Can you grow peppers in London?

Some of our customers ask us, can you grow peppers in London?

Sure! Of course you can grow peppers in London and the UK. We have customers growing our chile seeds around the world with great success, from everywhere from Florida to the UK.

The trick is to start chile pepper seeds with lots of heat indoors first to get them to germinate quickly, and grow into strong seedlings before planting outside after it warms up to 60-70˚ consistently. Then, make sure to harden them off before planting outdoors. They can be planted in large pots or the ground. Keep them somewhere that gets the most sun, ideally, and don't overwater them (if it's especially rainy for days on end, we'd plant them in pots so that we could move them under cover if the rain is non-stop to keep them from drowning. Also make sure your soil is well-draining.)

Learn more about how to grow chile peppers »

For the fastest growing peppers with earlier harvests, choose short season pepper varieties like Jalapeno M, Jimmy Nardello, Hatch Green X-Hot and Bulgarian Carrot. For tomatoes choose smaller fruited varieties like Black Prince, New Yorker, Chocolate Cherry and Isis Candy. 

There are many chile pepper farmers in the UK, including the Northerly Chilli Farm in Haltwhistle, Northumberland and The Chilli Garden in the Hampshire countryside.

• In the UK, it is usually warm enough by mid-May to plant seedlings outside. They ideally like outdoor temperatures higher than 16-21+˚ Celsius.
• Plant your seeds early (January) so you can harvest by July, the plants are somewhat slow growing so it's good to start them early to get robust plants by May for planting outdoors.
• You can Overwinter Chile Pepper plants – in fact, overwintering plants by bringing them indoors will result in larger yields and earlier fruit when brought back outside for the summer season. Peppers are long-lived plants, and they will typically produce well for five years.