390 Pepper Growing Basics

Show Transcript

390 TRANSCRIPT Pepper Growing Basics 

Farmer Fred:

[0:02] Get ready to spice up your garden. Today we're joined by master gardener and pepper aficionado Gail Pothour. You'll discover the incredible health benefits of growing peppers, from boosting metabolism to supporting heart health, and you'll learn practical tips for growing these colorful fruits in your summer garden. Plus, we have insights on a delightful array of pepper varieties, both sweet and spicy, that will leave you inspired to make your garden sizzle this growing season. It's episode 390, Pepper Growing Basics. 

We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon jungle in suburban purgatory. It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast, brought to you today by Dave Wilson Nursery. Let's go. 

PEPPER GROWING BASICS, PT. 1

Farmer Fred

There's a lot of great reasons to grow peppers in your summer garden. Peppers are good for you. It's one of the healthiest foods you can eat. They're packed with nutrients like vitamin C, vitamin A, antioxidants. It contributes to overall health. They have other benefits, too. Eating peppers boosts your metabolism. It supports heart health and can potentially reduce inflammation.

[1:07] Besides all that, it supports heart health. Peppers are a good source of potassium, which helps maintain healthy blood pressure and a cardiovascular function. It reduces inflammation, which is a key factor in many chronic diseases. Plus, all that fiber can promote healthy digestion and gut health. It supports eye health.

[1:29] It may combat cancer as well. Let's find out more about how to grow peppers in your yard. We're talking with Sacramento County Master Gardener Gail Pothour She's also a vegetable expert.

[1:41] She knows her peppers as well. She's a big sweet pepper fan. And we'll talk about both sweet peppers and hot peppers. And Gail, we've talked in previous episodes about starting peppers from seed, and that's a long, slow process. For example, I started my pepper seeds back in January, and they're finally ready to go in the ground here in late April.

Gail Pothour:

[2:03] As did I. I started mine the end of January. They have been moved up several times. They're now in one-gallon pots, and they're just about ready to go in the ground as soon as everything's warm enough, which at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, I believe we're going to plant them at our next workday. So it's going to be a couple weeks earlier than we typically do.

Farmer Fred:

[2:23] There's just so many good things you can do with peppers. You can eat them raw. You can saute them. You can put them in a myriad of dishes. Heck, you can make pepper relish with it. You can make pepper soup.

 What do you like to do with the finished product?

Gail Pothour:

[2:36] Oh, if I have a plethora of them, I will just slice them and freeze them. Don't blanch them or anything. Just freeze them and I use them all winter. I also like to make red pepper pesto. I make a lot of that. Put it in ice cube trays and freeze it. I can pull it out to make a quick dinner and I use it in a dish called Muhammara which is Middle Eastern red pepper dip that's kind of a little spicy. I have to make it not so spicy. But, yeah, I put them in almost everything, whether it's an Asian stir fry, a Mexican pasta dish, whatever. I always put sweet bell peppers in them.

Farmer Fred:

[3:16] All right. Let's talk about the conditions that peppers like. I would imagine that like most summertime vegetables that like heat and the pepper is one that likes the heat, they prefer full sun, whatever that is.

Gail Pothour:

[3:30] They do. Now, you're talking about once they're transplanted into the ground? Or when you start? Okay. They do like to have full sun, which in our neck of the woods, we would say at least six to eight hours of sun a day. However, in our hot afternoon west sun, in the middle of summer, we often need to give them a little bit of shade.

Farmer Fred:

[3:50] That is so true. If there is one thing that does vex a lot of pepper growers here, and if you live in a hot summer area, especially when you get those little sections of a week or so of temperatures over 100 degrees or so, you might start seeing some ugly little brown spots on the sides of your peppers. And I bet those peppers are facing either west or south.

Gail Pothour:

[4:11] Correct. Yeah, it would be sun scald. And often the pepper plants will have their fruit outside the foliage. So anything that's not covered by big leaves could get some sun scald. And it's the same thing that happens on tomatoes.

