Sweet peppers are one of the simplest plants to learn how to save seeds from. Learn how to save pepper seeds, and grow your own sweet peppers by following along with this little adventure.
You don’t need to rush out and buy any fancy seed packages to grow your own mini sweet peppers, or bell peppers honestly. You can grow peppers from the seeds of the store bought peppers you already eat.
Don’t believe me?
Join me in a simple journey to grow 5 pepper plants from grocery store pepper seeds, starting with saving the seeds.
How to save pepper seeds: Sweet
Chose ripe and fully colored peppers at the grocery store. The only difference, usually, between a red bell pepper and a green bell pepper is the stage of ripeness. If you can spot a female pepper (four bottom nodes instead of three, and sweeter), chose that one for your seed saving.
I’m starting with a packet of sweet mini peppers, these aren’t bell peppers, but they are sweet and not hot.
Cut the top off the pepper, or cut it in half, and clean it out like you’d use it for cooking. Eat the pepper. Make sure to only try to grow seed from peppers you like the flavor of.
Set the seeds aside. If you take seeds from more than one pepper, note the color or shape difference. Or, just combine all the seeds, and see what ends up sprouting.
For long-term storage of pepper seeds, let them dry for 24-48 hours on a paper towel. Then, store in a paper envelope, and then place with your other seeds. If these are your first seeds, store them in an airtight container and keep them out of reach of cats. My cat loves stealing my seed bags… Keep a silica packet with your seeds to prevent excess moisture.
This is part one of the sweet pepper saga, stay tuned for part two: Growing Sweet Peppers (coming soon)
How to save pepper seeds: hot
Chose hot peppers that have good visual characteristics of their species. Set aside the seeds from a few different hot peppers, when you are cooking with them. As long as you like the level of spice and flavor, feel free to keep, dry, and store these seeds.
Make sure to wear gloves when handling hot peppers in ANY form. This includes dried seeds when planting them, plants when transplanting them, and all parts of plants when caring for them, weeding around them, and harvesting them.
Back to You:
What peppers are your favorite?