Growing peppers

Peppers have sprouted and are busy growing in the small planters being nursed along until they begin to produce fruit, or in this case, peppers. I am looking forward to a much larger yield this year because of a little growing secret I ignored last year. I ignored this little growing secret because in my rush to plant, and grow, thinking at the time that all I needed were some seeds and good potting soil. So what is the growing secret, Growth Pellets!

My last years' pepper growing season about fifty percent of the seeds I planted actually survived the sprouting process, and about 10% actually made it to the pepper producing stage. As a result, my Bell Pepper crop was very small and none of the plants made it through the winter months. This growing season because of the growth pellets I used I am closer to 100% of the seed sprouts making it to maturity and that has me smiling.

I found these Jiffy Pellet Refills at my local Home Depot, the pellets I originally got started with this growing season came with the Burpee Self-Watering seed-string kit and while the pellets looked different the results were the same when it came to the amount of sprout growth I see this season.

Success with Peppers

The success I had with peppers I hope to repeat this planting season, I started my seeds off in small nursery planter boxes, keeping them inside, only allowing them out occasionally for direct sunlight.

When they were large enough I graduated them to plastic cups giving their roots a chance to begin taking in nourishment, I fed them with Liquid Fish Fertilizer.

From the plastic cup, my peppers and onions were moved to their growing pots to complete their growth

The entire process took about six weeks from planting seeds to fairly full grown plants and I waited for another four to five weeks before I had any sizable pepper. At this point, I'm still not quite sure what I did right, or wrong, as in the case of my cantaloupe plant. 

The cantaloupe plant is the one line of leaves in the middle/green planter. Not long after this picture was taken I began using plant bug killer on my peppers, the cantaloupe plant soon after began to wither and die, no autopsy performed. The peppers were fine with all the spraying. The cantaloupe plant was also sharing the planter with a pepper plant, which I don't believe was the problem, but if I  plant another cantaloupe plant this year it will be in a planter all by itself, and way away from my bug spraying.