Growing sweet peppers in a cool climate
 (Read 250+ times)
By Emma Cooper
|
|
|
Chillies are all the rage these days, it seems. Promoted everywhere as the perfect ornamental plant for a sunny patio, their cooler cousins are generally not mentioned. But for those of us who can’t take the heat, or just want to bite into succulent home-grown bell capsicums, sweet peppers are just as easy to grow.
Peppers are in the same plant family as tomatoes, and are similar in many ways. Like tomatoes, they like lots of sunshine and potassium-rich feed to promote flowering and fruiting. They’re also thirsty plants, and wilt visibly when they’re running out of water.
I think the main reason that chili plants are more popular is that their small fruits ripen more quickly – a bonus for gardeners with short growing seasons. However, there are many small-fruited sweet peppers, too, and varieties developed to give mature fruits quickly.
If you want to grow peppers from seed (and have more choice of variety) then you will need to start them indoors in the warm. A heated propagator will help, but a warm spot does just as well.
Peppers will happily live out their entire lives indoors, in a pot on a sunny windowsill. I’ve grown them in a light and airy office – and they were a big hit with work colleagues! A certain amount of root restriction encourages peppers to fruit, so they don’t resent being in a container. Neither do they mind being transplanted, so they’re easy to pot on as necessary.
You can even grow your peppers outside, in a sunny spot. In a long, hot summer the plants should fruit well – but you may find that the fruits still haven’t ripened when they days started to get cooler. You can harvest them all and eat them as green peppers, but another option is to uproot the plants and hang them upside down somewhere frost-free so that the fruits continue to ripen.
Peppers are naturally perennial plants, and given the right conditions it is possible to keep them alive over winter. They need to be kept frost-free and given as much light as possible. Low light conditions will cause the leaves to drop, but even sad plants can make a remarkable recovery in spring. The most important thing is not to over-water the plants while they’re effectively dormant.
|
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.
Didn't really find what you were looking for?
|
|
|
| |
|
|
![[Valid RSS feed]](images/rss.gif "Subscribe to our XML Feed for RSS")
