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Growing Peppers in the Pacific Northwest?

L

lostmind

Anyone here from the PNW? I'm in Port Moody, just about half an hour away from Vancouver.

I started my peppers indoors in mid march, but have had a few bumps. First, my wife tossed out my sheet of paper that had all my pepper varieties written on it, so now I don't know which plant is what :)

Second, I had horrible germination rates - about 1 in 3 or 4 seeds actually sprouted. I used a warming pad, jiffy peat pellets and kept them in the mini plastic greenhouse.

Third, I was putting the plants outside for some more intense sun on warm days and got stuck working late one night, got home after midnight and it was about 4c outside and I lost 50% of my plants. Plus the remaining peppers didn't grow for about 2 weeks after this, they were shocked pretty bad.

Fourth, I was newb and thought hey, peppers got stunted by the cold so let's give them a kickstart with a bit of miracle grow tomato fertilizer. I think that I burned them with that even though I diluted it quite a bit.

Anyways, I am trying to grow the following peppers from seed:

kung pao f1 - slim long and very hot, thin walled pepper for asian cooking. 85 days.

red habanero op - limegreen little pepper which turn red and very hot. 90-100 days.

long red cayenne - 75 days.

Hot Pepper Gourmet f1 - bright orange early maturing pepper with thick walls. 80 days.

Sweet patio red

Golden bell f1 - bright yellow with thick tasty walls, very productive. 62 days.

Cali wonder (bell). 75 days.

Italian sweet pepper.

And I have the following peppers from the nursery, since I wiped out over half my peppers with my moronic ineptitude:

Jalapeno (this plant is about 2' tall now)

Cherry bomb - no idea what it is tbh.

Tabasco - the pic shows slim, yellowy-whitish peppers. Claims to be very hot.

Hungarian hot wax - looks like a banana pepper?

Serrano

I think that's all of them. I've been growing them in my office building as it is on the 7th floor and gets a ton of sun and is climate controlled to stay at 19-20C. I'll see if I can post some pics later on.

Anyways, any tips/tricks from growers with a similar climate to mine would be appreciated!
 
lostmind said:
I started my peppers indoors in mid march, but have had a few bumps. First, my wife tossed out my sheet of paper that had all my pepper varieties written on it, so now I don't know which plant is what :)
Click to expand...

Welcome Lostmind, all the writing on my plant labels faded in the sun. Luckily I had back up labels.
 
I too am in the Pac Nw and I am NOT a chili growing expert by no means. I think you need to test your soil ph first and foremost because of the burning, they wont recover if the fertilizer levels are elevated. Then I would try to saturate the soil to get that Miracle grow build up out try to remember that omri listed ferts are best. Are you growing at home or at the office? I could not tell if it was a home grow or a work grow. If your at home and growing in the Pacific NW a good idea is to get a 400watt metal halide or high pressure sodium light. The reason to do this is because you can keep them under the light tell the weather is consistant and you will not lose any growing time or suffer any risk of shock. Also using these fairly cheap $145 average price lights you will get bigger better chilis. Lets face it we need man made intervention to grow chilis to the best of there ability in our region, you can and many people do a very good chili grow with natural NW climates but in my opinion to grow the plant to its maximum potential you need supplemental lighting and maybe a little climate control.

Also for germination I have so far have had good luck with a ice cube tray with 1 hole drilled in each holder.You would be surprised at how well this works a little tap on the tray when the time comes and waaaalaaa easy cube. Then i fill with dirt and saturate with hot/warm water. Then I take a pencil or screwdriver and plant the seed 1/4-1/8 inch into the soil and then give it just enough water so the medium covers the seed. keep warm and wet but not sopping.

I am a newb chili grower so take my advice with a grain of salt.


-cheers:onfire:
 
Hey...

