peppers... I have no idea what I'm doing!

[helanuels]

Hello everyone!

Not so long ago I was cutting a pepper for tea and I thought "this thing cost 75p!! I'm planting these seeds and seeing what happens..."

...then today I was standing looking at my nice new pepper plants in my propagator and realised that I have absolutly no idea how to look after the little fellas or if they will even produce edible peppers. So, I thought I'd ask all you lovely peeps for some advice. They're currently about 2 inches tall and I have 15+.

Any help would be wonderful!

Thanks, Hx

[ckfe]

glad you asked cos i'm in exactly the same situation.. they look lovely in their nice little pots but i've not got a clue what to do with them when they're bigger

[Two_Sheds]

Just keep potting them on as they get bigger.

15 plants is quite a lot.

[Two_Sheds]

I just used the search button and found this earlier thread: http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ers_11888.html

and this is quite useful about growing and saving seed: http://www.realseeds.co.uk/sweetpeppers.html

[SarzWix]

Peppers are nice and easy to grow in a lot of ways, they don't need to be pruned or anything. Just pot them into bigger pots gradually til they get to the size of pot you want them in (about 5 litre size will do) and when they start flowering, feed them with tomato food. Look out for aphids (greenfly) on the plants and squash em
Expect the plant to drop a few flowers before it manages to get the first fruit, but once it does it'll be away

[Incy]

Apparently you get a bigger crop if you cut the first peppers when they are still green and fairly small. I'm definitely trying that this year.

[thecarnage]

I did the same.

I have 40 plants all in 6" pots now.

[seasprout]

They do need pollinating...so make sure the Bees can get at them.!

[Jenegade]

They do need pollinating...so make sure the Bees can get at them.!

Can you pollinate them by hand if they're indoor peppers? Mine will be at the bay window in my living room and we don't get many bees in there!

[tamsin]

I use a paint brush and get almost 100% pollination just the odd flower drop. I found if the first flower/pepper was ahead of the rest it stopped the others developing (so if you get one pepper growing and not more take that off) but if you get a crop then let them ripen and once they start it will keep flowering/growing more as you pick them.

[helanuels]

Thanks everyone, I feel a bit silly asking this but, is there a special technique to pollinating? And do they need to be indoors, in my mini green house or outdoors? obviously if they are in the greenhouse i need to open it during the day to let the bees in.
I know ive read the answer to this somewhere but, when do i start feeding them with tomato feed?

Just keep potting them on as they get bigger.

15 plants is quite a lot.

I just got all excited with the idea of planting seeds I'd found myself and planted... 30 seeds all together and since last check 5 have popped up to say ello so added to the misscount last time, thats a total of 24 thus far. I hope i can cope with them all!
Thanks for the link, really very useful!

[Alison]

I currently have a couple of dwarf pepper plants with quite decent sized green peppers on them in pots in the conservatory and another 6 planted in their permanent positions in the greenhouse (plus one or two extras which are just hanging around in pots in case I need emergency replacements!).

They're all flowering now and will quite happily produce peppers without any interference from insects (the ones with fruit on them have spent their whole life in the house), if you want to make 100% sure you can fiddle with the flowers ourself but you don't need to and you'll still get a good crop if the conditions are right (ie warm enough and enough food etc)

[frias]

I've got one on my kitchen window sill that is still going strong from last year. It's got a few small peppers on it already and as I've not had a bee in the kitchen I've no idea how it gets pollinated.
As for saving seeds from shop bought peppers. I did this one year and the plants did really well but the peppers turned out to be chillies. We only found this out when we ate our salad! Shop bought peppers must be from hybrid seeds.

[leoblackcat]

I learnt my lesson last year with peppers. Spent the whole summer with 2 peppers on my plant - expecting them to turn red. Eventually decided to cut them off and when I did I must have had about 20 flowers open and loads more peppers appear...by them it was too late for them to grow into anything reasonable. This year I will cut my first peppers off when they are smallish.

[Two_Sheds]

plants did really well but the peppers turned out to be chillies. ...Shop bought peppers must be from hybrid seeds.

there is sweet peppers and there is chilli peppers. And there is black pepper