Pepper Plant CompanionsWondering what to plant with your chile peppers to help them thrive? Flowers, chives, carrots, radishes, squash, basil, parsley, dill, marjoram, Oregano, Rosemary, cucumbers, eggplant, and onions all do well when grown in close proximity to peppers. But don't plant them too close that they will shade your pepper plants: Squash and cucumbers, for example, need ample space so we plant them at least 3-4' away from our pepper patch. You can also use trellises for your cucumbers to grow th...
10 Heat-Tolerant Tomato VarietiesTomato growers in warmer areas, like the Southeastern part of the United States, often choose heat-tolerant tomato varieties for summer and fall production. Growers farther north may want to emulate this strategy too, now that climate change is causing hotter summers in most regions. When growing tomatoes in hot temperatures, you can boost your success rate by planting deeper, where the soil temperatures are cooler, providing afternoon shade, watering in the morning and using thick organic mu...
Seed ReviewsSEED REVIEWS Thank you to all of our seed customers over the years, your continued patronage helps support our small, woman-owned seed business! We love sharing the love of growing chile peppers with people, and appreciate your kind words. Please see just a small sampling of our happy seed customer reviews below! ★★★★★ Surprisingly productive "Bought (Guajillo) seeds last year(2024). Started early indoors with heat mat. Didn't have high expectations as I live in northern Michigan...
“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.”“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.” ~ Janet Kilburn Phillips So True! Every year we learn something new. In the many years of growing chile pepper seeds, tomato seeds, and other vegetables, we've always learned new things every season! To help you along, check out our top tips for avoiding some of the "experiments" with your peppers that won't go so well.Below is a list of the most common "experiments" we recommend you not try when growing chile pep...
How to Prune Pepper Plants for Maximum YieldHow to Prune Pepper Plants for Maximum YieldWhen growing peppers from seed, you want to make sure you get the maximum yield from your plants. There are many theories on how to prune peppers for the highest yield. We've tried multiple ways of pruning such as topping pepper plants, but we haven't found that topped plants have necessarily produced more peppers than their un-topped counterparts. In fact, in short seasons, it seemed to just put off the harvest a little longer as the plants...
Happy National Chili Day!Happy National Chili Day!! We like Hatch Chile best of all! Are you making some chili to celebrate today?Today, Thursday, February 28, 2019 is National Chili Day! 'Chili' is short for chili con carne, which simply means chili with meat in spanish. The fourth Thursday of February is National Chili Day each year to honor the cook-off favorite. What's your favorite type of chile? Share your recipes or photos with us on Facebook »One of our favorite chili recipes is below. We love pul...
Grow Seed - Save Seed - Share SeedDiversity is important for the resilience of seed systems. Just how diverse are the seeds that produce our food? Here is a chart of the “Big 6” agrochemical/seed firms combining recently into a Big 4. See Chart. These four firms are now estimated to control over 60% of global proprietary seed sales. Yikes! Seeds grow food - Yes, you can grow almost all the produce you need for the whole year. Here is a detailed article with info on how to do just that. Produce per person. This page contains ...
Green Chile Shepherd's Pie RecipeGreen Chile Shepherd's Pie Recipe If you love green chile, then you have to try out this amazing Green Chile Shepherd's Pie Recipe – it is a New Mexican twist on the the classic Irish dish. INGREDIENTS 4 large potatoes, diced 1 stick of butter (or 1/2 cup of olive oil) 1 onion, chopped 2 cups mixed vegetables (diced carrots, peas, corn) 1 cup of roasted Green Chile (peeled, de-seeded, and chopped) 1 1/2 lbs ground round beef, chicken or pork (or omit the meat for a vegan version...
Happy 1st Day of Spring!In 2019, the first day of spring is March 20th – that's today! Yay for spring. We have lots of our chile pepper seeds started, and it won't be long before we can plant them outside here in the West. If you're looking to start peppers from seed, it's not too late – keep them nice and toasty warm at 80-90˚ F and they'll sprout quickly. If you want to get some peppers started quickly, check out our Is it Too Late to Start Seeds? blog post which has short season recommendation...
