Growing Spicy Hot Peppers in a Raised Garden Bed

If you have a sunny garden site and love heat, you can grow spicy peppers at home. All peppers, from crispy, mild bell peppers to mouth-on-fire Scotch bonnets, thrive in heat. The longer your growing season, the better for growing peppers.

Peppers need a full sun situation to grow and produce fruit. "Full sun" means at least six hours of sunlight each day. You can grow peppers in ground or containers. Raised garden beds are like big containers that let you control the soil and water for your garden.

Before planting, it's important to choose peppers that match your taste and growing conditions.

Here's how to choose the perfect peppers for your garden:

• Consider taste and heat level: Are you looking for sweet varieties like bell peppers or spicy options like jalapeños and habaneros? Identify your preferences.
• Choose based on climate: Peppers thrive in hot weather. If you live in a cooler region, consider early-maturing varieties or grow peppers in pots so you can move them to the sunniest spot in your garden.
• Space requirements: Some pepper plants grow several feet tall, while compact varieties are ideal for balconies and patios. Check plant labels for the variety’s mature size before bringing plants home.
• Disease-resistant varieties: It's always a good idea to minimize problems with plants. Purchasing plants that are resistant to diseases like blossom end rot makes your harvest sweeter.

You can grow peppers from seed or seedling. For the best results with seeds, start them indoors about 8 to 10 weeks before your last frost date. Peppers need a long, hot growing season to produce fruit.

If you're not starting from seed, buy healthy, robust seedlings in the Garden Center. When shopping for hot peppers, pay attention to the Scoville scale number that's on the plant label. Scoville ratings start at 100 for mild poblanos and goes up to 100,000 to 300,000 (extra hot) for habaneros.

Some varieties of spicy hot peppers you may find online and in the Garden Center (selection will vary by region and season).

• Banana hot pepper
• Habanero hot pepper
• Cayenne pepper
• Poblano (ancho) pepper
• Red ghost pepper
• Jalapeno
• Serrano
• Anaheim
• Cajun Belle
• Chile de Arbol
• Carolina reaper
• New Mexico
• Fresno chili hot pepper
• Sandia hot pepper
• Thai hot

When you're ready to grow spicy peppers, you'll want to start with the best soil in your raised garden bed. If this is a new bed, protect against pests by lining the bottom with weed block like hardware cloth, builder's paper or landscape fabric. Abarrier will keep burrowing critters out of your raised garden beds.

Growing peppers in raised garden beds lets you control the soil and irrigation. Peppers like humus-rich, well-draining garden soil with a neutral pH. If you're unsure of your soil's pH, get a soil test from the Garden Center or your local Extension Service, and amend your soil based on the recommendations. No matter what kind of soil you start with, adding organic compost is almost always a good idea to improve soil texture and nutrient value.

Note that most packaged garden soils have a neutral pH around 7.

In the Garden Center and online, look for raised garden bed soil that's designed for optimal nutrition and plant support. You can also mix your own. A good basic recipe is made from 60 percent topsoil, 30 percent compost and 10 percent potting mix. Adjust the proportions for your garden and store in a covered bin.

Tip: Use the formula Length x Width x Depth to determine the amount of soil needed to fill the raised garden bed. A raised garden bed that measures 8-feet by 4-feet by 10-inches will need about 27-cubic feet of soil. For faster solutions, check out the Soil and Mulch Calculator.

One of the advantages of growing peppers in raised garden beds is that the soil heats up faster than in-ground garden beds. And if the garden beds are made of metal, they heat even sooner and hold to heat longer.

Keep in mind that pepper plants do not toleratue wet or cold soils. For this reason, you'll want to plant peppers in the garden bed when soil temperatures are 70 degrees and nighttime air temperatures are above 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here's how to plant peppers:

• Set seedlings out after the last spring frost in your area.
• Plant seedlings 18 to 24 inches apart.
• Top dress with organic compost or a slow release fertilizer after planting.
• Water when first planted, and continue with an inch or two of water each week.
• Instead of a slow release fertilizer, you can use a well-balanced organic plant fertilizer every couple of weeks, beginning six weeks after planting and again after flowering.
• A layer of mulch keeps down weeds and cools the soil.
• Stake or cage the peppers for support before fruit appears.

Tip: It's ok to plant sweet and hot peppers close to each other; it’s a gardening myth that they will all grow hot. Because peppers are self-pollinating, you would need to save seeds and grow a crop the next year for any cross-pollinating heat variations to appear.

Keep your spicy pepper crop happy and healthy through the summer with this care plan:

• Water well. Peppers are water hogs, but don't like soggy soil. A couple times week, water deeply. It's important to let the soil dry slightly in between waterings. A 1-inch blanket of mulch reduces evaporation.
• Fertilize regularly. Once the plants start flowering, apply a low-nitrogen fertilizer at half-strength every few weeks. You can also top dress with organic compost.
• Trim the plants. Take your pruning snips into the garden and remove damaged leaves. Keeping plants tidy improves airflow and prevents disease.
• Support your plants. Cages or stakes will keep the fruit off the ground. It's best to put cages around newly-planted seedlings.

Pepper plants are an easy crop to grow and are not bothered by a lot of pest and disease issues. However, you may notice early in the season that the first fruits have a soft brown bottom. This is called blossom end rot, and it affects tomatoes, too. Blossom end rot is caused by a calcium deficiency, and for this reason some gardeners will add crushed eggshells to their soil. However, most garden soils have plenty of calcium and it's the delivery system, water, that's usually the cause of blossom end rot. BER occurs when the fruit is at a crucial stage during extreme heat. The easy solution for BER is to water more frequently, especially during sudden heat spells.

Two more problems you may spot on peppers:

• Powdery mildew is a white powdering coating that thrives in humid conditions. Improving air circulation by pruning plants will help.
• Bacterial leaf spot can spread rapidly through your garden. When you find this on leaves, remove foliage, spray remaining foliage with copper fungicide.

Tip: Installing drip irrigation for regular watering will reduce blossom end rot, too.

Most peppers are ready to harvest in 60 to 90 days, depending on factors like the variety and your weather conditions. Look for visual cues that your peppers are ripe; usually color and skin texture.

It's best to use pruning snips to harvest any kind of pepper. They give you a clean break on the stem. It's also a good idea to wear gloves when you're harvesting and handling spicy peppers like ghost peppers. The fiery capsaicin oils can transfer to your skin.

The more you harvest peppers, the more fruit they will produce.

Most peppers will require some type of processing to preserve the harvest. You can freeze and dry many peppers. You can also use them in recipes for salsas and sauces.