Starting Pepper Plants Indoors – Seed Starting Under the Dome

Starting pepper plants indoors is really the only way to go if you plan to grow your pepper plants from seed.  Unless you live in a topical location, your season probably isn’t long enough to start your seeds outside and still get ripe fruit from your plants.

Is seed starting difficult?  Nope, it’s easy.  You can go the route I went in the video below, or you can just use paper cups with some seed-starting mix.  Either way, I think the absolute hardest thing is choosing which pepper varieties you want to grow from seed!

Starting Pepper Plants Indoors

This year (2020) I have so far planted the following pepper varieties:

• Buena Mulata:  A purple-fruited cayenne type of pepper (hot).  Starts as purple and ripens to red.
• Tricked You Hybrid Jalapeno:  A very low-heat jalapeno, so you get the flavor without the spice.  Starts out dark green and ripens to red.
• Purple Jalapeno:  This jalapeno starts out purple and ripens to red.  Since I also planned to grow the no-heat jalapenos, I wanted my hot variety to be a different color to easily tell them apart.  Medium hot.
• NuMex Suave Orange:  A very low-heat habanero; it will let you enjoy the fruity flavor of a habanero with the blistering heat.  Starts green and ripens to orange.
• Bill’s Striped:  An interesting striped pepper which is shaped kind of like a cone or horn.  It’s striped cream and green when young, and then cream, red and darker red when ripe.  Sweet.
• Giuzeppi:  A Hatch chile pepper, it’s a low-heat variety.  The Scoville rating is around 1,500 so it’s good for someone who like just a tiny bit of heat.  Starts out green and ripens to red.
• Sweet Banana:  An old favorite, sweet and no heat.  They are very prolific, and I’m using it as part of an experiment.  Starts out a light yellow-green and ripens to red.
• Roumanian Sweet:  So far my only bell pepper of the year.  Starts out a very pale green and ripens to red.  Sweet.

I plan on some more, but the above are the seeds which I have started so far.  I have to get these farther along so I can plant my ornamentals and maybe another cayenne-type.  It’s called running out of space (yes, I planted more than just peppers, lol).

Starting Seeds Under the Dome

When starting pepper plants indoors, you’ll need your seeds, some water and your planting medium.  If you want to go the paper cup route, here’s a post on how to plant pepper seeds in a cup.  However, this year I’ve decided to use the Park’s BioDome for starting my seeds, and that is what you will see in the video.

You’ll notice that I also use a seed germination mat when planting pepper seeds.  Most peppers like bottom warmth for germination, but if you don’t have one, just make sure you find a warm spot after you plant your seeds.

So how long does it take for pepper seeds to sprout?  It depends on the variety, the warmth you can give them and the freshness of the seeds.  I got lucky and almost all f them germinated within a week.  The two hold-outs are the NuMex Suave Orange and the Roumanian Sweet.  The NuMex Suave Orange isn’t all that surprising — it’s a capsicum chinenses, and they tend to take longer to germinate.  Roumainian Sweet — well, maybe it just needs a little more coaxing to wake up from its sleep.

Starting Pepper Plants Indoors – Video

Here’s the video for planting pepper seeds in the Park’s Bio Dome.  Hope you enjoy it!