Many people believe that we can’t grow peppers well in Canada, or in any cold climate, without the help of a greenhouse. Our seasons are short, they don’t get super hot and we often don’t have time for our peppers to ripen before the first frost. However, it is possible to get your peppers to grow a few feet tall and produce a ton of peppers for you, and that’s what I’m going to teach you today!
This is the most crucial step if you’re growing your peppers from seed, and one that most people get wrong. If you live in Canada, or any short season area, you must start your peppers in January! It doesn’t have to be January 1st, but sometime in the month. It sounds early, and seems like it has to be wrong, but trust me, you have to start this early. The one thing to be mindful of is when you start them this early, you’re going to have to pot them up on more than one occasion, or else you’re going to get flowers indoors – which you don’t want. If you do find any flowers on your indoor plants, pinch them off.
Peppers hate cold weather. They don’t like any temperature below 10°C, so this means both daytime and nighttime temperatures must be above this. This means that you can’t start hardening off your plants until the days are above this temperature. Also, Canada is known to get a false-spring every single year. This is when the daytime temperatures rise, it looks beautiful, and we all think that spring has sprung. But usually we dip back into winter, or a cold spring a week or two after that before temperatures rise consistently.
Don’t be tricked by false spring! Keep an eye on the 14 day forecast and only plant when it’s safely and consistently above 10°C.
Even if temperatures are at 10°C, peppers don’t love it. They tolerate it. So when you do decide to plant your peppers outside, grow them under cover. Hoop houses are a great way to do this since you can have them over your garden temporarily, removing them later in spring. What’s good about this is that if there is an unexpectedly cold night or if frost comes unannounced, your peppers are already covered. The other benefit is that it may be 10° outside, but under the greenhouse cover it can easily be 20°C+ which is what peppers love. This is going to give them an early boost, helping them grow faster and earlier in the season.
Far too often social media creates trend frenzies that everyone thinks is scientific and is the “thing to do” and topping peppers is one of those cases. No matter how many times this gets debunked, it shows up again in forums, groups and videos. But here’s the thing – peppers don’t need to be topped. They branch out naturally on their own. And the ones that don’t, it’s because that’s how the variety grows. And here in Canada, if you top your peppers, expect to be racing the clock at the end of the season for a harvest. Cutting the top of your pepper off and waiting for it to regrow and branch will set your pepper plant back weeks. So unless you plan to start your peppers in November or December, leave them to grow naturally. The next tips are going to give you more harvests than topping your peppers will.
Alright, you might wonder how this tip is going to get you bigger harvests but here’s the thing. If you want big plants, you need be prepared in advance for them to get big. This means securing them early and continuously typing them up. Because they’re going to get big, they’re going to branch out, and when they’re loaded with fruit – they can easily tip over or break in wind or heavy rains.
The above photo is proof of how big peppers can get in our climate. And this is while ignoring plant spacing rules. I have 25 plants in this garden and they STILL grew over 3 feet tall. And that’s because their roots have a lot of space in this garden bed, they’ve been pruned nicely but mostly because they have LOTS of sun. They’re getting sun here all day long – with only a short time being shaded by a small tree. Otherwise they’re in sun all morning, right until sunset. There are no other garden plants shading them out and so they have all the space they need to grow.
In my opinion, this is one of the most important tips in order to get a lot of peppers and that is choosing the right variety! If you want a ton of peppers, choose varieties that are super productive such as shishitos, super hots, and jalapenos. The main pepper you see in the grocery store are large, sweet bell peppers but these aren’t the best variety for us cold season gardeners. The large bell peppers won’t produce at the same quantity as smaller ones do because they take up more energy to produce. And the peppers available at the store are either grown out of country or in a greenhouse which doesn’t make them the best variety for your home garden. Plus they aren’t even the best variety in terms of flavours! So expand your selection, look for smaller peppers and you’ll be rewarded with large harvests.
Gardening Advice for Short Season Gardeners
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