Growing Bell Peppers in Pots

I like to use bell peppers in stir-fries, pasta and noodle dishes and many other recipes. Whenever I cut bell peppers for cooking, I tend to find a lot of seeds in them that I would throw away. Now that I’m interested in balcony gardening, I realised that I could grow this plant and have a steady supply of bell peppers as and when I need them in the future. Bell pepper seeds also germinate very fast. The picture above shows the seedlings at about two weeks after planting.

Here’s what I did, shown step-by-step:

A bell pepper cut open to be used for cooking.

Reserve the seeds. Since bell peppers seeds have a high rate of germination, you will probably only need a few.

Fill a pot about four-fifths full with potting mix. Scatter a few seeds over it.

Cover the seeds with about half a cm of potting mix, then spray with water to keep it moist. Young seedlings need water regularly — at least once a day.

Bell pepper seedlings after about two weeks of planting. Nearly all of the seeds managed to germinate. The pots will get quite crowded when the plants grow bigger. After a few days, I would need to thin out the seedlings to allow the plants to grow well and not have to compete for nutrients and root space.