We had a goood question from one of our Colorado customers:
I'm debating when I should start germinating my super hot seeds now in December, but I don't want to start them too early as I only have limited room for seedlings... However, I know they can take 100+ days to fully mature so I was hoping I could get some advice on when to start?
Answer:
With limited indoor growing room, most Colorado hot pepper growers usually start seed germination at the beginning of February. Though if you have more room and good lighting, you could start them anytime indoors (such as in December) and grow larger plants for transplanting outdoors to get pods faster.
Super hot peppers do take a long time to grow and ripen, and with Colorado's early snowstorms/frosts in fall, the plants can often get frozen before the pods ripen.
We wrote a blog post recently about the Fastest Super Hot Peppers to Grow, which includes tips like growing them in pots so you can move them indoors during cold spells, as well as the fastest-growing hot peppers so you can have better super hot pepper growing success in short growing season areas such as Colorado.
Happy growing!