Many years ago, while looking for a way to earn extra income from my regular job, I decided to start a very small vegetable nursery in my backyard. Since I was living in the Tampa Bay area, there was almost always a season for planting something. I had planted a garden almost every year in the past, so starting vegetables in containers was easy for me. I ordered a seed catalog and started building some tables. I then picked out few varieties of tomatoes, several types of lettuce, a few other seasonal vegetables, some herbs, and three types of peppers. I think they were a type of Bell pepper, Banana pepper, and Jalapeño. I ordered some 4x4 containers, trays to transport them with, and some potting soil from a local nursery supply center. After I got some plants started, I went down to the local flea market and rented a booth. I thought I should have a name for my nursery, so I decided to call it “Dirt Cheap Edible Plants.” 

Each week, it seemed that I would sell out all the pepper plants I had brought with me. Plus, people were asking me if I could get other types of pepper plants, so I would search the web for the requested types of pepper seeds, order them, and start growing them. The first thing I noticed was that the germination rate of most of the pepper seeds was very poor, which left me scratching my head. Still, I had built my pepper inventory up to about twelve types. 

Then, one weekend, an old farmer stopped by my booth, saw my pepper plants, and started talking about them. He said I had a couple he had never seen before. I told him about my germination problem with my pepper seeds. He said that he liked “bird peppers,” and they were very hard to germinate. He told me that he would use chicken manure, because peppers seeds needed nitrogen, and keep the seeds warm to help them germinate. He also said that the soil type was very important. It seems that pepper seeds do not germinate well in peat-based potting soils, which is what I was using. The farmer suggested that I use a bark-based or other peat-free type of soil, mixed with 25% perlite and 10% vermiculite. The additives would keep the pepper seeds moist without saturating them. But the most important thing he taught me was this: by nature, all pepper plants are tropical or subtropical shade perennials, and some can live for several years. They also grow very well in containers because they like to keep their feet—their roots—dry. Growing them in containers made the plants mobile, so they could be kept out of the hot Florida sun. During the cooler months, he would bring his pepper plants inside when the temperature dropped below 50 degrees. By doing that, the pepper plants could live more than just one year. That old farmer sure taught me a lot. 

So, as it turned out, when it came to starting pepper seeds, I was doing everything wrong. I was using the wrong soil, I needed a way to add nitrogen to the soil and had to keep the seeds warm. I had no idea that all of this was necessary. But by this time, I had decided that since there were so many pepper varieties available to me, I was going to concentrate on learning how to proficiently grow pepper plants. And since peppers were perennials, I did not have a growing season in the usual sense. I could grow them almost any time of year. Since peppers grow in hot, humid climates, so in order to germinate my seeds during the cooler months, I built a rack in my bathroom to hold the seed trays. I used an oil-filled radiator heater to keep the room at my seeds warm. The optimal temperature was 85 to 90 degrees. Humidity wasn’t much of a problem, but I kept a small bucket of water in there which helped to keep the room steamy.  I experimented with agricultural-grade, water-soluble fertilizer until I got the nitrogen level just right. All of this took time. But in the end, I had turned my bathroom into a perfect incubation room, and I was germinating pepper seeds in days instead of weeks. 

I built more tables in my backyard to put the trays on. I knew that the plants would need shade, so I enclosed the tables with shade cloth. To store the trays of pepper plants on colder nights, I built a shed and added shelves for the pepper trays. I ran an electrical line to the shed and put in a radiator heater. In the evening, I would transfer my peppers to the shed, then bring them back out as the temperature warmed each day. During cold snaps, the plants stayed warm in my shed. Once it warmed back up, the trays would be brought back out for some much needed sunshine. 

I had heard about a spring plant show at a local botanical garden. I contacted the director, who was reluctant to let me be a vendor because I wasn’t a professional nurseryman. But someone selling pepper plants intrigued her, so she let me do the plant show. By this time, I had expanded my pepper inventory to about 50 varieties. I printed up some notebooks with descriptions of each pepper plant, including their origin and culinary uses. I also printed tip sheets to educate customers on how to grow pepper plants in the hot Florida sun. At that plant show, I turned some heads. Not only were my pepper plants selling well, but people were also asking me if I could do other shows. My new nursery would need a name, so I called it “Mild to Wild Pepper Plants.” 

I quickly expanded my inventory to well over 120 varieties of peppers plants, and over the next several years, I was a regular at annual shows all over the Bay area. I was a top vendor at venues like the “I Like It Hot Festival,” the “Pinellas Pepper Festival,” and the “Sunken Gardens Pepper Festival.” I was also a vendor at the “Green Thumb” Arbor Day plant sale, as well as barbecue competitions, chili cook-offs, and other annual shows and plant sales. And if I didn’t have a show to do, people could find me back at the local flea market. 

 I have long since retired from the nursery business, but I decided to start this website to share my love for peppers. There are so many varieties to choose from, and their gourmet culinary used are almost endless. Be sure to review my germinating instructions, where I’ve shared what I have learned, mostly by trial and error, about germinating peppers seeds. If you’ve tried growing peppers in the past, and had poor results, you just may be able figure out what went wrong. Enjoy! 

—Hothead Red