Cheap Vegetable SeedsLooking for cheap vegetable seeds? Check out our discounted seed 3-packs, with three of our most popular varieties. Our Chimayo, Big Jim & Sandia Select Green Chile Seeds 3-pack has 90 seeds total for just $6.35! Now that's a great deal, you can grow a huge plot of these famous New Mexican chiles in your backyard garden or urban farm for under $7. Check out this Wyoming gardener's massive chile garden and harvest photos below – she grows a HUGE harvest of Big Jim green chiles ev...
Cheap Veg SeedsLooking for cheap veg seeds for your vegetable garden or farm? Sandia Seed specializes in New Mexican Chile seeds, including several Hatch Chile seeds varieties, as well as super hot pepper seeds like the Carolina Reaper, and sweet pepper seeds like Pimento Pepper seeds If you're looking for getting the most seeds for your money, then the cheapest seeds are the seeds sold in 30-seed packs or check out our Bulk Seeds. The number of seeds per packet depends on the variety, some of our sp...
Carolina Reaper Seeds - Best GerminationWe have our high-quality Carolina Reaper seeds for sale! Carolina Reaper peppers are the hottest peppers in the world. People love to grow them to use for hot sauce or Carolina Reaper Salsa. Great Germination:Our Carolina Reaper seeds have great germination, we have had numerous customers report that they have had nearly 100% germination of our Carolina Reaper seeds. Super hot pepper seeds are notoriously slow to sprout, the trick is to keep them warm (80-90˚ F), which ensures a much hi...
Harissa Recipe - with Homegrown Hatch ChilesHarissa is a spice mix used in Tunisian cuisine, and can be used on everything from vegetables to soups to rice or couscous. This Harissa recipe uses the famous New Mexican Red Hatch Chiles, which are roasted and peeled to make this delicious spice. 3 fresh* or frozen Hatch Red Chiles (any variety of red chile will do!) 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp coriander seeds 3 tbsp olive oil 1 red onion, chopped 2 tsp tomato paste 6 cloves garlic, chopped 6 hot red chiles, (use super hot peppers like Caro...
New Year’s Resolutions for GardenersHere are some of our favorite Gardener Resolutions to aspire to this coming year! Gardener Resolutions: Build a Compost Bin (or a compost pile!) – Compost is natures FREE fertilizer and works better than anything you can buy. Read more about Peppers & Compost » Plant More Perennials– to feed the birds and the bees and beautify your landscape. What's great about perennials is that they come back bigger and better every year and they also provide some of the earliest blooms for bea...
Last Minute Gardener GiftsGift Cards for seeds make great last minute gifts for gardeners!Sandia Seed will email your purchased gift cards immediately after you buy them so you can email to the recipient or print and wrap as a present or use as a stocking stuffer! The gift card can be used immediately online to purchase any of our seeds. Ask anyone who grows vegetables from seed, and they'll tell you: you can never have too many seeds! So gift cards for seeds are always welcome as we all dream of growing new var...
Instagram T-Shirt WinnersHappy New Year, Gardeners! My name is Patsy, and I'm the owner of Sandia Seed. In November 2018, I bet our team that we could get 2,000 Instagram followers by 2019 New Year's Day. We got quite close, we're now at 1,650 followers! And it's still growing. Thank you to everyone who followed us! While this $5 offer is no longer available, please stay tuned on Instagram and Facebook or Pinterest for future coupon offers! Of course, you can still follow us on Instagram–thanks for ...
I'm going to grow these every year, they are HOT!! They make great poppers and salsa. Very productive, easy to grow, quick germination and fast growing plants. Thank you for the stellar seeds.
I planted several cultivars from wholesale seed. These were prolific. See all that RED (and green)?!? Looking forward to harvesting in a few days. Thank You Sandia Seed!
I pretty much use Sandia seeds exclusively! A few years ago I just happened to order your Jalapeño M. To me it's the perfect Jalapeño! Really nice size! Perfect heat for what we like! Wonderful flavor with a meatyness that's perfect for many different uses! I make my own Sriracha so I wait for them to turn red. They're one of my base peppers for my sauce! I praise them to all my personal friends and to members of groups that I belong to!
Serrano Hidalgo Seeds fromSandia Seed produce even in the HOT drought of central Illinois this year! I love adding a little Mexican kick to my salsa but also tossing these on the grill! They have great flavor and produce all summer long!