Farmer Fred:

[4:26] We were just talking about planting peppers in late April, early May. Well, that's here in USDA Zone 9. For people in colder climates, I guess the rule of thumb is wait until the minimum soil temperature is about 55 degrees.

Gail Pothour:

[4:41] Yeah, it could. I would say more like a minimum of about 60. They like it a tad warmer than tomatoes do. The optimum soil temperature would be about 65 to 70 or so. But I would say at least 60 degrees for peppers.

Farmer Fred:

[4:55] The other rule of thumb is to wait for nighttime temperatures to be steadily over 50 or 55 degrees, depending upon your nighttime temperatures typically. But once it starts getting over 50, you can start thinking about it. And of course, it's always good to have a soil thermometer.

Gail Pothour:

[5:11] Absolutely. Because if you have raised beds, the soil will warm up faster than if you're planting in the ground. So a soil thermometer can give you an idea of what the temperature is like in the soil.

And the peppers will kind of sulk if it's too cool for them. Tomatoes often will snap out of it, but peppers sometimes will just sulk. So I'm always surprised when I see peppers for sale in garden centers in February that it's just way too early.

Farmer Fred:

[5:40] Oh, yes. The excuse that the people in the nursery will say is, well, these people are putting it in their greenhouse. Well, fine and dandy, but don't take them out of your greenhouse and plop them in the ground. They need to be hardened off, don't they?

Gail Pothour:

[5:53] Oh, absolutely. Any vegetable, I think, needs to be hardened off before you put it in your garden because you don't necessarily know what conditions they were growing at. They could have been just pulled from a greenhouse into the garden center. So they need to have at least a week or two of acclimating to the outdoor temperatures, the nighttime temperatures, the wind. It's a completely different environment than where they were in a greenhouse or indoors or even in a garden center where they maybe have shade cloth over them or protect it some way.

Farmer Fred:

[6:25] What is the best way to plant a pepper and what time of day is best for planting a pepper?

Gail Pothour:

[6:30] I would say whenever it's convenient to do it, but typically I would say maybe later afternoon so that it has all night to kind of acclimate. You plant it in the middle of the afternoon and it's really hot. When we've been getting in the low to mid 80s so far, That could kind of shock it a little bit. So I like to plant them a little later in the late afternoon, early evening as the sun is going down. It's not quite so warm. And it gives them a little bit of time to acclimate to the temperatures. So that's my suggestion is don't do it in the heat of the day. Do it when it's a little cooler.

Farmer Fred:

[7:06] Plant with falling temperatures, I guess.

Gail Pothour:

[7:09] And I would also plant them a little deep. If you've heard about transplanting tomatoes into the garden, plant them deeply and they can develop roots in the stem that's under the ground. Peppers will kind of do the same thing, not as vigorously, but I would suggest planting them up to maybe the first leaf and you can still get some roots to develop at those nodes.

 And I learned that from, I think it was the New Mexico State University Chile Institute. They were talking about actually mounding soil around the base of the pepper plant to give it a little more stability and it can develop a few roots in that soil.

Farmer Fred:

[7:54] So is a general rule of thumb then to transplant them about one to two inches deeper than the root ball?

Gail Pothour:

[8:00] Yeah, I would think so. I would go up to the first leaf. So whether it's where the cotyledon or the seed leaf was, or if it's a real leggy plant, you could go up to the first true leaf. In fact, I did that. My peppers went in yesterday, which is earlier than usual, but were warm enough. And I had a couple of them that had some damage on the lower leaves. And so I actually plucked those off and planted it up to the first leaf. So we'll see how they go.

Farmer Fred:

[8:27] Are their roots very sensitive? Should you handle them carefully or can you loosen up those roots when you take it out of your small container to go into the ground?

Gail Pothour:

[8:37] I generally am not very gentle with peppers, just as I am with tomatoes. I'll have a toothpick or a skewer or something and I will prick out the roots if it's starting to get root bound in the container that it was growing in. I'll prick those out. I'll even cut off a few of the long roots if on the bottom. And I have not noticed any issues. They seem to respond very well. Unlike the vegetables in the cucurbit family, melon, squash. They don't like to have their roots disturbed. But it seems like peppers can tolerate a bit of pricking out their roots. So, you don't have to be too gentle.

