I'd check in at the hot pepper forum...you'll get tons of advice there. I'll be starting some milds and mediums indoors in March, probably. I've usually bought plants in the past, but I'll be trying seed this year.

Hi Clairewags,

I start my hot pepper seeds indoors on March 30th. I grow the seedlings under lights (first 6 inches under two 40 watt florescent lights, then 3 feet under 400 Metal Halide HID lights). The seed trays are on a heating mat until they germinate. When the seedlings produce their second set of true leaves, I transplant the seedlings from their community tray into individual 2 inch pots.

When the weather warms, usually by May 1st, I move half of seedlings onto a garden bench in my garage. I keep the other half of the seedling in the house for a "back up" supply should something bad happen in the garage (damping off, sun burnt, etc). I open the garage door every morning and the young plants on my garden bench get a few hours of sunlight. By mid to late May, I transplant a choice sample of young plants into 2 to 5 gallon black plastic pots. All the plants are moved outdoors for good on June 1st.

I ran an experiment a few years ago where I put 10 pepper plants (2 of each kind) in black plastic pots and planted 10 peppers in the ground. I found that the peppers in the pots produced a pepper crop 4 weeks earlier then those in the ground. They also produced over twice as many peppers.

Peppers hate cold soil. It retards their growth. By placing the peppers in black plastic pots, the sunlight heated the soil in the pots much more quickly then the soil in the ground.

Potted peppers plants (say that three times quickly) dry out rapidly in warm weather. I used a tray with a 1 inch lip under each pot. I would fill the 1 inch tray with water and the soil stayed moist even in very hot weather. Note: if it rains for several days in a row, remove the tray.

This year I'm growing all of my pepper plants in black plastic pots.

PS: Clairewags, The extra pepper plants I grow go into my annual plant sale which I hold in mid May. Stop by if your pepper seedlings don't turn out and you can look over
my batch of plants.

PS2: In May, you can stop and look at my orchids too :-)

Tom

Hey thanks you guys!

Tom- I read somewhere you should add sand to the soil for hot peppers. Do you do that?

Thanks for the plant sale offer. :) If all goes well maybe I'll have some extra plants for you to sell!

I also start my pepper seeds inside around mid-March. I've heard they like warm temps to sprout, so I start mine in 4" plastic pots and sit them on a warm, sunny windowsill. The sun shines directly in that window all morning so I can get away without using extra lighting.

I've never added sand to the soil for my peppers so I'm not familiar with that technique. I'll be interested to hear what others have to say about that.