I had looked high & low, and searched the web with many word combinations ‘looking’ specifically for my favorite chili, the Dynamite xx Hot… so I could grow my own. The peppers were sold in Colorado at select places during roasting season, but you couldn’t buy seeds for them… anywhere!
Finally, as luck and persistence would have it, I discovered Sandia Seed Company.
Thank you Sandia! I planted them and had a great crop this year. I plan on growing them every year as well as trying some of their other seeds,
There's just something fun about growing a jalapeno that is light enough in color that some people think it's a banana pepper. LOL! I picked these just for color variety, and I'm very pleased that my plants have been loaded with them all season! We donated about 50 lbs of mixed peppers this year from our garden and I still had enough to freeze some and can more jars of recipes than we'll probably be able to use before next season. All my peppers were from Sandia Seed Company. I've never had such great pepper production before using these seeds!!
This spinach germinated well, and produced way more spinach than I'd initially expected. It grew really well, was slow to bolt in the summer, and has a really nice mild flavor for salads or steamed.
This was my first time growing these and I will definitely be growing them from now on. Great germination and very sturdy plants that have withstood some really high winds. Huge long peppers that are excellent green or red, very easy to peel skin.
Growing these in Florida, (Recent transplant of NM).
Lovely peppers. Took a couple weeks is all and wow! I have several budding; 2 large enough to nickname. They're still in their infancy, but I can tell they are going to be great! Love the seeds!
I got these to make Chipotle chilis. These fruit early and are mild-ish when green, but when they ripen, they are perfect for smoking and drying with great flavor and nice heat. Don't plant too many as they are quite prolific.
Pepper Plant Companions
Wondering what to plant with your chile peppers to help them thrive? Flowers, chives, carrots, radishes, squash, basil, parsley, dill, marjoram, Oregano, Rosemary, cucumbers, eggplant, and onions all do well when grown in close proximity to peppers. But don't plant them too close that they will shade your pepper plants: Squash and cucumbers, for example, need ample space so we plant them at least 3-4' away from our pepper patch. You can also use trellises for your cucumbers to grow th...
10 Heat-Tolerant Tomato Varieties
Tomato growers in warmer areas, like the Southeastern part of the United States, often choose heat-tolerant tomato varieties for summer and fall production. Growers farther north may want to emulate this strategy too, now that climate change is causing hotter summers in most regions. When growing tomatoes in hot temperatures, you can boost your success rate by planting deeper, where the soil temperatures are cooler, providing afternoon shade, watering in the morning and using thick organic mu...
Seed Reviews
SEED REVIEWS Thank you to all of our seed customers over the years, your continued patronage helps support our small, woman-owned seed business! We love sharing the love of growing chile peppers with people, and appreciate your kind words. Please see just a small sampling of our happy seed customer reviews below! ★★★★★ Surprisingly productive "Bought (Guajillo) seeds last year(2024). Started early indoors with heat mat. Didn't have high expectations as I live in northern Michigan...
“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.”
“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.” ~ Janet Kilburn Phillips So True! Every year we learn something new. In the many years of growing chile pepper seeds, tomato seeds, and other vegetables, we've always learned new things every season! To help you along, check out our top tips for avoiding some of the "experiments" with your peppers that won't go so well.Below is a list of the most common "experiments" we recommend you not try when growing chile pep...
How to Prune Pepper Plants for Maximum Yield
How to Prune Pepper Plants for Maximum YieldWhen growing peppers from seed, you want to make sure you get the maximum yield from your plants. There are many theories on how to prune peppers for the highest yield. We've tried multiple ways of pruning such as topping pepper plants, but we haven't found that topped plants have necessarily produced more peppers than their un-topped counterparts. In fact, in short seasons, it seemed to just put off the harvest a little longer as the plants...
Happy National Chili Day!
Happy National Chili Day!! We like Hatch Chile best of all! Are you making some chili to celebrate today?Today, Thursday, February 28, 2019 is National Chili Day! 'Chili' is short for chili con carne, which simply means chili with meat in spanish. The fourth Thursday of February is National Chili Day each year to honor the cook-off favorite. What's your favorite type of chile? Share your recipes or photos with us on Facebook »One of our favorite chili recipes is below. We love pul...
