How to Grow Chilli Peppers

Growing your own chili peppers is easy. It's great to be able to go pick a few peppers from the garden when you're making a spicy dish for dinner. Chili peppers can also be frozen or canned. You can even make up some stuffed pepper or popper appetizers and freeze them. Hot peppers are also great plants for container gardens, so if you have room indoors, you can grow them all year long. Just make sure to wear gloves when picking them so the spicy hot oil doesn't get onto your hands and end up in your eyes.

Things You'll Need

• Chili pepper plants Shovel or garden tiller Compost Ironite Peat moss Sand

Instructions

Grow Chilli Peppers

1. Prepare the garden for the pepper plants. Dig or till the area that you will need for the number of plants you want to grow. Depending on the size of the variety you are growing, you will need spacing to put them 12 to 16 inches apart. Add compost, quartz sand, ironite and peat moss to the tilled soil. The amounts you will use will depend on the size of your garden, but roughly use a shovel full of peat moss, sand and compost and a couple of handfuls of ironite per each plant. Turn over the mixture into the soil.

2. Plant your pepper plants when the soil temperature reaches about 60 degrees and there is no chance of a returning frost. Place them in the ground at the same level as they are in the containers you purchased them in and space them 12 to 16 inches apart in an area that gets the most direct sunshine.

3. Water the plants deep in the evenings and let them dry out during the day. There is no need to water during the day unless the plants show signs of significant wilt. Using trickle irrigation during the evening works well.

4. Fertilize with a vegetable fertilizer once a month starting a month after planting. There should be enough nutrients in the soil from the compost and ironite that you shouldn't need the fertilizer right away.

5. Go out to your garden daily and pull up any weeds. Weeds will take water and nutrition away from your pepper plants and can possibly strangle them. Don't wait and only pull them once a week or you might get overwhelmed and the weeds will have already stressed your plants.

References

• Chili Pepper Gardening