Growing home garden pepper varieties
Growing peppers in the home garden ranks high on the list for most people. In fact, many folks will not consider the garden complete without their favorite pepper varieties.
I remember my cousins Gary Montgomery and Bobby Dodd sharing their favorite hot peppers last growing season. Just the name of some of the varieties made the mouth of the county agent burn.
Peppers are not that difficult to grow if you follow gardening basics for this garden favorite. In addition, you have varieties in peppers based on the two pepper types of sweet and hot peppers. Today, I will be going over some peppers gardening basics by use of a UGA publication by Bob Westerfield and Malgorzata Florkowska, UGA Horticulture.
First, I would like to go over common problems that you may have to overcome in order to have pepper gardening success. In sports, many winning teams are based on a super defense. In vegetable gardening, you have to be prepared for the problems that can arise. Preparation can be the same as a great defense on a basketball team and be the reason you have a successful growing season.
Peppers can have issues with blossomend rot. Blossom-end rot is the result of calcium deficiency along with bad irrigation management by the grower. The best thing you can do now is correctly take a soil sample and get it sent to the UGA Soils Lab by our office in order to get liming and fertilization recommendations. If you do have issues with blossom-end rot, there are products on the market that can be a short-term answer. Checking the soil pH, which is a part of a soil sample sent to the lab, is seen as a long-term solution.
Three of the more common insect issues in peppers are associated with European corn borer, corn earworm and armyworm. Now would be a good time to study the identification of these insects and look at researched based solutions.
Disease can be a problem, with bacterial wilt and bacterial leaf spot being the most common. We suggest to use certified-free seed and transplants in order to reduce disease issues. Do not forget to incorporate crop rotation in your pepper considerations. You do not need to plant peppers or other items in the same family in the same garden spot more than once every two years. You also need to remove all plant debris from the garden at the end of each growing season to reduce insect and potentially disease issues the following year.
As previously stated, sweet and hot are the two major pepper types. There is the Scoville Heat Index that is used to measure the pungency of the different peppers. The spiciness or hotness of peppers is actually in the seeds of the pepper. Your mild peppers such as banana peppers are at the bottom of the index while red cayenne would be in the middle of the scale. The top of the Scoville Heat Index would be your habanero and chili peppers. Your choice of pepper should be based on personal preference and your goals with the pepper crop.
Keep in mind that peppers are a warm weather plant and do not handle frost, cool weather or wet ground well. Note that the soil temperature needs to be at least 70 degrees F along with night temperatures that stay about 50 degrees F before you plant peppers in the garden. Pepper plants need a garden spot that is well draining and will supply 8 to 10 hours of sunlight per day. Peppers are also selfpollinating.
I will add that peppers belong to the vegetable family, Solanaceae. Eggplant, tomatoes and potatoes also belong to this family. Since we are in spring, buying your pepper transplants is probably the best option instead of growing from seed due to timing. Keep in mind that pepper seed will take approximately 10 days to germinate. For future reference, you can start the seed indoors six to eight weeks before planting them in your garden spot.
Once a proper gardening site is selected, you need to prepare the area. You prepare your soil as you would for tomatoes by using some compost or other organic soil amendments if necessary according to our information. Make sure the soil pH is in the 6.0 to 6.5 zone. Keep in mind that soil sampling can be a great tool for providing accurate recommendations. Ideally, you soil test several months before gardening season.
I know some people just will not soil test so a general recommendation is to fertilize with 10-10-10 or 13-13-13 at the rate of 2 pounds per 100 square feet of garden, and lime may be added at the rate of 2025 pounds per 1,000 square feet. You need to spade or till the soil to a depth of 6 to 8 inches and then level with a rake. When it is time to plant the transplants, space the pepper plants 24 inches apart in the row with rows approximately 3 feet apart.
It is suggested to mulch pepper plants with compost, straw or wood chips to reduce weeds and to help with water conservation. Make sure you keep the mulch off of the stems. Do not forget the importance of irrigation when you need to supplement. You need to water peppers with drip irrigation or soaker hoses to keep the root zone moist. The root zone should be six inches deep.
Finally, consistent watering is important for correct fruit set and development.