Dirt
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How many pepper plants?

Last year I ventured into the world of hot peppers. I also canned for the first time in my life. After having some pepper losses due to a really bad recommendation for a home remedy bug spray, I bought a Hungarian Wax and Hot Thai really late in the season just to fill in space. The Thai were mislabeled as Tobasco. I smoked some of the Hungarian and froze a few, and am drying the Thai.

Last year was also my first year with square foot gardening. I grew a little of this and a little of that just to see what I wanted to do in the future. I dislike wasting space on something like onions, for example. I can get many, many cuttings of lettuce from the same space.

Next year I am going to dedicate one of my raised beds to peppers. Bell, sweet banana, jalapeno, pepperoncini, and tobasco or chili, something I can grind into flakes.

I love pickled banana and pepperoncini, but I'm the only one in my household that eats them. If I could end up with 6-8 pints of each by the end of the season it'd be fine.

So, my question to all you pepper experts is this: How many plants of each should I put in to end up with that yield?

And, how many of the tobasco plants to end up with a pint +/- of flakes?

Again, these quantities can be built up through the season.

Thanks!

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rainbowgardener
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Can't answer your questions, but I sure some of our pepperheads will be along soon! :)

But I just had to say, don't give up on onions so easily. The plants grow mostly vertically, so a row of onions along the edge of a bed actually takes up very little room. And having onions and garlic growing around your garden bed edges helps keeps pest bugs away.

Dirt
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rainbowgardener wrote:The plants grow mostly vertically, so a row of onions along the edge of a bed actually takes up very little room. And having onions and garlic growing around your garden bed edges helps keeps pest bugs away.
Dang it! Never even thought of that. Strangely, I was going to plant a single row of rutabaga, carrots and turnips along my beans and peas this year. Maybe I'll do the onions and garlic around the peppers.

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rainbowgardener
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The carrots are good with beans. Plant basil outside your tomato beds, to help repel insects from them. Garlic is good everywhere.

Dirt
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Thanks, I might try the basil here or there. My tomatoes have good company in giant marigolds. Been using them for years. The few times I didnt I had a horn worms. As long as I intersperse them with the tomatoes, almost everything stays away.

imafan26
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Please update your location in your profile so we don't have to keep asking where you live.

If you are frost free in zones 10 and up, peppers live well outdoors in the ground or in pots (4 gallon). Spacing will be important because pepper pests multiply quickly. Tabasco plants are long lived in my zone 12a, and in the ground they can live 10 years or more, in a 20 inch pot about 5-8 years. They also get tall. I had one that got over 5 ft tall because it was growing between the mandarin trees. 3- 5 feet are not uncommon. The taller plants will produce a couple of hundred peppers repeatedly throughout the season once the temp is above 68. In the cooler months they slow down but start again when it gets warmer and the days get longer. I have a couple of plants of tabasco, super chili, and Hawaiian chilies which are about the same size and similar in use. Hawaiian chilies and tabasco need to be caged or there will be not peppers to harvest, the birds will eat all of them and leave you just the caps. Superchilies and Thai peppers are larger and while the birds will take the smaller ones, there will still be some left for you.

Space the peppers 24 inches apart. I don't like to plant the peppers all in the same space,and I don't have space to waste so I have my peppers in pots spaced out more than that, and between and under them, I have pots of shorter plants. That preserves the air movement between the plants and having other plants between them helps in keeping the bugs away. I don't like to set up a buffet for pests and in a humid climate, air circulation is important to hold back bacterial and fungal diseases since my only recourse when that happens is to cut the plants back or throw them away.
I don't collect peppers all at once and I just fill a snack bag and give them away. We like our peppers fresh. I don't pick a lot of them red because that will attract the birds even more. The peppers can be used fresh, frozen,pickled, and any ripe ones can be dried and powdered (freeze the powder and dried chilies and it keeps longer).
I use marigolds, onions for companions too. I also plant a lot of nectar flowers, herbs, and shrubs in my yard to attract beneficial insects. The lizards and skinks take care of most of the bugs and insects, the birds have to be excluded and fruit needs to be picked at first signs of ripening or they will go after good fruit. I have to cover my seeds because the birds will eat the seeds out of the containers too.

gumbo2176
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For you to wind up with just a few pints of pickled peppers over the growing season, I'd say no more than 2 pepper plants of the varieties you want to do that with.

