Growing Peppers Indoors During Winter and Snow in the Garden

Sometimes I get the urge to garden but the weather isn’t the right kind of weather for what I want to do. So what do I do? I bring it indoors! There are all kinds of ways to garden indoors but for this post I’m going to show you a little about growing peppers indoors during the winter. I’m a huge fan of peppers whether sweet or spicy and since I had a planter pot I wasn’t using for anything else I set it up for growing peppers indoors over the winter.

Growing Peppers Indoors from Seeds Saved in 2013

In my garage refrigerator I keep the seeds that I have collected over the years including some seeds from 2013 of ‘Orange Bell’ peppers and Jalapeno peppers. I planted one type at each end of the planter and covered with a little seed starting mix. Then I put the planter in a window area and kept it the soil moist. In about a week I had really good germination. I’m very pleased with this since the seeds are about 6 years old at this point. Peppers always tend to be slow starts for me and growing peppers indoors is one way to get a jump start for spring.

I’ll keep the peppers in this planter box until spring. A few weeks before the last frost date I’ll take cuttings of the peppers and use them to start plants out in the vegetable garden. The peppers grown indoors will also be transplanted into the garden and hopefully have a great start on the 2020 pepper crop!

Hmm, one of these is not like the others! Apparently a seedling from something else was in my planter! I wonder what it could be?

Southern Snow

If you’re reading this post and you live up north, don’t laugh. We received a dusting of snow down here in Tennessee. Snow in the south often is a rare thing and is celebrated victoriously by every school age kid. I won’t get into the particulars but to sum it up we don’t have expensive heavy equipment down here since we only get a couple snows a year and salt truck usually are enough to keep the roads safe.

What we do get fairly often is a little dusting. Just a little. Just enough to decorate the plants for a day and then the snow melts away. Later this winter we may see 1 or 2 good snows of around 3-6 inches but that is far less common, and far more celebrated with school closings and happy children.