So yah, I am growing a couple of peppers in my office but only on the windowsill. No metal halide or any supplemental lighting. It seems to be going ok so far. While I do lease the office I doubt the building management would be happy with me running massive metal halide lights in there, which is too bad cuz I have 400w metal halides in the basement doing nothing at home. I used to have a salt water reef tank addiction... well I still do but I can't afford it anymore, so I am selling all my equipment. :|

I also have a couple peppers in the ground already here at home. They seem to be doing ok so far. Then again, we've had hot weather for the past week or so and that may change.

I'll post some pics of my gardens tomorrow. I took the day off work today because it wasn't raining and did a ton of yardwork - ripped out three dead trees, a bunch of scraggly rhododendrons and made 2 veggie garden beds. Had a couple yards of garden soil mix brought up and added some sea soil bags, vermicompost and regular compost... hopefully some stuff will grow!
 
Welcome!

We have one member growing peppers in Alaska - AKButch - I'm sure he can provide a lot of info.

Meanwhile, have fun. I'm looking forward to your pics!
 
Ok, so this is just my second year gardening. I've always wanted to have a veggie garden for some weird reason, but I tend to read and read about something before ever doing it. Well last year I had this small little strip of garden, just big enough for 6 tomatoes and some lettuce. I expanded that little garden just this past weekend into:

maingarden.jpg


Then I had this side garden here, full of three dead pine tree's and a big plastic pond filled with stones and had a pump with a fountain attachment.. it was a nice idea but really didn't work well. If you had the pump on it evaporated all the water in a couple hours and since I never turned it on, it was just a mosquito farm. So I ripped it all out and made this:

sidegarden.jpg


Surprisingly, the wife is happy with it.

In this pic, you'll see how clay'ey my soil is... I've tossed some of it around the base of the trees in this pic and it's dried into an almost hard crust. Note that I used the pine needles as mulch around my blueberries - I also have three yards of bark mulch to spread around my front gardens and these blueberries/trees. This pic is mainly to show of my newest blueberry plant... it's so small!

babyblueberry.jpg


The rest of my blueberries and my strawberry planters:

moreberries.jpg
 
Here are a few of my potted tomatoes, most of these are nursery bought:

pottedtomatoes.jpg


Here's a pic of my surprise tomatoes. Not only did my wife toss the sheet with the tomato types on them, these guys also survived a night out below 4c and got shocked to hell and back... yet they live!:

surprisetomatoes.jpg


I only have one pepper in the ground right now. I haven't managed to take pics of the pepper plants growing on my windowsill in the office yet. I do think I will plant most of them in the garden.. hopefully it'll be warm enough for them - I'm going to try some black plastic around the base of the plants (tomatoes too!) to try and get the soil temps a bit higher to see if I can actually get anything to harvest.

Well, comments appreciated!
 
Welcome from Fort Worth...things are looking good...
 
Hey Rainbowberry - I inherited that trellis from my mother. I'm going to try and train some cucumbers up it this year.

Thanks AlabamaJack! There is still a long way to go, but the weather hasn't really co-operated here and I hate doing yardwork in the rain...

I've just finished getting those two gardens done this weekend. I still have to rip out some more sod, put down a few more allan blocks for a third little garden thing (we don't care much for grass) with a pergola in the middle of it, so I gotta figure out how to build a pergola... and then there is some grass that needs cutting, weeds that need pulling and I gotta borrow my dads pickup to make a run to the green waste dump to drop off all the yard garbage I've got from doing all this.

By then it'll be winter time I think :)
 
Welcome LostMind, love the name. If you find my mind out there in your travels tell it I miss it but am doing quite well without it.

Great pics of your plants too. I look forward to seeing some ripe fruit pics from your set up.
 
Thanks IGG!

I got my pepper plants into the dirt today, but they have transplant shock and won't smile for the camera right now. I'll snap some pics of those in a day or two :)
 
Good luck with the blueberries, you are definately on the right track using pine needles as mulch. I had a heck of a time growing them until I started to do that.
 
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