Growing peppers from pips
 (Read 250+ times)
By Emma Cooper
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The media is full of stories about the credit crunch at the moment – it looks like it might be a lean year for lots of people. But if you’ve got a garden then there are easy ways to cut back on your gardening expenses without cutting back on the gardening – try swapping seeds, propagating plants, making your own compost and saving your own seeds in fall.
You can even try growing plants from pips if you’ve bought fruit from the grocery store. Some plants are easier than others, and more likely to be successful, but it's a fun project for the summer regardless.
Collecting seeds from peppers you have bought is easy – you simply need to make sure that they come from a fruit that has ripened to its final color (usually, but not always, red). When you use the pepper in cooking, just scrape the seeds out and dry them on a plate. Once they’re dry you can either plant them now or wait until the right time next year.
There is a catch. At worst, commercially grown peppers are F1 hybrids. At best, you will not know the circumstances under which they were grown and pollinated. The genetic make-up of your seeds will be a mystery and what this means is that the plants you grow from these seeds (and they will grow) are unlikely to be like their parents, and your peppers may be considerably different to the one you started with.
But just because you don’t know exactly what they will grow into is no reason not to try. The likelihood is that the plants will grow into healthy, productive peppers, and you will get a harvest you can enjoy. You might even grow something exciting.
Peppers are easily grown from seed. Just push them into a pot of damp compost and keep them warm – a sunny windowsill is ideal – and moist. They can take up to a month to germinate, although 2 weeks is more usual. Once they start to sprout they need lots of light, and to be kept out of the cold.
Peppers like being repotted, so keep giving them larger pots as they grow, until they’re ready to be planted outside in the garden (if you have a warm and sheltered spot) or you get to a final pot size of 10-12 inches. Then simply give them plenty of light, plenty of water and tomato feed when they’re flowering and fruiting. You can harvest peppers as soon as they’re large enough to use in the kitchen, but they will be fully ripe in late summer, early fall.
So when you’re removing the seeds from your next pepper, consider saving them and trying to grow them next year. And when you get the bug and want to grow more peppers (and you will!), check out a seed catalogue so that you’re guaranteed something a little more interesting.
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Author Bio Box: Emma Cooper
Emma Cooper is the author of Growing Vegetables is Fun. She also has a weekly gardening podcast, The Alternative Kitchen Garden, all about growing your own food in an environmentally friendly way. Check out her website for her gardening blog and more articles.
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