Pepper

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Choose from Harris Seeds' extensive pepper seed offering that includes sweet bell peppers, hot peppers, specialty peppers and ornamental peppers. Whether you are a home gardener or grow for profit, you have plenty of pepper seed varieties to choose from. Sweet, mild, hot, crisp, spicy, tangy — all these adjectives describe the versatile pepper. Rich in vitamin C, peppers add color and flavor to any recipe. Untreated and organic pepper seeds are available to suit everyone’s taste buds!

Growing Tips: Sweet peppers, particularly the familiar bell-shaped varieties, are the most widely grown. The fruit is usually harvested when green, but will ripen to red (or sometimes yellow) if allowed to stay on the plant, adding a splash of color to the garden. Sweet peppers are eaten raw or cooked, and are good for freezing, too. Hot Peppers come in all shapes and sizes. The presence of the substance capsaicin is what makes a hot pepper hot. This substance is found in all peppers, but in differing quantities, and the degree of hotness is directly related to how much capsaicin is present. Use hot peppers to add a spicy, hot flavor to sauces, dips, chilis, or any recipe. They can also be dried and crushed into a powder.

Growing Tips: Peppers are a warm weather crop, and grow well with moderate fertilization. Seeds should be started indoors and transplanted into the garden when night temperatures do not fall below 60° F. Black plastic mulch (see accessory section) is beneficial for maintaining soil temperature and moisture.

Fresh Market Grower Tips:
There is such a great diversity of pepper types available for roadside and fresh market use today! We are really excited about some of the opportunities we can offer growers who either haven’t grown them or haven’t watched the trends. You will notice that in the sweet pepper class there are tapered, blocky and elongated shapes; dark green, light green, purple and waxy yellow immature colors turning red, yellow or orange. In hot peppers you can choose many sizes and fruit types, and most of the same color combinations mentioned above.

Culture:
Definitely a warm weather, long season species that is usually transplanted to the field 2-3 weeks after the last threat of frost. Seed germinates best at 75° F. soil temp. in about 10-20 days. Plan on about six weeks to grow at that temperature in a greenhouse, followed by a few days at 60-65° F. for hardening before field setting. Peppers prefer a sandy loam soil of average fertility and pH of 6.0-6.8. Black plastic mulch and drip irrigation are beneficial in maintaining soil temperatures and moisture levels as well as controlling weeds.

Maturity dates listed are from transplanting and are only for variety comparison.

Pepper Disease Code:
PVY - Potato Virus Y
TEV - Tobacco Etch Virus
TMV - Tobacco Mosaic Virus

Avg. Seed Count: 4400/Oz., 70,000/Lb.