Starting Peppers

I do love peppers – hot peppers, sweet peppers – Yum!  Last year I only grew two varieties, a hot (Hungarian Hot Wax) and a sweet (King of the North).   One thing is for sure – I grew FAR too few varieties.  I’ll be fixing that issue this year.

Pepper Seeds for 2015
 

And now for the specifics on the varieties that I chose to grow this year - and let me tell you, with all of the incredible varieties out there, choosing was no easy task.

In brackets, I’ve indicated the days to harvest, the source & date of purchase (if not purchased this year).  We are talking peppers, so days to harvest indicates days from transplanting outdoors to a full sized green pepper; you'd have to add another 3-4 weeks for the red-ripe stage.  New varieties are marked with an asterisk (*).

Sweet Peppers

*Jimmy Nardello Italian (75 days, Baker Creek)


Photo Source:  Baker Creek
 

This heirloom variety was originally brought to the US by Italian immigrants in the late 1800’s.  Plants are supposed to produce an abundant crop of long, thin peppers that ripen early.  Both Daves (Our Happy Acres and Dave’s Square Foot Garden) recommend this variety.


Stocky Red Roaster (65 days green/85 days red, High Mowing) 


Photo Source:  High Mowing
 

An Italian frying pepper with thick walls & 4-6” long fruits.  Michelle grew this one last year – her gorgeous harvest & subsequent comments that they were in fact delicious as a roasted pepper inspired me to include them in this year’s lineup.


Melrose (?? days, Baker Creek)


Photo Source:  Baker Creek
 

Baker Creek describes this pepper as being rich, flavourful & very sweet.  Fruit is about 4” long & 2” wide.  Melrose peppers are practically an institution in Chicago & those who have moved away from the area often lament that they can't find their beloved pepper in their new location.  Since Chicago has a similar climate to ours, I’m hoping that this one grows well here.   I find that Baker Creek often does not include days to maturity for their seeds & a quick internet search didn’t give me anything definitive, so I have no idea if this is an early, mid or late maturing pepper.

Hot Peppers

Hungarian Hot Wax  (58 days yellow/83 days red, Baker Creek, 2014)

Hungarian Hot Wax Peppers
 

These are fairly mild (for a hot pepper) & they were a huge hit last year as both a fresh and pickled pepper.  Our first harvest was relatively early (mid-July) and the plants kept producing until mid-September.  I also harvested a few more peppers in November from a potted up plant that eventually succumbed to aphids.


Anaheim (80 days, Baker Creek)

Photo Source:  Baker Creek
 

Mildly hot, large peppers that are good for roasting & frying.  These peppers are often used in their green stage, so that is definitely a plus.


Tam Jalapeno (70-80 days, Baker Creek)


Photo Source:  Baker Creek
 

This is supposed to be a very mild jalapeno pepper with all the flavour but 1/3 the bite of traditional jalapenos – I’m thinking that this one may be a good introduction to jalapenos for the kids.


Corne de Chevre (90 days, Baker Creek)

Photo Source:  Baker Creek
 

A hot pepper from Spain’s Basque region that is great for drying.  I'm picturing a gorgeous bunch of strung dried peppers hanging in the kitchen...maybe too much to ask for but a girl can dream, can't she ;)


Ostra-Cyklon (80 days, Baker Creek)

Photo Source:  Baker Creek
 

This one is great for drying & making Polish paprika.  According to Baker Creek, it only has a “bit of heat”, but when I looked it up online all other sources referred to this pepper as simply “Cyklon” and most stated that it had a good amount of heat or that it was “HOT”.  I’m not sure if the “Ostra-Cyklon” Baker Creek sells is a milder variety of “Cyklon” or if the catalogue is mistaken when it comes to the level of heat.


Italian Pepperoncino (75 days, Pinetree)

Photo Source:  Pinetree
 

These are the peppers that we often see pickled & included in Italian type salads & antipasto.  Both my husband and I are quite fond of them, so it was a no brainer to add these to the list when I came across them on the Pinetree website.  I would consider most of the ones that we have eaten to be mildy hot.


Spanish Padron (80-85 days, Renee’s)

Photo Source:  Renee's
 

Last year, Michelle harvested a ton of these & her descriptions got me sufficiently intrigued to give them a try.  The seed packet indicates that these should be harvested when no more than 2” long otherwise they get very spicy – I’m thinking that the continuous harvest of smaller fruits will mean a larger harvest overall.

As a side note, I’m VERY impressed with the information that Renee’s provides on its seed packets.  All of the info on the Padron packet was specific to that particular variety, including how to prepare them (vs. many other companies that only provide generic instructions & info).

Seed Starting

Pepper seeds, specifically hot pepper seeds, can take a long time to germinate.  Last year, I initially sowed my hot pepper seeds directly in cell packs.  I started to get nervous when there was no sign of life after almost 2 weeks, so I decided to pre-germinate some more seeds.  This turned out to be a much better method of starting the seeds.  Most germinated in 8-10 days, at which point I sowed them in the cell packs.  The first of the hot peppers that were directly sown in the soil took almost one month to emerge.  The overall time-frame doesn’t really change when you pre-germinate vs. direct sow, but if the seeds are no longer viable, at least I only lose 10 days or so instead of 4 weeks.

Just as a side note, the sweet pepper seeds took no time at all to germinate - these were started a few weeks after the hot peppers & I went directly to pre-germinating them, which only took 3 days.

There is one other benefit to pre-germinating the seeds (can you tell I'm a pre-germinating fan yet?) – it allows me to sow one viable seed per cell instead of having some cells with 2 starts and others with none.  I would either have to disturb their delicate, new root system if I were to transplant them or I would waste seeds if I thinned – an important consideration especially when a packet doesn’t contain many seeds (my Stocky Red Roaster only had 10 seeds in the packet).

Now comes what could potentially have been very bad news.  The first step I take when pre-germinating pepper seeds is to soak them for 8 hours.  So last Saturday morning, I placed each variety into a little cup and added a bit of water.  At around 6pm, I looked at the clock and thought – only 1 hour left.   And then I promptly forgot all about them until the next morning as I was driving my son to soccer.  So my 8 hour soak turned into a 24 hour soak.

 

Soaking Pepper Seeds
 

I still went ahead with pre-germinating them, keeping my fingers crossed that the extra-long soak didn’t drown them.  And only 2 days later, I was re-assured that everything might be ok when one of the Corne de Chevre seeds germinated.  On day 3, one or two seeds from several other varieties also germinated (Padron, Ostra-Cyklon, Stocky Red Roaster, Anaheim, Jimmy Nardello).  Based on my experience last year, I was quite surprised that several of the hot peppers germinated so quickly.  I had, however, read that a lot of germination issues with hot peppers comes down to variety - some varieties are just more fickle than others and I guess the Hungarian Hot Wax pepper is one of them.  This, of course, tainted my overall impression.

I sowed the germinated seeds into cell packs that I cut into individual cells.  This allows me to move each plant out of the covered, heated tray to the grow lights as soon as it emerges.  Last year I sowing the seeds in non-separated 4-cell packs and then, of course, had issues with some seeds germinating & needing to get out of the too moist/warm environment of the covered trays, while other seeds in the same pack had not yet come up and would have benefited from more time on the heat mat.  I like using the 2.5" square cells as they are small enough to allow for lots of transplants in one tray, but still large enough that I won't have to pot up the peppers until mid-April.


Cells Newly Sown with Pepper Seeds
 

It has now been 8 days since that initial soak & out of the 10 varieties I started, only one has not had any germination yet - take a wild guess which one....it begins with an H.

Till next time...