Peppers

Pepper plants thrive in a sunny, warm spot in your garden, greenhouse or even inside on a window sill!

Pepper (sweet, bell or chilli) seeds need to be sown between February and April. Seeds are best kept in a warm environment (18-25 degrees) in small pots, seed trays or propagators, using seed compost ideally. Germination should take 7-14 days and seedlings can then be transplanted into larger (8cm) pots, when ready to be handled – normally when leaves have formed. A further transplant will be required once the roots have filled the 8cm pots in late April/May – around 30cm is perfect!

Alternatively, young plants can be bought from your local garden centre in Spring, to avoid the sowing process.

Top tips

– Ensure that you water young and older plants regularly!

– If growing chillies, make sure to pinch back the growing tips when the plant reaches around 8cm. This will encourage more fruit.

– Once the fruit and/or flowers have appeared on your plant, add some tomato fertiliser to the soil to encourage growth!

– You may need to stake or tie plants if they produce lots of heavy peppers!

Key timings

Our experience

Don’t forget that most pepper species will grow entirely green! But don’t despair, I found that they will change colour eventually and the flavour will adapt too! 

Also, make sure that you don’t overdo the fertiliser as it can really dehydrate the roots!