What is the lowest possible temps for peppers?

brooklyn boy · Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:00 am

Temp in NYC are now at night in the upper 40's - mid 50's & the upper 50's - lower 60's by day what will happen if I transplant my peppers to outdoors would it simply not grow as good as the summer or will it get irreversible damage???

jal_ut · Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:21 am

Those temps won't hurt them. 32Ã‚Â° will.

You need to harden them off before planting them out. Direct full sun will damage them if you haven't hardened them off.

applestar · Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:32 am

I like those temps for starting to plant out tomatoes. I generally wait until it stabilizes at 70's/50's for peppers. I'm covering the first string tomatoes right now due to dips into upper 30's so wouldn't consider planting out peppers yet.

I'm planning to plant the remaining tomatoes next week after the worst of it is over. I'll probably bring out the peppers to harden off then, and plant them after another week or so.

Francis Barnswallow · Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:43 am

From my experience, my peppers survived approx. 6 freezes and are 2+ years old. I never covered them during the freezes we got those years. After the freezes hit I thought they were dead, but they just kept coming back and producing peppers. And I planted them in the garden as seed in January 2010.

They didn't do much when I first planted them, but once the warmer temps arrived, they became very productive ever since. Then again, I'm in Orlando.

If I were you, I'd wait until the first week of May (just to be sure there are no more crazy cold snaps like eastern half the country just had) to transplant them.

Check out wunderground.com for weather details. Very useful weather site.

brooklyn boy · Wed Apr 25, 2012 1:03 pm

Francis Barnswallow wrote:From my experience, my peppers survived approx. 6 freezes and are 2+ years old. I never covered them during the freezes we got those years. After the freezes hit I thought they were dead, but they just kept coming back and producing peppers. And I planted them in the garden as seed in January 2010.

They didn't do much when I first planted them, but once the warmer temps arrived, they became very productive ever since. Then again, I'm in Orlando.

If I were you, I'd wait until the first week of May (just to be sure there are no more crazy cold snaps like eastern half the country just had) to transplant them.

Check out wunderground.com for weather details. Very useful weather site.

the long term weather is not going to dip below the 40's ,so based on your experience I'll put them outdoors

Thanks

dtlove129 · Wed Apr 25, 2012 2:41 pm

Most of you are farther North than I am, and I don't have the guts to put out tomatoes or peppers just yet. Maybe after this weekend, because this weekend we dip back into the 30's. I had rather wait another week than have to replace the seedlings that I raised due to a frost, but that is just me. I didn't mine planting corn because if I lost that it only cost me 10 minutes of work since I directly sowed them.

Lintu · Wed Apr 25, 2012 2:52 pm

I'm in SW CT and plan to wait at least another 2 weeks or so.

orgoveg · Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:55 pm

I may be wrong but looking at the zone maps, I think NYC is in about the same zone that I'm in. It's definitely further north than me. My traditional last frost date is May 10 and I've seen frost as late as May 15. If your plants are doing well where they are now, I wouldn't risk it. They won't grow any faster until it gets warmer anyway.

Lintu · Wed Apr 25, 2012 4:05 pm

orgoveg, I believe our last frost date is earlier. I'm about 60 min outside NYC and it's usually sometime between April 15 and 25.

dtlove129 · Wed Apr 25, 2012 4:21 pm

Man, I'm geographically challenged. I guess I don't ever realize how far North I am located now since I wasn't raised here. Really NY City isn't much farther north than where I am at all. I'm still waiting at least 1 more week.

jal_ut · Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:00 pm

[url=https://www.weather.com/maps/activity/garden/usnationalnormallastfreeze_large.html]Map[/url]

Take a look at this map. The weather is fickle, however records have been kept long enough to get an average for the last frost in all areas. I wait until seven days past the average last frost here to plant out tomatoes and peppers. That puts me right at June 1. It works most years.

The date of avg. last frost for your garden is very useful. Do a Google search, you may find info that is better than this map for your locale.

orgoveg · Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:30 pm

jal_ut wrote:[url=https://www.weather.com/maps/activity/garden/usnationalnormallastfreeze_large.html]Map[/url]

Take a look at this map. The weather is fickle, however records have been kept long enough to get an average for the last frost in all areas. I wait until seven days past the average last frost here to plant out tomatoes and peppers. That puts me right at June 1. It works most years.

The date of avg. last frost for your garden is very useful. Do a Google search, you may find info that is better than this map for your locale.

You suggested a Google search for better information, so this is not an argument. Just additional input. That map seems to based on the dates beyond which there is a 90% chance that there will be frost at some point. The dates become much later when you take the frost likelihood down to 10%. The map puts me on the border between a April 15 and May 1 last frost date. We just about always have frost in early May. It's April 25 now and we just had a frost 2 nights ago.