Right now I have 3 habanero pepper plants that have been in the ground since the spring and I am picking between 75-100 peppers from them a week. I also have 1 Trinidad Scorpion Butch T that produces very hot peppers, but only about 10 of them a month. I make my own pepper jelly with the hot peppers and just yesterday I made 9 pints of it with the habaneros and Butch T's.

I also make my own brand of hot sauce that is very good, but also very hot that I keep for personal use and give some of it away to folks that enjoy the extreme hot sauces. As for excess peppers, I give them away too after I've used what I need. I'll simply pickle some whole or sliced, add some to spice up jars of green beans, cucumbers or okra that I pickle for later use.

I live in Zone 9 in New Orleans and if we don't get much freezing weather this winter, my pepper plants will over-winter and come back strong in the spring. The good thing is, pepper plants really don't take up a lot of space when compared to some plants like zucchini, cabbage, okra, etc.

Dirt
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Now there ya' go, a straight up answer! 2 plants per. In order to hedge my bet on the possibility of a bad season, I'll boost that a bit.

I had thought about but eventually forgotten about my own hot sauce and/or salsa. Stupidly, since I have 16 lbs. of ground up green tomatoes in my freezer just waiting for enough time to make and can Salsa Verde.

In my mind, I had 4 plants set aside for each the pepperoncini and the sweet banana, and 2 plants for the red pepper flakes. I might go ahead and leave it at that, and if I get too much just proceed with the canning and giving.

Thanks gumbo, good post!

gumbo2176
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You're welcome Dirt. Like already mentioned, it would help if you put your location in your sig line so you can more specific advice that is best suited for your area of the world.

Your 4 plants would likely be more than enough and I have found pepper plants like Banana and Hungarian Hot Wax don't put out near the amount of peppers as my Habaneros. So, with 4 plants you should have enough to do what you want and still have some to give away. But be warned, some years a particular plant may do great, and the next, it could be a bust. All gardeners have had that happen to them from time to time.

RadRob
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Gumbo gave good advice and I'll add to that a little. Grow 4 plants of everything but I want you to prune the other two plants as a trial in your garden. At the end of the season you can decide how you want to grow in the future. Pruning at the right time will encourage more stems to grow and more stems = more peppers. You may find that halfway through the season you can pull the plants you didn't prune because you'll have too many peppers. Pruning doesn't work well with some peppers but hot peppers usually love it and make 3x as many peppers.

What this video from a friend of mine about production from pruning, it's hard to believe but all those peppers are in 2 4'x4' raised beds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zetxfpcooXc

Dirt
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Thanks, I'll take a look. I'm not new to gardening, just growing hot peppers. I prune most of my garden in some form or another. Last year I took to pruning my summer squash.

Last season I had four good productive Jalapeno plants in addition to those named above. My Bell peppers on the other hand failed miserably. We had a very strange season here last year. I'm in that little corner of SE Michigan known as Zone 6A, so my season is shorter than you folks, and I'll adjust my expectations accordingly.

If I go with four of each I'll have two empty spot. I am considering another slightly warm pepper to make my own Smoked Paprika. I use smoked paprika a lot and it's expensive.

RadRob
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I'm growing some too this year, after research these are the best to grow, Alma Paprika & Leutschauer Paprika. Everyone says homemade is so much better than store bought.

Dirt
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I do a lot of smoking, everything from peppers to ice. Also make my own sausage. In fact, I just made a big ol' batch of jambalaya with my own home grown tomatoes, peppers, and Andouille. Man, it tastes so much better when it's fresh. Better for you too!

The Leutschauer look interesting. I was considering these Beaver Dam just because they are good for my area.

https://natureandnurtureseeds.com/collec ... beaver-dam



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