To successfully grow peppers from seed, it's important to start them indoors at least 6-8 weeks prior to transplanting outdoors. This helps keep them warm and provide perfect conditions to get a faster head start growing so that they can produce a lot of peppers in the summer months. It is especially important to start them indoors if you live in a short season climate, as many of the hot peppers need at least 80-90+ days to produce peppers.
Start seeds in a good seedling starter mix (avoid peat!). This is important so that the medium is fast draining and loose. Keep the seeds moist and warm at 80-90˚ F by using a seedling heat mat until they germinate. Be patient, they can take 7-21+ days to sprout depending on the pepper and age of the seed.
Once sprouted, provide air circulation and/or movement by brushing them with your hands. This will help them grow more stout and avoid legginess and damping off.
Provide supplemental lighting for 12-16 hours a day (an old fluorescent light will do or there are lots of new LED grow light strips that work well). We like to grow ours near a sunny window with some LED strips for added light, but we have roo for that – you can also grow them in a basement as long as you provided supplemental lighting.
You can also start peppers earlier than 6-8 weeks prior to transplanting outdoors, but it is good to transplant them into larger pots if their roots fill out the existing soil – the larger the root ball, the faster your peppers will grow after transplanting into pots or the garden in the summer. Though most of us treat them as annuals, peppers can be perennial and live for many years if protected from frost, whether by growing in a tropical climate or by growing them indoors over the winter.
Never over-water your pepper seedlings! They hate soggy, wet feet, so let the mix dry out slightly between watering. This will also help prevent fungus gnats and other soggy soil problems.
See our top 12 tips for growing peppers from seed »
You can also grow our Fastest Growing Peppers which start to harvest between 57-70~ days after germination, so you can get more ripe peppers in a short season climate, or just have them earlier and provide more peppers all season long. Early Jalapenos and several other Jalapeno varieties like the super spicy Lemon Spice Jalapeno, or the 80,000 Scoville Orange Spice Jalapeno are some of the fastest growing hot peppers, so make sure to include them in every garden for more spicy salsa, pickled jalapenos, or poppers.
We also like to grow peppers in pots, especially in areas where there are late or early frosts, snowstorms or freezes – this way you can move them to a protected location indoors where they are protected from the cold. Peppers really do like warm weather, and warm nights especially – so some growers even keep their peppers in a hoop house all summer, and close it at night to trap the heat and get the peppers to produce more pods – this works very well with the super hot peppers like the Carolina Reaper.
So to summarize, there is no exact time for when you should start pepper seeds indoors – but we do recommend starting them at least 6-8 weeks prior to transplanting outdoors if you live in an area with winters. This will allow you to have robust plants that have a head start on the season and will produce lots of peppers for you before winter again returns. Some people grow peppers year-round by bringing them indoors in the winters, and back outside in the spring once all chance of frost has passed. Of course, if you live in growing zones 9 to 11, your peppers will behave as a perennials and can grow and produce for many years.
Check out more of our tips for growing peppers from seed »
Happy growing!