Farmer Fred:

[9:20] What about the idea of adding magnesium to the hole and working that in before transplanting? I'm not sure what magnesium would add, other than magnesium.

Gail Pothour:

[9:29] Yeah. Not sure. I generally don't add a lot of anything. I prepare my bed with pelleted chicken manure. So, it's like a 4-3-2 fertilizer. So, it's a complete fertilizer. It's not balanced, but it's complete. And I add compost. So I like to prep my beds prior to planting. What I occasionally will do is sprinkle a little bit of a fertility mix that I make up that happens to be blood meal, bone meal, rock phosphate, green sand, kelp. I like to have that handy to mix in with some of my potting soil. So if I have anything going into a container, I'll add some of that. But occasionally, I'll put a little bit in the bottom of the hole in my raised bed if I think they might need just a little boost of something, especially if not deep green. So, there might be a little bit of a nutritional issue going on.

Farmer Fred:

[10:24] A fertility mix. Do you do it during a full moon around a maypole?

Gail Pothour:

[10:29] Not that kind of fertility, Fred. It's just all organic items that I found a recipe years ago, and I just keep a can of it. In my greenhouse and I'll mix it in with potting soil because often potting soil doesn't have a lot of fertility. And occasionally I'll mix it in the planting hole in my raised bed.

Farmer Fred:

[10:52] If there is one mistake that a lot of beginning gardeners make, and it's due to their excitement in planting a garden, is they tend to crowd their plants a little too close together. What is the proper spacing for a pepper plant?

Gail Pothour:

[11:06] I'd say at least two feet. The plants on peppers tend to not get really large like a tomato. They can get huge. Generally, they're 24 inches, maybe 30 inches tall. And I like to grow them in those cone-shaped, quote, tomato cages. They're not really tomato cages. They're better for peppers to give them some stability because the stems are a little bit brittle. But I like to have good air circulation because there is the possibility that peppers can get a powdery mildew in the middle of summer if the air circulation isn't good. So, I think it's always best to not crowd any plant. You want good air circulation. And if they're crowded, if you planted them too close together, then they're competing for nutrients and water. So, I'd say probably at least two feet is a good spacing for peppers.

Farmer Fred:

[11:58] You mentioned that you use the chicken pellets, that you work them into the hole before planting. What is your fertilizing regimen with peppers throughout the season?

Gail Pothour:

[12:07] I like to give them a diluted liquid fertilizer, which would be fish emulsion. Sometimes I'll add a little bit of liquid kelp in it and dilute it according to the bottle directions. And the most important time to fertilize peppers are as they're flowering and when fruit is starting to develop. That's the most critical time. And also the most critical time to keep them well irrigated.

Gail Pothour:

[12:32] They don't want to be too wet, but you don't want them to dry out too. Then with those kinds of conditions, you can run into blossom end rot, which is a calcium deficiency caused by irregular watering. Most critical to have deep, infrequent watering, you know, depending on your soil and how much you mulch, but especially during flowering and fruit set.

Farmer Fred:

[12:55] Yeah, that wet-dry, wet-dry cycle, not too many plants enjoy that. In fact, I think peppers are fairly intolerant of that. So I guess the bottom line is keeping the root zone evenly moist.

Gail Pothour:

[13:07] Correct, yeah. And if you use a good organic mulch like chopped up leaves, shredded leaves or straw would be a good mulch. It would insulate the soil. It will keep the roots from getting too hot. It will keep the soil from drying out too quickly. So I think several inches of mulch is ideal for peppers and any of our summer vegetable crops.

Farmer Fred:

[13:31] Do you subscribe to the theory about pinching the early blossoms?

Gail Pothour:

[13:34] Well, you know, there's some controversy about that. I've always heard that you don't want any flowers and fruit on it, so I would always pick those off. But then I read a couple of articles. I think one of them was by the garden professors of several years ago that said, well, you know, you're just eliminating your first crop. So I'm kind of vacillating on that. My plants right now that will be going into the ground tomorrow, some of them have flowers on them. Some of them I have been pinching the flowers off. Maybe I'm doing an informal experiment here to see if there's a difference because I have two plants of each variety. You know, I don't know. I have one of my pepper plants that I put in my own garden a couple of days ago, and it already has a pepper on it, and I left it. So we'll see. There's kind of mixed feelings on whether or not you should pinch the flowers and the fruit.

