I figure that when you add in time and ALL the gear and supplies, many of us are spending far more for our peppers than we could buy them for. If you want to take out the "time" factor and consider that entertainment, then the cost per pepper comes way down. Once your you have your lights, heat, greenhouses, containers, etc..., and other durable supplies, the costs come down also.
Bruce

Yea good points. In my case growing in the ground is way cheaper then using containers. Then again when you consider time spent tilling, containers have an advantage there. So a lot of my plants will be in ground next year. I will use my containers still so I will have quite the harvest.

As mentioned by Bruce it definitely costs more to grow your own peppers than it does to buy them at the store/farmer's market. I've never done the math to see what it actually costs but I don't look at it like that. To me it's more of a hobby and compared to other folks hobbies it's a heck of a lot cheaper too.

I don't find it so expensive. I spent nothing on feed - I had Miracle-Gro, Osmocote, and epsom salts already. Two bags of potting mix at $15 per bag. Pots and sunlight were free. Oh, and the plants themselves were $3-4 each, but I only bought four. The rest were from last year. So total $45 for more peppers than I can use.

Cheap and fun at twice the price.

DMForcier: You probably have the most prudent approach to growing peppers. But it like with any hobby, you can go fishing in a $10,000 rig with $250 rod and reels and every lure imaginable and get out-fished by the old timer on the shore with his old fiber glass rod, zebco 33 reel and a coffee can full of earth worms. The guy in the boat might even catch a few more fish but his catch costs him $100 per pound where the old timer just had to dig a few shovel fulls of dirt out of the compost pile and his fish only cost him $.50 a pound.

Then again, sometimes, the only thing the fish will bite on is worms and the guy in the boat gets skunked and the old timer goes him with a heavy stringer.

When we see the 10,000 watt grow light setup and 300 sq ft greenhouse, we know who the 150hp bass boat guy is. When we see the weed infested garden in the back corner of the yard along the fence, we know who the Zebco and worm guy is. Both types seem to post some pretty impressive harvest pictures in the fall.

Bruce

I moved recently, but my old beds were made with reclaimed lumber that I picked up for $20 (3x 6x4) and reinforced with some reclaimed (free) metal stakes placed outside the beds to hold the soil in the inevitable wood splitting planks.

I loosened a few inches of soil (mostly clay) below the boxes before filling them with $15 (pickup truck load) full of city-provided topsoil and a mound of compost I had been cooking for a while (free).

One $5 box of Miracle Grow with micronutrients later (which I only use twice per growing season) has barely been dented.

More supplemental top dressing of compost once a year helps buffer it all with the topsoil/clay.

I got awesome results.

I started plants inside under a 2-lamp flouro strip setup...around $30...on a timer. I only bring my plants to small starts in 4-cell packs because in my area I get enough spring/summer/fall that it doesn't matter much. My plants were producing pods by early-June after transplanting in late-March/early-April. I usually got ripe pods by late-June/early-July.

nc-cm sounds like the old timer on shore with a bucket of worms type guy. But maybe he picked up a dozen minnows at the bait shop on the way to the lake.
Bruce

Thanks everyone for the addition.

Yea I agree with DM here. Around here it costs 3-4 a lb of jalapeno. I grew over 50 pounds. That would cost 150-200 bucks right at the store. I find it is cheaper then buying at the store. I do find it is easier for me just to buy hot sauce then growing the cayenne then having to make it. I guess my jalapeno crop really surprised me. Even though a jalapeno in the store is maybe 5 cents for a pepper, I grew each pepper for a fraction of a penny, literally.

It was a lot of fun in itself to see how many pounds of jalapeno I got, but I wont be growing as much jalapeno next season. I cant use them up that quik and they will only last about 8 months in the freezer. :)

Craigslist is good for some things...other times it's an exercise in patience, weirdness, and fear. That $20 worth of lumber would have probably cost me $50+ if I went to Lowes/etc...the guy I bought it from even cut the 10' boards to 6'+4' boards because he had his saw out (and I asked).

My biggest money saver was the fact my city will sell you a load of top soil rather cheaply, even if I had to pick it up myself.

The metal stakes were old railroad ties.

My peppers cost me about a gazillion dollars a piece to grow in recycled soil and pots...
When I go fishing it costs more...

I should probably add that this soil was (technically is) sold as compost...but given the makeup of what I actually got, it was mostly topsoil graded off of construction sites before they built on the hard/level clay subsoil. It also had a weird amount (though not much) plastic waste mixed in with it. Woo, the joys of municipal composts.

It's also doubled in price since I bought it nearly 7 years ago (boo).

smokemaster_2007,

Wow that is quite a bit.

I found out it costs me only .83741033 cents to grow one pepper. :) In .006887 acres.

Speeking of fishing, I used to fish Ballyhoo and sell them as bait to the close by dock. "Pin fish" was another huge seller! :) Nothing like getting paid to fish!

The first season is the most expensive. Once you get past the learning curve and start to find a groove, the costs decrease significantly. The cost of peppers at the local store and farmer's markets are ridiculous.

Nope, after the first year, the expansion begins.
The first season, it is a Habanero starter from Home Depot planted in the garden between the Zinnias and Rhododendron. The next year is where the wallet gets a little lighter and the next, etc...
Bruce

Consider that the chiles most chileheads grow aren't available in the store for any price.

I grow manzaons and chilacas because you can't get them in the store in NY at any price.

"Consider that the chiles most chileheads grow aren't available in the store for any price."

Zactly. Thank you.

