Everything this plant will ever be is already inside the seed
You are holding seed that young people grew, by hand, through a whole season. Here is where it came from, and here is everything it needs from you.
I found my way back to the centre where this story starts not as the young person I once was, but as a farmer and a college professor, looking for a way to serve and give back. After a TEDx talk I gave, the chair of the board pointed me back toward the Youth Services Bureau. Some doors you walk through twice in a lifetime, and the second time you are carrying seed.
The idea was not mine. Josh Torres and Ryan McKay knew the young people here loved making hot sauce, and they put a question to me: why not grow the peppers with them, from the very beginning? So in February we sat down and built a plan for the whole year, and we ordered the seed.
We set a grow light and a growing stand in the main cafeteria, right in the middle of the place where everyone gathers to eat. While it was cold and grey outside through March and April, something green was rising indoors where nobody could miss it. I got my hands in the dirt, introduced myself to the boys, and got their hands in the dirt too.
What I will carry from this season is the curiosity. The plain wonder on a young person's face at every stage of the growing, the first shoot breaking the surface, the first true leaves, the first flower, the first fruit setting where the flower had been. New life forming, step by step, in a hard place in the middle of winter.
The boys grew them so well that they outgrew the garden beds in the yard. There were more healthy plants than the space could hold. So some of them came home with me, out to Thunder Gardens, and grew on alongside the rest of our plantings through the summer.
What came back was abundance. A huge harvest of some of the hottest peppers on earth and some of the most flavourful, Carolina Reapers and habaneros growing beside sweet peppers, shishitos and Thai chilies. There was so much of it that there was really only one thing to do. We made hot sauce.
One moment I keep coming back to. A young man, out in my garden, decided to take a bite straight out of a raw Carolina Reaper. Oh boy. He threw that thing down fast. Thirty minutes of real pain and tears streaming down his face. He is fine now, and he laughs about it, and I promise you he will never forget which pepper that was. Neither will anyone who watched.
At the end of a season, you choose your best fruit and you save the seed, so the plant can grow again next year. The boys cut the peppers open, saved the seed, and packed the very packets these came from. They did not do it alone. Our volunteers and the members of our Community Growing Collective came out and worked beside them, cutting and sorting and getting it all ready. Many hands are in this.
There is something true in that step that goes beyond gardening. All of us shed our skin as we grow. We shed our fears, we shed our tears. And some of what we shed lies dormant through the cold, waiting, until the conditions are right and it is planted again. A seed is just a living thing that learned how to wait for its moment.
So this is the hand-forward. What the young people grew is now yours to grow. Give it warmth, give it light, give it room, and in a season you will have your own harvest, and your own seed to save and pass to someone else. That is how this works. That is how it has always worked.
Grown and saved by the young people of Youth Justice Services at the Youth Services Bureau, with the volunteers and members of the Thunder Gardens Community Growing Project. With thanks to Ryan McKay, Director of Youth Justice, and Josh Torres, Assistant Director of Programs and Services, Youth Justice, who asked the question that started it.
How to grow your pepper from seed
Everything below is set for the Ottawa climate, where the plant that produced your seed was grown. Follow it stop by stop and you will have your own harvest by fall.
What is in your bag
Each bag holds one variety. Match the small card inside it to the picture here. They all grow the same way. Only the heat and the patience change.
Jalapeño
2,500 to 8,000 SHU
70 days green, 85 days red, from transplant
The classic. Crisp picked green, sweeter and hotter left red.
Serrano
10,000 to 23,000 SHU
75 days green, 90 days red, from transplant
Thin walls and a clean bright heat. Excellent raw in salsa.
Thai
50,000 to 100,000 SHU
90 days to red, from transplant
Small, slender and hot well past its size. Dries and stores beautifully.
Habanero
100,000 to 350,000 SHU
95 days to orange, from transplant
Tropical and floral under real heat. Wear gloves when cutting it.
Carolina Reaper
1.4 to 2.2 million SHU
100 days and up to red, from transplant
Needs a longer season than most. Start in mid February. Gloves on, every time.
Three conditions decide almost everything
A pepper seed asks for very little, and it asks for it in order. Get these three right and the rest is tending.
Warmth opens the seed
Seeds respond to heat, not light. Hold the mix at 24 to 29°C on a heat mat or a warm shelf. Expect one to three weeks, longer for the superhots. Below 20°C the seed simply waits.
Light builds the plant
The day a shoot appears, light becomes everything. Give it 14 to 16 hours a day, two inches above the leaves, raised as it grows. A windowsill alone makes long, thin seedlings.
Room lets it fruit
One plant per 5 gallon pot, about 12 inches across, with drainage. Peppers carry a heavy crop in a container. Open ground works too, given full sun and compost.
The season, stop by stop
The last frost here lands around the Victoria Day weekend and the first arrives in early October. Those two dates set everything else.
Mid February
Start the Reaper
The Carolina Reaper alone wants a head start. Sow it now, a month ahead of the rest, so it ripens red before frost.
Mid March
Sow the rest
One quarter inch deep in damp seed starting mix, somewhere warm. Label it while you still know what it is.
Late March
First leaves
Lights on 14 to 16 hours a day the moment a shoot appears, two inches above the leaves. Keep the mix just damp.
April
Pot up
Move to a 4 inch pot once the second set of true leaves opens. Begin a half strength feed every second watering.
Late April
Top it
At 8 to 12 inches, pinch the growing tip out above the fifth or sixth leaf node.
Victoria Day weekend
Plant out
Into a 5 gallon pot or the ground once nights hold above 10°C. Full sun, shelter from hard wind.
June and July
Feed and water
Water deeply once the top inch goes dry. Once flowers open, feed every week to ten days, higher in potassium.
Late July to October
Harvest
Pick green for crisp heat, or leave fruit on for full colour and full heat. Picking often brings the next flowers.
Why topping gives you more peppers
Left alone, a young plant runs up on a single stem. Pinch out that top tip at 8 to 12 inches and the plant pushes sideways instead, into the buds at every leaf node. One stem becomes four or six. Flowers form at the branch points, so more branches means more flowers, and more flowers means more fruit.
It feels wrong the first time. Do it anyway, and do it before the plant goes outside.
When something looks wrong
Three weeks and still no sprout
Normal for peppers, and the superhots are slowest of all. Check the warmth first. Below 20°C the seed simply waits.
Seedlings tall, thin and pale
The light needs to come closer and stay on longer. Two inches above the leaves, 14 to 16 hours a day.
Flowers dropping in a heat wave
Common once days pass 32°C. Shade at midday and steady moisture at the roots bring the next set through.
Lower leaves yellowing
Usually a feeding question once a plant is in its final pot. Start a balanced liquid feed and watch the new growth.
Fruit still green in September
Colour comes late here. Move the pot to the warmest sheltered spot you have and it often finishes through October.
Saving seed from your own plants
Bees move pollen between pepper plants freely, so if you grow more than one variety close together, the seed you save may grow into something a little different from its parent. Gardeners have found good surprises that way for a very long time. It is simply worth knowing before you plan a whole crop around it.
To save some, leave a few fruit on the plant until fully coloured and just starting to wrinkle. Scrape the seed onto a plate, dry it out of direct sun for two weeks, and store it cool and dark. It stays good for two to three years. Then you get to hand it forward, the way it was handed to you.
Come grow with us
Thunder Gardens is a regenerative community farm twenty minutes east of Ottawa. The Community Growing Collective brings people onto the land for shared work through the season. No experience needed. Just curiosity and a pair of boots.
Join a growing season