COLUMNIST: ELI APPLEBY-DONALD
There are plenty of staples grown in our gardens and allotments all over Scotland, some of them because we know they do so well in our climate: turnips, potatoes, carrots, and onions. Others because it is almost a rite of passage for new gardeners: tomatoes, Chinese greens, and weird coloured veg. If you want to set yourself an interesting challenge this year though and grow something new and interesting, how about bell peppers?
Like tomatoes, bell peppers are a warm-weather crop and you will increase your opportunity for a good-sized harvest if you have an unheated greenhouse, but you absolutely can grow these in a sunny spot in the garden, perhaps against a south-facing wall to help the plants feel at home.
Given that the Scottish season for warm weather crops tends to be short, taking time to pick the right variety of bell pepper to grow can make the difference between an okay harvest at the end of the year and a bumper crop.
I have tried a few different varieties over the last few years and have found four definite winners for me. All of which have produced good crops in my garden:
From all of these, ‘King of the North’ is my number one variety for large, thick-walled bell peppers and plants which produce an abundance of fruit. A good reliable plant.
As with all veg and fruit growing, there are various stages and techniques to growing your bell peppers and this month we are going to look at sowing the seeds and caring for those young seedlings. We will look at the different stages of growing in subsequent issues throughout 2024. So why not grow along with us?
As the old adage says, “Ask four gardeners and you will get six answers”. Asking when to sow bell peppers is one of those topics and here is why: as a warm weather plant, peppers have a relatively long growing season. This means that it can be quite late into our Scottish growing season before you are rejoicing in those large, brightly coloured fruits and then when our season begins to cool down, it becomes a priority to encourage green fruits to ripen before the cold of winter comes and takes the plant from you.
To combat this shorter season, some gardeners will deliberately sow their pepper seeds in January or February, when the days are still short and most definitely cold. They do this by using additional heat sources and lights to fool those little seedlings into thinking it is spring. The benefit of this method is that your little pepper plants have already grown into strong, established plants by the time you transplant them to their permanent home. The obvious down side to this method is the need to use heat and light sources to nurture and care for these plants until it is safe to move them into a greenhouse or cold frame.
The alternative for those of us who would prefer a simpler approach is to wait until mid-March to sow the seeds in an unheated greenhouse, or under protection of a cold frame or similar in a sunny spot of the garden. It is true that the March sown plants will be a little behind those grown with artificial heat and light but I have had some wonderful crops from March sown plants and never been disappointed.
The key to germinating pepper seedlings is keeping your growing medium warm: peppers germinate quickest at around 18-21℃ (the temperature of the potting mix not the ambient room temperature).
It is so easy to think that you need to add lots of heat to warm your pots and module trays to this point, but too much heat can also be a bad thing causing stress and damage to delicate seedling roots. So less really is more in this instance.
Bring your potting mix indoors or into the greenhouse and let it warm up to ambient temperature before sowing. If you are using a heat mat, try to use a thermostat that can turn the heating element off once the temperatures are within the right range.
Pepper seeds can take a little longer to germinate than other plants, so patience is required. I have waited as many as three weeks for germination with some of my seeds.
Pepper seeds are large enough to handle and they are easy to see. Using a damp potting mix, simply sow the seeds into individual containers or using a seed tray, sprinkle over the soil’s surface. Cover with a thin layer of potting mix or even vermiculite.
To help with germination, you can use a propagator or even a plastic 'ginger’ bottle (I am from Glasgow) to act as a dome and help keep the humidity around your seeds. Remember to allow ventilation and remove this once your seedlings have germinated.
Although the seeds may need warmer temperatures to encourage germination, your little seedlings will be very happy in the temperature of your average home, around 17℃, but they will require a lot of light to help them grow into strong plants.
In the early part of the year, we do not get a lot of daylight here in Scotland, so if you have sown your seeds early you will have to add some form of supplementary lighting. I do not have a bright enough window sill in my home, even with lots of tin foil cunningly surrounding my little plants, so I add some grow lights to my seed sowing set up. If you sow your seeds in your unheated greenhouse in March, this will not be as much of an issue for you.
One of the most common problems I hear about growing from seed is overwatering and the problems it can bring. Seedlings really do not need much water at all, very little compared to growing plants.
One way to prevent over watering is to sow your seeds into a modular tray or very small pot, allowing only a small amount of potting mix for the seedling’s first few weeks. The reason for this is that your potting mix holds water and if your plant is too small to use it up, you risk problems caused by roots sitting in wet potting mix or even fungal problems caused by a persistently wet environment.
Grow your seedlings on in small modules or pots and regularly pot them on into a larger sized pot once the roots are established and filling the original pot. This ensures that the root systems have time to grow and develop and therefore use the water held in your potting mix.
You can start this process when your seedling has its first true leaves, (more on gardening terms to help you understand them here), and continue this process with larger and then larger pots until it is time to transplant the little plants to their final home.
When transplanting your seedlings, handle with care. Try to avoid handling stems and roots, instead handle gently using the larger cotyledon/first leaves. Use the end of your plant label, the handle end of a tea spoon or special widger tool to tease the plant out of its home before moving to its new destination.
If you have sown into modular trays, this is an easier job as you can simply push the entire plug out of the tray by pressing from the bottom and then transplant the entire plug with very little handling.
Once those seedlings become small plants, it is time to consider their final transplant and final homes, and that is for the next issue.
Eli Appleby-Donald, one half of 'In the Garden With Eli and Kate' tends an urban garden in East Lothian which she has managed to make beautiful and productive. She considers herself a perpetual learner gardener, and has spent the last 11 years learning by experience, success, and failure.
Eli is a digital education guru for a local university by day, and due to the lack of good information about growing in Scotland when she started gardening, she decided it was time to put those skills into action to correct this. She now regularly blogs and vlogs about gardening on YouTube where she has hundreds of videos all about her gardening journey and her top tips, as well as appearing as a guest on others worldwide.
You can find out more about Eli and all the fun of creating your own suburban garden paradise on either her YouTube channel, her website or instagram.