Planting Width for Green Peppers

Green Peppers

• Peppers are an appropriate choice for ambitious gardeners, both because their seeds are readily available at a very minor cost and because they are generally not felt to be labor-intensive plants to grow. Most sources recommend starting the plants from seed indoors and then transplanting the plants outside once they have sprouted. Unless you live in a warm climate, you should avoid growing your own peppers since they are highly frost-intolerant and since their fruit production suffers when temperatures dip below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
  
  

Planting Width

• When planting peppers outside, place them about 14 to 18 inches apart and make sure that they have 18 to 24 inches of space around them in all directions. In other words, place each pepper plant in a single row so they are 14 to 18 inches away from the each other in the row. Each row should be separated by up to 24 inches of space. This spacing will allow pepper plants to grow to their full, mature height without growing so close together that the plants will compete with each other for moisture and nutrients.
  
  

Other Planting Tips

• Plant your peppers plants in a well-drained soil with a high moisture content. Soil acidity is not as important of a consideration as it is with other plants, but pepper yields will be best when plants are planted in soil with a pH reading between 6.0 and 6.8. A 5-10-10 or 8-16-16 fertilizer -- the numbers indicating the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in the product -- is usually suitable for healthy pepper growth.
  
  

Other Considerations

• Choosing the kind of pepper you wish to grow is important, but equally as important is choosing what cultivar of that particular kind of pepper you wish to grow. If you are growing green peppers in a container, for instance, Yolo Wonder, Keystone Resistant Giant, Canape and Red Cherry cultivars all grow more effectively in containers than they do outside. Conversely, Bell Boy, Lady Bell, Purple Belle and Chocolate Bell cultivars do better when planted outside than when grown in containers.