and the resident dog. Especially tall fences, over 8 feet in height, are needed if deer are a problem because they are great jumpers, and once over, they love to nibble pepper plants to a nubbin, even the really spicy ones!
The number of pepper plants you plan to grow needs thought. Home gardeners don’t need a full flat of jalapeños, no matter how good a deal they get at the nursery. Better to put in two or three plants of a few varieties each year until you find those you most enjoy and that grow best in your garden. With many pepper seasons under my belt, I find that to match the way I cook, and with the number of peppers I give away, I need a minimum of three plants each of pimiento and ‘Anaheim’-type peppers for roasting; a few plants of yellow, orange, red, and lilac bells for colorful salads and soups; a few Cuban and ‘Italian Long’ sweet peppers for frying; a few paprika peppers for drying; three or so plants of jalapeños for chipotle and using fresh; and only one plant each of the blazo serrano, chiltepíns, de árbol, and habanera types because a little heat goes a long way in my family.
Selecting Pepper Varieties
When you choose your peppers, consider not only your dinner table, but also your climate, growing season, sun exposure, and local pests and diseases. You can save yourself much grief by growing the varieties proved best for your region. In the “The Pepper Garden Encyclopedia,” I have noted, whenever possible, the regions where a variety usually does best and where it may have problems. Check also with your local master gardeners’ organization or with the closest university extension service. I realize, of course, that it is often in a gardener’s nature to want to experiment. When you do, it helps to keep good records so that you can repeat your triumphs.
As a general rule, if you are a beginning gardener and looking for sweet peppers with the least problems, choose peppers that produce the smaller fruits because some of the very large bells need optimum conditions to produce well. Some excellent sweet peppers that have been bred for short seasons, such as ‘Gypsy’ and ‘North Star,’ are perfect for beginning gardeners. Gardeners in northern climates and high elevations also need to look for peppers that will tolerate cooler temperatures and/or short-summer growing seasons. Gardeners in hot, humid areas require plants that tolerate diseases, heat, and humidity. See pages 31 and 32 for information on growing peppers under those conditions. Also remember to look at the days-to-maturity numbers and select peppers that will fit into your growing season. (Days to maturity means the number of days it takes a transplant six to eight weeks old to reach a mature green stage. It does not mean from time of seeding. An additional two to six weeks, depending on variety, are usually needed for the pepper to ripen fully.) I always allow leeway because actual days to maturity will vary with the weather. Cool nights, in particular, slow ripening.
Jody Main, my garden manager, shows off the pepper harvest from our 1998 garden.
Certain types of peppers grow better in particular areas. Some of the wild chiltepíns, for instance, are triggered to bloom when the days get short in early fall, and in a short-summer area you won’t get peppers before frost hits. Further, according to pepper gurus Dave DeWitt and Paul Bosland, in The Pepper Garden, “...the New Mexican varieties grow well in the Southwest but not that well in the Northwest and Northeast. Bells and Habañeros do not grow as well in the Southwest as they do in other regions.” In sections to follow, I address the particular challenges of growing peppers in cooler, short-summer regions as well as very hot ones.
If you are lucky, or if you only want to grow a few red bell pepper plants and a generic jalapeño, say, you may be able to obtain your pepper plants locally as nursery-grown transplants. If, however, you become a certifiable “chili-head,” or if you live in a climate that is borderline for peppers, you will need to obtain your plants or seeds by mail order to get a good, much less a great, selection. Fortunately, peppers are quite easy to start from seed. Most seed companies carry a few interesting pepper varieties, but others specialize in peppers and offer a lifetime of choices. See the Resources section, page 102, for numerous recommended seed and plant sources.
Preparing New Garden Beds and Adding Soil Amendments
Let’s assume that you’re hooked on peppers, and planting a variety here and there no longer fills the bill. You now want to grow a pepper garden with many different types. How do you proceed? First you choose a very sunny spot and prepare the soil. If you are one of the few gardeners on the planet with a vacant piece of beautifully loamy soil with good drainage, it’s a snap. You just mark out the rows, turn under a little compost, form the paths, and plant. If you’re like the rest of us mere mortals, however, you have to start from scratch. This means removing a piece of lawn or removing large rocks and weeds. If you’re taking up part of a lawn, the sod needs to be removed. If it is a small area, this can be done with a flat spade. Removing large sections, though, warrants renting a sod cutter, If the area is a weed patch, unfortunately, you will need to dig out any perennial weeds, especially perennial grasses. It’s a pain, but you really do need to sift and closely examine each shovelful of soil for every little piece of their roots, or they will regrow with a vengeance and crowd out your pepper plants. Once the lawn, rocks, and weeds are out, and when the soil is not too wet, you need to spade over the area. If your garden is large or the soil is very hard to work, you might rent a rototiller, When you put in a garden for the first time, a rototiller can be very helpful. However, research has shown that continued use of tillers, or regularly turning the soil over by hand, is hard on soil structure and quickly burns up valuable organic matter if done repeatedly.
Now it’s time to take note of what type of soil you have and how well it drains. Is it rich in organic matter and fertility? Is it so sandy that water drains too fast? Or is there a hardpan under your garden that prevents roots from penetrating the soil or water from draining? Hardpan is a fairly common problem in areas of heavy clay, especially in many parts of the Southwest with caliche soils—a very alkaline clay. You need answers to such basic questions before you proceed because peppers grow best with as little stress as possible and their roots are prone to root rot in waterlogged soil. If you are unsure how well a particular area in your garden drains, dig a hole there, about 10 inches deep and 10 inches across, and fill it with water. The next day fill it again. If it still has water in it 8 to 10 hours later, you need to find another place in the garden that will drain much faster, amend your soil with a lot of organic matter and mound it up at least 6 to 8 inches above ground level, or grow your peppers in containers. A very sandy soil, which drains too fast, also calls for the addition of copious amounts of organic matter.
Find out, too, what your soil pH is. Nurseries have kits to test your soil’s pH. (The most reliable soil tests are done by soil-testing labs. For recommendations, call your local university extension service or ask at the nursery. In addition to giving you the pH, they can also analyze your soil type and nutrient levels at quite a reasonable price. This will give you a much better idea of the amounts and kinds of nutrients it needs.) Peppers need a pH between 6.0 and 8.0 and grow best between 6.7 and 7.3. An acidic soil below 6.0 ties up phosphorus, potassium, and calcium, making them unavailable to plants; an alkaline soil tends to tie up iron and zinc. As a rule, rainy climates have acidic soil that needs the pH raised, usually by adding lime, and arid climates have fairly neutral or alkaline soil that needs extra organic matter to lower the pH.
Most soils need to be supplemented with organic matter and nutrients. The big-three nutrients are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)—the ones most frequently found in fertilizers. Calcium, magnesium, and sulfur are also important plant nutrients, and all plants need a number of trace minerals for healthy growth, among them iron, zinc, boron, copper, and manganese. Again, a soil test is the best way to see what your soil needs.
For peppers, most soils will benefit from an application of 4 or 5 inches of compost, 1 or
