Find out how to grow pepper with The Yorkshire Gardeners tips and advice.

About Peppers

Peppers are ideally grown indoors in greenhouses and polytunnels or in conservatories. Peppers are often called sweet peppers. Peppers start off as green peppers before becoming a different colour. The colours peppers come in are the common ones Red, Yellow, Orange and Green Pepper. You can also get purple peppers which are a lot rarer to purchase so purple peppers might be something worth trying to grow. A lot of people ask the question is a pepper a fruit? The answer is yes pepper is classed as a fruit as it contains it’s own seeds.

Here you will learn about how to grow sweet peppers in the UK and the rest of the world with tips on sowing, growing and harvesting peppers. These methods can be used for growing green, red, yellow, orange and purple peppers.

Recommended varieties of Sweet Pepper

There are many varieties of mixed peppers to try growing. Here are some of the mixed pepper varieties that we suggest growing:-

• Californian Wonder Pepper
• Bell Boy Pepper
• Redskin Pepper

Choosing the best spot to grow

The best place to grow sweet peppers and bell peppers in the Uk would be in a greenhouse, polytunnel or conservatory. In warmer climates you would be able to grow sweet peppers and bell peppers outdoors. If you are growing peppers outdoors they need to be grown in a sunny warm area which has fertile soil.

How to sow

Here we will tell you how to grow sweet peppers and bell peppers in the Uk and the rest of the world it is the same method everywhere.

When you are sowing sweet peppers and bell peppers they need to be sown at 18 degrees minimum so ideally in a greenhouse indoors. Keep them warm at all times so they germinate and start to grow..

How to grow

When your sweet peppers and bell peppers have germinated wait until they have formed at least two true leaves. When they have these formed you can now transplant them to bigger plant pots. They need to be potted onto plant pots that are at least 9cm big.

Once you have transplanted the peppers you can keep growing them in these pots until the roots fill the pots.

When the pepper roots fill the pots they can now be transferred to grow bags or buckets if you are growing indoors. IF you are in a warm country you can plant them outdoors and space them at least 50cm apart.

How to care for your plants

The best way to care for your plants are to keep them staked up as they grow, you do not want them toppling over. You cane stake them up by using canes.

When the pepper plants reach around 20cm tall snip off any growing tips. This will encourage the plant to bush out. Be warned this will delay cropping though so don’t be worried.

Make sure you keep the plants regually watered especially in warm weather. You can also feed your plants with a general fertiliser. When the first fruit sets you can start to use a high potash feed.

If you are growing your plants indoors regularly mist your plants with water, this will help your flowers to set and fruit grow. It will also discourage red spider mite.

How to Harvest

The time it takes for you to be picking your first pepper after sowing your sweet pepper and bell pepper seeds will be around 22 weeks. You can pick the fruit when the peppers are a glossy green. If you leave them on the plant to ripen it will reduce the crop. You can expect around 8 peppers per plant.