Farmer Fred:

[14:28] Yeah, I'm not too concerned about those early flowers, especially if when you're planting it into the ground, if it has flowers. Chances are the stress going through that plant after getting put into the ground, those flowers are going to fall off anyway.

Gail Pothour:

[14:42] Yeah, that's correct. 

Farmer Fred:

[14:43] Another thing that can cause pepper flowers to fall off, and we hear this a lot come June.  People don't understand why they're not seeing any peppers on their plants. Temperatures can really play a big part on whether that pollen becomes viable or not, because if nighttime temperatures are over 70 or daytime temperatures are over 85, good luck.

Gail Pothour:

[15:06] Yeah, a good rule of thumb is if it's going to be 90 degrees for a stretch, the pollen on peppers, tomatoes, and some other of your vegetable crops could dry up before the fruit gets fertilized, you know, before there's pollination and fertilization. So during that stretch of time, I think it's a good practice maybe to put some shade cloth out to keep it a little bit cooler. But 90 degrees seems to kind of be the threshold, 85 to 90. And that's our typical summer here in the Sacramento area is we pretty much have days on end where it's over 90 degrees.

Farmer Fred:

[15:46] Shade cloth over peppers. You're talking about extending it over the top of the plant to allow pollinating insects to get in there to pollinate the plant?

Gail Pothour:

[15:56] Yeah, I would say you only need to clip it to some lath or some kind of poles to shade it from the south and the west side for that hot afternoon sun. It could be over the top a little bit, But I wouldn't put it right over the plant. Peppers tend to be self-pollinating, but they can also get pollinated by insects. So, I wouldn't completely cover the plant. I would have it up high where insects can get in there. And it's a good idea to allow insects in there, to allow room for that, because there's a lot of beneficial insects that could get in there and then help control aphids, white flies, other insects that aren't good for pepper plants. So I don't think you want to completely exclude any insects. You want the shade cloth up high enough. And it doesn't have to be a real heavy shade cloth. It could be something with 30 or 50 percent. But yeah, just to give it some afternoon shade and maybe a few degrees of cooling.

Farmer Fred:

[16:57] I would think if insects are getting in there to pollinate and you have hot peppers nearby, there could be some cross-pollination going on. But would that affect this year's crop or would it affect the seeds if you tried to save the seeds from those?

Gail Pothour:

[17:12] It should not affect this year's crop. And I think a lot of people think they can't grow a hot pepper next to a sweet pepper because it'll get pollinated and the sweet pepper will then become hot. It's only the seeds inside that fruit that will show the crossing. So if you had a chili next to a sweet pepper, they got cross-pollinated, you saved the seeds from the sweet pepper, planted it out next year, it could be hot if it got crossed with that hot pepper.

Farmer Fred:

[17:42] And I guess if you are in the habit of saving seeds, maybe another strategy might be to put the hot peppers downwind from the sweet peppers.

Gail Pothour:

[17:50] That way or isolate them some way, put it in a different part of the yard. You could bag it, you know, do some self-pollinating, you know, yourself with a little paintbrush or whatever utensil you want, but you could do that. But I would do isolation. Or if I'm saving seed, I will only grow sweet peppers. I won't grow a hot pepper if I know I'm going to save seed this year.

Farmer Fred:

[18:12] That's the best advice of all, probably. Now, when it comes to feeding the plant during the year, I imagine it's like a lot of summertime vegetables. You want sort of a balanced fertilizer, and you especially want to avoid putting on too much nitrogen.

Gail Pothour:

[18:30] Right, because too much nitrogen is going to put on a lot of tender foliage, and that can attract aphids. And aphids can spread viruses in pepper plants. So anything that's more of a low nitrogen, I wouldn't put on a bunch of blood meal or something that's high nitrogen. It's not needed throughout the summer. You just want a balanced, low organic fertilizer.

