How to Grow Hot Peppers Indoors

Hot peppers add a rush of warmth to your dishes, and there was a time that if you wanted to have such warmth in your meals in the cold of winter, you had to can your peppers. While this process produces particularly piquant peppers, they just never have quite the same taste that you find in a freshly picked pepper straight out of the garden. While pepper plants won’t necessarily bear fruit throughout the year, you can significantly increase the growing season during which your plants produce fruit by simply growing your pepper plants indoors. Granted, you are more able to do this with some varieties of peppers than others, but the process can realistically be adapted to almost any pepper, regardless of how hot or how sweet.

Beyond growing pepper plants for their fruit indoors, peppers also make attractive houseplants when they are properly kept and allowed to grow in a bright, sunny area. Most of the pepper plants you will want to have indoors have relatively small leaves and compact fruit. You can raise larger pepper plants if you want, but if you have space constraints, you may want to stick with the smaller varieties of pepper plants and just use less of them in your cooking. After all, one easy way to gauge the relative heat of a pepper is by how small it is. Some of the very hottest peppers in the world are very small, while some of the sweetest peppers are very large.

Begin by purchasing a ready-grown pepper plant or the necessary seeds from your local home garden center, along with either plastic or ceramic pots that are at least one gallon in size. This size will allow the plants to grow more freely, preventing them from overcrowding smaller pots. Think of the plants as being “comfortable.” If they are too crowded, they won’t produce fruit. If they’re comfortable, on the other hand, they’ll bear fruit, sometimes several times throughout the year.

Fill the pots with potting soil, and then plant your seeds or ready-grown pepper plants. Water the pot thoroughly the first time, and then make certain to water it regularly at least once per week thereafter. It sometimes helps to remember to water your plants if you do it on a specific day, such as Sunday or Monday. Once it becomes a routine, you’ll find you have a much easier time remembering to water your plants than you would if you simply watered them whenever you remembered to.

Place the pepper plants in a window that receives plenty of sunlight throughout the day, particularly in the winter. You will notice that the plant may not grow as large as it would during the summer or when it is planted outside. This is normal. You will know that you have been successful when you begin to see buds forming on the plant. Once these buds have formed, they will flower and will eventually change into peppers. Pick the peppers at the height of their growth and use them right away in your soups, Mexican dishes, or just eat them off the plant for a quick capsicum rush to really get the old endorphins flowing!


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