Hot Peppers in the PNW, Ciscoe's tricks for growing them

Apr 22, 2023

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Gardening expert Ciscoe Morris loves hot peppers and wants to dispel a popular myth about growing them in the Pacific Northwest. "A lot of people say you can't grow hot peppers because we don't give enough heat here. But you could do it," he said. "So the first thing that I want to tell you is don't be too big a hurry to plant it, wait till things warm up outside."

Use a soil thermometer to make sure your soil is holding at a temperature over 60 Fahrenheit. Ciscoe's is well above that with this warm June weather, so it's the perfect time to plant some peppers he bought at a nursery.

"And these little Scotch bonnets, they don't get too big. They might get three feet at the most. Usually around two feet." These peppers are big on heat though – they can measure up to 350,000 Scoville units (a heat rating) which is 40 times hotter than a jalapeño.

Ciscoe has a special note about fertilizing peppers: "You notice I didn't add any (granular) fertilizer when I planted these. That's because peppers need a special way of being fertilized. When you first plant your peppers, you want to give them something with high nitrogen. And that's because we got to get them growing fast and peppers can be kinda slow because we don't have to have much heat here. So what I'm going to do is start with this 4-4-1 that's higher nitrogen," he said, measuring out high nitrogen liquid organic fertilizer from Dramm and watering them in with it.

The next step is important: After the pepper plants grow, change the fertilizing formula. "And now after these get to their mature height, which is about 24 inches then I'm going to switch over to a high phosphorus fertilizer, because that's going to make it start to form flowers and then fruit so that's really important to make that switch once they're a mature height," said Ciscoe. He’ll use Dramm's organic liquid fertilizer in a 2-4-1 ratio when the plants are full-height.

Ciscoe adds that knowing your pepper's mature color is a good way to control heat. "These particular ones are going to turn bright red." Check your label if you’re not sure. "You can harvest peppers before they turn their final mature color if you have to, but they won't be as hot. If you want them to be really hot and make you scream when you eat them, you want to make sure that you wait till they turn their fully mature color."

Ciscoe of course, will let his new Scotch bonnets become bright red, and hotter than heck.

"Think how good these will be in a Brussel's sprout quesadilla! Oh la la!"

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