Farmer Fred:

[18:56] All right. And then you would do that, what, about every three weeks or so?

Gail Pothour:

[19:01] It could be. I usually do it mostly when it's flowering and setting fruit, but you don't need to do it too often. and often the plant will tell you if it needs some fertilization if the leaves are kind of not as bright, dark green as they should be. It may tell you that it needs a little bit of fertilization. But if you've prepared the bed well beforehand, before you've planted, you may not need to add much fertilization throughout the growing season if the plants are doing well.

Farmer Fred:

[19:29] When you're feeding your plants during the season, you mentioned you like to use fish emulsion, maybe a little bit of seaweed. That's a liquid fertilizer.  And you can try to apply it closer to the ground. But chances are,  I use fish emulsion every year, and I tend to apply it over the plant, just sort of wash the leaves off, if you will. Some may consider that foliar feeding. Is that going on?

Gail Pothour:

[19:52] Could be. I tend to do more of a soil drench right at the roots. I don't do foliar feeding, but there's no reason you couldn't. I would be sure to not apply it to the foliage if it's a hot afternoon. That could stress the plant. You could even burn the leaves a little bit. So I would do it maybe in the cooler part of the day. But that's also one way to help wash off white flies or aphids if you have them on your plant is do the foliar feeding, do a drench over the top of your plant, however you're applying the liquid fertilizer. I don't see any problem with that. I tend to do just more of a soil drench.

Farmer Fred:

[20:30] And at harvest time, how do you harvest your peppers?

Gail Pothour:

[20:34] With pruners. I do not pull them off. The branches are very brittle. And if you just try to snap it off the bush, you could take a whole branch with it. So as sharp pair of pruners, cut it off, leave a little bit of a stem.  That works perfect.

Farmer Fred:

[20:50] Right. Don't pull it. Don't twist it. Cut it. Right. Right. Cut it. Leave a little bit of the stem.

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PEPPER GROWING BASICS, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred:

[22:13] All right, let's get to the good stuff. The peppers to grow, the varieties of peppers that you may want to grow. Some people like sweet peppers. Some people like warmer peppers. Some people like hot peppers. The choice is yours, folks. The choice is yours. I have grown plenty of peppers over the years, ranging from zero Scoville units up to several thousand Scoville units. A Scoville unit is a heat measurement system devised back in the early 20th century that allegedly measured pepper heat. I think from what I was reading about it, it was really more of a case of human survival from people who had to go through all those tastings.

Gail Pothour:

[22:53] As I had mentioned, my tongue does not like the heat, so I tend to not grow anything with much heat at all. They're mostly sweet. But I do like to grow jalapeno occasionally, just to help spice up a dish, and my husband does like jalapenos. So the one that I like to grow every year. It's called Potapeno. It's an All-America selection winner. It's good for a container. I grow it in a hanging basket, and it has little one to two inch, maybe not even that big, of jalapeno peppers, typical jalapeno heat. Then I also grow one for myself called Tricked You. So it's a good-sized jalapeno that has no heat. So it's been bred where the heat has been taken out of it. But yeah, I really enjoy growing a variety of different types of sweet peppers, whether they're small pimentos, whether they're great, big, huge ones. Like Red Impact is one that we've been growing the last year or two. It's an All-America Selection winner, and it's huge. Red, thick-walled, about six inches long. Or I like Sheep-nosed Pimento that's tiny, one to two inches, flat and thick walled. So a real variety and different colors. They tend to almost always start out green or pale yellow or even purple in the green stage, but they then tend to ripen either orange or red. So yeah, I do love sweet bells.

Farmer Fred:

[24:19] I'm very fond of sweet peppers, as is my wife, and we have them during the summer and through the early fall, probably as a side dish to dinner just about every night. And why not? Some of my favorites over the years, I think as long as I've been growing peppers, I think the two that have been in the garden for decades are Flamingo and Gypsy. They're very similar looking. Flamingo is a harder one to find. I think only Harris Seed Company carries it.

Gail Pothour:

[24:49] Never heard of Flamingo. Wow. Okay. I'll have to look for it.