I haven't gotten into the idiosyncrasies of chile cultivation yet but Miracle Grow for tomatoes and plenty of water did nicely for me with the only container grown I had, a root bound Lemon Pepper.

The plants in the garden basically survived on the compost/mulch/organic matter available to them (which was good quality).

Thanks everyone for posting.

Yea it is great to grow chilis you cant get in store. For some reason working with what grows best in my zone, whcich happens to be Jalapeno, and going for production is what makes growing fun.

Next season I am putting little money into my grow just for the fun of it! I will buy a pack or two of the 1 dollar Jalapeno seeds from Burpee Seeds. I will start them right in the window and if they get leggy I will just cut them in half! :) At least then I will have starts by spring then I can get them out and let them grow. Better then paying 1.80 for only 4 little starts. I will plant them all right in ground with a conventional till and then use some time release fertilizer. I will have them all in organized rows just like a small farm plot.

Upfront cost-2 dollars and a little digging :)

Other costs- Deer fencing and sprays which are already purchased. Fertilizer.

I can see now that crop protection is the highest cost upfront. If I dont count the deer fencing being it lasts forever, the cost for me to grow 30-40 plants will be, well, 2 dollars. If I count the very little fertilizer I will need it may be up to 10 bucks next season to grow even more! Now thats more like it!

Funny thing is I can only grow peppers in my yard because the deer really leave them alone. If I grew one tomato I would need to make a really strong 7 foot fence. That would be an eyesore in my area and a more expensive fence that would take more time to build. So I grow what animals dont want. I let the peppers thousands of years of evolution do the work. A small 2-1/2' fence is all that is needed. I even had a row unprotected with no fence and the only thing that the deer got was the Cayenne on the end of the row, the other 9 Jalapeno plants were only nibbled once until they got either a bad taste or the lack of nutrients in the foliage itself of the jalapeno. Besides the deer choosing what I get to grow, I really like to garden and I do like peppers so that is why I grow only peppers.

Mastergardern1: Sounds like a pretty good approach to pepper growing. Good luck.
Bruce

You guys have a great perspective.

For me, it isn't about cost, either. I spend a bit of money up front to wrangle my materials,
but after that the monetary cost goes way down. And with the mix I make, I'm not watering every day,
so the cost in time diminishes as well.

I also buy my bark and perlite in bulk, and turface costs $12.50 for a 50 pound bag. Dolomitic Lime
is $6 for 40 pounds, and I won't need to buy more for years and years to come. Osmocote and
Foliage Pro last me multiple seasons.

Josh

Yea I had a lot of fun growing in containers this year. I was very surprised the harvest I got from plants in only #1 nursery pots. I also liked experimenting with new soil media. I was very surprised at how well a mix of peat moss and composted horse manure worked. Nothing else added but lime and plant were potted up right into the mix. One of my largest jalapeno was grown in it so I can see what can really work. I had used promix but after seeing the results from that mix I thought would never work because of low air porosity turned a heavy yield. I even tryed top soil in containers but that had a lot of pod drop. The 80/20 peat/manure really compared with bagged potting mix and other mixes I used.

Took time, patience and seed from fellow gardners....priceless in the amount of tranquility, pride and harvest! This year was a challenge, heat, tornado, was it worth it, heck yes! Can't wait to start next year's seed. Put a price on it? No. Sometimes rewards can not attach a price tag.....have soil and such on my Santa list, lol. Loved sharing my "cool" (hot) peppers with my friends.

Mastergardern1,
30-40 plants..

I can only wish that I had the room for half that number. lol

I got a spot in my wifes garden for up to 6 plants and that's cutting (planting) them to close together.

I never fertilize, so I guess I'm saving there. water once a week if we did not get rain BUT I grow enough of two types to keep me happy throughout the rest of the season. Seing that I am the only one in the house that has a taste for the heat.

Unless they're in containers (or your soil is crap) peppers don't really need a lot of fertilizer.

I wish I could get more people to understand that around here who wonder "how I get so many peppers" on my plants...

I see a lot of people growing some really nice, big, green leaves that are missing out on flower set before the hell of summer kicks in...then loving their fall crop. They could have enjoyed a nice June/July/August crop, too.

Yea. Half way in the year my in ground plants showed slight yellow so I gave them some fertilizer and a few days later they were green again. Worked great. It is just like watering when there is already been rain or rain is coming- more is less.

My plants in containers produced way more lb of peppers per square foot then my in ground plants. When I look at the cost- my in ground plants produced more lb of peppers per dollar.

I guess I should add that when I said "around here" I meant locally, in my area...not on this board.

Reading it again today I feel I should clear that up.

Every area/soil is going to be different depending on your local area soil profile. Once my crops get below my prepared beds they grow into some really nice clay (not all clay is bad) with a bit of decent organic matter.

...just heading that off before the wrong idea pops up. heh...

I'd say its taken a lot of trial and error. starting from not having any idea about what it took to keep a plant alive, it was a LOT of error.

but after all the wrong assumptions, over complicated plans, figuring out the right place to stage them in the apartment, and lurking on these forums (chiming in from time to time), i'd say its all paid off.

i agree, the upfront cost can keep it from being cost efficient compared to market vegs.. but the accomplishment of having your own chosen supply of peppers on hand is pretty awesome. And for times when there are more than you want to process, it makes for a perfect excuse to host a chile festival for your favorite people at work.. or, your not-so-favorite people :-D

Now I just need to find a house with the outdoor space necessary for expansion.

-H