pepper

Mark your calendars! Our 2009 Spring Garden Market will be held on April 4th at History San Jose. Same great place as last year and an even wider selection of tomatoes and chiles for sale along with much much more.

Each year in April the Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County hold the Spring Garden Market in San Jose. The market is more than a plant sale - it features dozens of vendor booths, our own Green Elephant Sale and seminars on popular gardening topics. For many people who come year after year, however, the 70+ varieties of tomatoes and 90+ varieties of chile peppers, along with other vegetables and flowers ready for transplanting, are what draw them in.

Rain or shine! Free Admission!

Seedling care

Peppers and chiles like warm weather and warm soil. So it’s best to keep your new seedlings in a sheltered spot until our nighttime temperatures are consistently 55 F or above.

Water them frequently, every other day if they’re in the sun. If the pots ever dry out, soak them in a bucket of water to make sure the potting soil gets thoroughly rewetted. Dry potting soil will shed water without absorbing it., so it can look like it’s wet when it’s not. A truly wet pot will be heavy; a dry pot will be light. Consider transplanting them into larger containers. It will let their roots develop and the larger pots won’t dry out as easily.

Check the seedlings regularly to see if any snails or aphids have found them. Hand-pick the snails. Aphids are soft-bodied insects that can easily be squished with your fingers or washed off with a hard spray of water. For a bad infestation, you can use insecticidal soap, but it’s seldom necessary.

Planting out

When you’re ready to plant your seedlings, soak them in a bucket of water to make sure the root ball is thoroughly wet. Remove them from the pot, handling them gently. If the plant is rootbound (when you take it out, you see a tight mass of white roots), gently tear them apart a bit or score the rootball with a knife.

Peppers can range from very sweet to very hot. The hotter types are often called chiles or chile peppers.