Farmer Fred:

[24:52] Yeah. As far as I know, it's only available from Harris Seed, But it's very similar to Gypsy. And I really like the Gypsy pepper, too, because of the wonderful color changes that the Gypsy goes through.

Gail Pothour:

[25:03] And I grow Gypsy every year as well. It's an All-America Selection winner from the early 80s, I think. So it's been around a long time. I like it because it's a little smaller.

 Often I don't want to use a huge bell in a recipe. You know, I maybe use a piece of it. Well, with Gypsy, it's small enough. I can use the whole pepper. And they're kind of pointed and they're cute. And they mature from kind of a greenish yellow to a kind of a deep reddish orange. And we grow it every year. It's a great pepper.

Farmer Fred:

[25:37] One of the peppers that has a little bit of heat to it, and it too was an All-America selections winner, as are a lot of my favorites. So that's always a good site to go to. If you go to All America selections and look at their list of pepper winners, you're sure to find one you're going to like. But the Mariachi, which has only a little bit of heat, I'd call it more of a spice than a heat, about 500 to 600 Scoville units. It's a cone-shaped pepper, about four inches long, two inches wide. It starts out green, then ripens through yellow to rose-colored to red. And it can get hotter if the weather gets hotter, too. So keep that in mind.

Gail Pothour:

[26:14] Right. I think we grew that a number of years ago out at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. It hasn't been on my radar lately. I think I should look it up. But one of them that we're growing this year that's an All-America selection winner that does have just a little bit of heat. It's a hybrid pepper called Mexibell. So it looks like the typical blocky bell pepper, but it's small, probably two inches in diameter, maybe. And it's supposed to have a Scoville unit of 100 to 1,000. So there's always a range on those Scoville heat units. So it does have a little bit of heat, but we haven't grown that one in quite some time. So that's one we're going to do this year.

Farmer Fred:

[26:57] I think my favorite pepper, though, of all time has to be the Tequila, which is  an amethyst pepper from Holland. It's lavender in color. It not only has that beautiful purple like color, but the aroma of it is just wonderful. The fruit sets early. It's a blocky bell type, about four and a half inches deep, four inches across. It begins as lavender and stays that color for a long time. And then it fades to a lovely orange and then finally to red. And it is certainly edible through all those stages. Very attractive, very virus resistant as well. Tolerant to a blossom end rot. It ripens in about 72 days. And I am always planting Tequila.

Gail Pothour:

[27:41] Well, you know, I grew it years ago when I first started growing peppers. And it's another one that fell off my radar until this year when we were trying to come up with the varieties that would grow at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. Tequila somehow rose to the top. And so I bought seeds for that. So we are going to be growing it this year. And you're right. It is. It's a beautiful pepper.

] There are times when it has kind of a gold and purple coloration all at the same time. So it's, yeah, I had forgotten about it. So I'm glad we're growing it again this year.

Farmer Fred:

[28:18] Another one of my favorites, and I used to hold pepper parties. This is how crazy I was. We would invite a house full of people, really a yard full of people, and we would lay out all the peppers and all the samples and people could sample it. And usually there was alcohol involved, but what else is new? But it was a wonderful time. It was a wonderful party. The old Farmer Fred pepper parties. The one variety that would win year after year in this amateur competition was one with a little bit of heat, about 500 to 1,000 Scoville units, the Numex Joe E. Parker. And that is one that I've stuck with over the years as well.

Gail Pothour:

[28:58] So your pepper tasting party was not just sweet peppers. There were some that had some heat.

Farmer Fred:

[29:05] And they were all clearly labeled.

Gail Pothour:

[29:10] So if they were really, really hot, they would know who avoided if they couldn't eat those. But that sounds pretty fun. I've had melon tastings and tomato tastings, but it has not occurred to me to have a pepper tasting. Oh, yeah.

Farmer Fred:

[29:22] They're quite fun. But here's a pro tip for you. If you eat a hot pepper accidentally and it starts to burn your mouth, don't drink water. You want to…

Gail Pothour:

[29:32] Drink milk.

Farmer Fred:

[29:32] Whole