you don’t use black plastic, apply an inch or so of loose mulch to help insulate the soil and keep down weeds. Brush the mulch away from any direct contact with the stems.

Early on, peppers like a good, thorough soak every few days. But as they gain size and their leaves begin to shade their roots, you can ease off on the frequency to once or twice a week. By then, water whenever the top half inch to inch of soil dries out.

If you’re inclined to fertilize, sprinkle some bone meal around your peppers every couple of weeks during the growing season. But if you’ve beefed up your soil with compost at the outset, nothing more may be necessary.

Harvest

You can pick your peppers as soon as they reach full size. The first green fruits may be harvestable 55 to 75 days after you set them out. But they may not fully mature to their true color and flavor for a remarkable 90 to 150 days, and depending on their heritage, they’ll change color and grow sweeter or hotter the longer they remain in the garden.

Pluck a few every week or so, and you can track that evolution. Be sure to use scissors or a knife. The stems can be reluctant to release the fruit, and if you try twisting, you may rip the pepper or even uproot the plant instead.