Green Chile Shepherd's Pie Recipe
Green Chile Shepherd's Pie Recipe If you love green chile, then you have to try out this amazing Green Chile Shepherd's Pie Recipe – it is a New Mexican twist on the the classic Irish dish. INGREDIENTS 4 large potatoes, diced 1 stick of butter (or 1/2 cup of olive oil) 1 onion, chopped 2 cups mixed vegetables (diced carrots, peas, corn) 1 cup of roasted Green Chile (peeled, de-seeded, and chopped) 1 1/2 lbs ground round beef, chicken or pork (or omit the meat for a vegan version...
Happy 1st Day of Spring!
In 2019, the first day of spring is March 20th – that's today! Yay for spring. We have lots of our chile pepper seeds started, and it won't be long before we can plant them outside here in the West. If you're looking to start peppers from seed, it's not too late – keep them nice and toasty warm at 80-90˚ F and they'll sprout quickly. If you want to get some peppers started quickly, check out our Is it Too Late to Start Seeds? blog post which has short season recommendation...
Cheap Vegetable Seeds
Looking for cheap vegetable seeds? Check out our discounted seed 3-packs, with three of our most popular varieties. Our Chimayo, Big Jim & Sandia Select Green Chile Seeds 3-pack has 90 seeds total for just $6.35! Now that's a great deal, you can grow a huge plot of these famous New Mexican chiles in your backyard garden or urban farm for under $7. Check out this Wyoming gardener's massive chile garden and harvest photos below – she grows a HUGE harvest of Big Jim green chiles ev...
Cheap Veg Seeds
Looking for cheap veg seeds for your vegetable garden or farm? Sandia Seed specializes in New Mexican Chile seeds, including several Hatch Chile seeds varieties, as well as super hot pepper seeds like the Carolina Reaper, and sweet pepper seeds like Pimento Pepper seeds If you're looking for getting the most seeds for your money, then the cheapest seeds are the seeds sold in 30-seed packs or check out our Bulk Seeds. The number of seeds per packet depends on the variety, some of our sp...
Carolina Reaper Seeds - Best Germination
We have our high-quality Carolina Reaper seeds for sale! Carolina Reaper peppers are the hottest peppers in the world. People love to grow them to use for hot sauce or Carolina Reaper Salsa. Great Germination:Our Carolina Reaper seeds have great germination, we have had numerous customers report that they have had nearly 100% germination of our Carolina Reaper seeds. Super hot pepper seeds are notoriously slow to sprout, the trick is to keep them warm (80-90˚ F), which ensures a much hi...
Harissa Recipe - with Homegrown Hatch Chiles
Harissa is a spice mix used in Tunisian cuisine, and can be used on everything from vegetables to soups to rice or couscous. This Harissa recipe uses the famous New Mexican Red Hatch Chiles, which are roasted and peeled to make this delicious spice. 3 fresh* or frozen Hatch Red Chiles (any variety of red chile will do!) 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp coriander seeds 3 tbsp olive oil 1 red onion, chopped 2 tsp tomato paste 6 cloves garlic, chopped 6 hot red chiles, (use super hot peppers like Caro...
New Year’s Resolutions for Gardeners
Here are some of our favorite Gardener Resolutions to aspire to this coming year! Gardener Resolutions: Build a Compost Bin (or a compost pile!) – Compost is natures FREE fertilizer and works better than anything you can buy. Read more about Peppers & Compost » Plant More Perennials– to feed the birds and the bees and beautify your landscape. What's great about perennials is that they come back bigger and better every year and they also provide some of the earliest blooms for bea...
Last Minute Gardener Gifts
Gift Cards for seeds make great last minute gifts for gardeners!Sandia Seed will email your purchased gift cards immediately after you buy them so you can email to the recipient or print and wrap as a present or use as a stocking stuffer! The gift card can be used immediately online to purchase any of our seeds. Ask anyone who grows vegetables from seed, and they'll tell you: you can never have too many seeds! So gift cards for seeds are always welcome as we all dream of growing new var...
Instagram T-Shirt Winners
Happy New Year, Gardeners! My name is Patsy, and I'm the owner of Sandia Seed. In November 2018, I bet our team that we could get 2,000 Instagram followers by 2019 New Year's Day. We got quite close, we're now at 1,650 followers! And it's still growing. Thank you to everyone who followed us! While this $5 offer is no longer available, please stay tuned on Instagram and Facebook or Pinterest for future coupon offers! Of course, you can still follow us on Instagram–thanks for ...
