Hot Pepper Seeds - How Do I Pick From All of Those Seed Companies?

There is a growing interest in hot pepper seeds and seed companies are getting into the trend. Most retailers on the Internet specialize in particular types of hot pepper seeds and will exclusively sell those, while a seed catalog may sprinkle a few types in with their other seeds. Seed companies often provide a description of the pepper, either by name, color, or intensity of heat, but make sure that you know how hot the pepper is that you are growing in your vegetable garden because they can vary from very mild to extreme heat.

What Do I Do With My Hot Pepper Seeds Once I Get Them From One of the Seed Companies?

There are many important things to remember when seed starting.  Hot pepper seeds need a warm place to germinate or they will never grow. Seed companies will send general instructions on the temperatures for seed starting; generally, peppers need 80-degree heat during the day and no lower than 60 degrees at night. The light bulb in the box method can achieve these temperatures. Some varieties of hot peppers will germinate in 5-7 days, but many take two weeks or longer. Just remember to keep the soil moist during this period.

After germination, hot pepper seeds can be transplanted to your vegetable garden or grown by container gardening. In the garden, there are varieties of hot peppers that sprawl and can be trained to climb a trellis and should reach maturity around three months. Seed companies sell hot peppers in yellow, green, red, orange, and purple, but all peppers are green when immature. They can be picked green as long as they are an edible size. And remember that all peppers are perennials and can make an interesting houseplant in the winter.

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