How to Grow Peppers: The Abridged Guide
Everything you need to grow peppers from seed.
This is meant to be a short & sweet guide with no fluff: a reference you can come back to over and over.
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Email: blake@slowandsteady.farm
We are a community, you and I, and I love to learn from you, teach what I know, and grow together. Happy growing!
-Blake
Pepper Growing Guide 2026:
Seeds
Buy from reputable dealers.
Johnny’s Seeds (employee owned USA based. excellent choice for small scale / organic farms)
Seed Savers Exchange (non-profit dedicated to preserving heirlooms)
Baker Creek Seeds
Local CO-OPs
F1s are hybrids. You can’t reliably save seeds from hybrids. OP or open-pollinated means you can reliably save seeds. More on this later.
Germinating Seeds
Fill tray with soil, seed 1” deep, water from bottom filling the bottom half tray, cover with humidity dome, set thermostat to 88F, have an oscillating fan running 24/7 on all trays, set up sticky traps, set under LED lights.
1020 38x 50x cell trays
1020 short bottom trays, without holes
Promix Brand or Seed Starting Mix potting soil
Heat mat + Heat Mat Thermostat
LED Lights
Humidity dome
Oscillating fan (prevents damping off disease)
Wall timer (for lights)
4 foot wide steel rack. (You can get a different size, but the 4 foot wide steel racks hold 4× 1020 trays AND the Barrina LED lights on each rack. 2 foot wide is also doable.
After Germination & Fertilize!
Remove humidity home
Remove from heat mat
Fertilize with each watering, after top of soil dries and tray becomes light-weight.
I use a half dose of Alaska Fish Fertilizer (5-1-1) + a half dose of Seaweed Extract fertilizer (0.3-0.2-1) at each watering until the peppers go in the ground.
Hardening Off
At about 2-3 inches tall with two sets of true leaves.
Begin hardening off process by putting into greenhouse with shade cloth, or putting in sun for increasing amounts of time each day. Watch them closely if in direct sun, as plants will physically wilt when they need to be pulled back.
Hanging sheer curtains from a picnic umbrella is a good way to create a shady greenhouse effect.
Planting In-Ground
At 5-6+ inches tall
Prep beds ahead of time using silage tarp to kill sod. Weighing down tarp with rocks and pallets speeds up the process greatly. Tillage to start a garden is okay, but do not till every year as this will damage your soil structure and drainage long term.
Pull back tarp, spread 3 inches wood chips from ChipDrop, spread 3 inches compost from local supplier, then fertilize with a naturally derived dry fertilizer like NatureSafe 8-5-5.
At planting, fertilize with a quick-acting nitrogen heavy fertilizer. I like feather meal (13-0-0). Blood meal is also good.
For in ground peppers, fertilize every two months. For potted peppers, fertilize every week, or water with diluted liquid fertilizer at each watering.
Irrigate regularly. Drip tape is king. Youtube video coming soon on this.
Enjoy your peppers! Reach out for any questions.
Principles to remember:
Always bottom water. Reduces greatly the risk of fungus gnats
Always have a fan on. This stops damping off disease which can kill your peppers within hours under the right conditions. It also strengthens their stems for real wind outside.
Hotter peppers take longer to germinate. Typically peppers take 7-10 days. Hotter peppers take 10-17 days. Ghost, Aji Charapita, Habanero, etc. Don’t get discouraged. Make sure trays don’t dry out when germinating for a long time.
You NEED a heat mat controller/thermostat. If you dont have a heat mat controller set to 88F, your seeds will get too HOT, and they will poorly germinate especially towards the middle of the tray. Trust me, 88F is perfect.
FERTILIZE once peppers germinate. Your peppers should look lush and strong and green. The most common issue in peppers Nitrogen Deficiency which causes yellowing and stunting. Check out the Common Issues Page showing the comparison between a Nitrogen Deficient and Properly Fertilized pepper.
