Planting Your Peppers

Peppers are similar to tomatoes as you can start them inside from seed, or you can plant the seeds directly into the ground once the danger of frost has passed. If anything, peppers are even more sensitive to frost than tomatoes. Unlike tomatoes, though, peppers tend not to respond until it gets hot. Therefore, I am usually in no hurry to get my pepper plants going. Lately, I have been planting the seeds directly in the ground, and it seems to work just as well. They can be stubborn though, so I plant a few seeds in each hole.

Mulching around the plants will help maintain more consistent dampness to the soil, and it will suppress some of the weeds. If you are planting peppers that you have started indoors, I like to add some water-soluble plant starter with some of the water to give the plants an extra boost. My personal favorite is Southern Ag Plant Starter. As with tomatoes, I believe it’s a good practice to plant your peppers late in the day, so the sun isn’t beating down on them immediately after planting. On the following day, I will check on the plants to make sure they have adequate water and to make sure they are not getting too much sun. It’s helpful to have some row covers you can place over your new plants if it’s a very sunny day or even if it happens to be extremely windy. If you can be protective of them for the first few days, they should be fine after that.