Planting Red Bell Pepper Seeds

As you can see, one of my favorite things is to collect seeds from food I'm eating and see if they will grow. Some time last week, I made stuffed peppers, an absolutely delicious meal. At home my mom uses green bell peppers, but I prefer more color, so I bought four red bell peppers. Yellow and orange are really good too.

Once the food was in the oven, I pulled a chair up to the table where I was working and started collecting the seeds from the four bell pepper tops.

I put them in a small tupperware bowl and set that in the window so that the seeds could dry before putting them in storage. Every so often, like once or twice a day, I would pick up the bowl and swirl it around so the seeds would dry evenly.

Once I assumed they were all dry, I poured all the seeds into an old pill bottle. I saw this on Pinterest, and it has worked out well so far. I labeled the bottle with what seeds were inside and when I harvested them.

That's a lot of seeds! I'm not sure if I'm ever going to use them all, but they sure are pretty to look at.

Once I had that established, I put some potting soil in a cup and put 5 or 6 seeds in the middle. Usually I would only use 2 or 3 seeds max, but you can never be too sure how well seeds from store-bought foods are going to germinate, especially if they are not organic. There are so many hybrid varieties out there in the grocery stores that you never really know what you're going to get. I don't expect to get a perfect red bell pepper from this experiment, but I'll be happy if I get something close.

Here's my cup of dirt with seeds inside:

Fast forward to last night: I decided to check on my cup of dirt and I saw two little sprouts pushing their way up through the soil!

I took a picture this morning:

The two bigger ones are what I saw last night, and since then a new baby with its seed still stuck on its head has popped up as well. 

I've noticed that when growing peppers from seeds collected from the fruit, some of the babies just don't ever escape from the seed hull. I suppose that's just all a part of natural/artificial selection. I'm assuming it has something to do with growing hybrids. 

Once these babies get bigger, I'll thin them down to just one plant, which I hope to be able to keep in this small pot/cup/thingy. I'll probably end up having to prune it to keep it small, which will delay fruit production unfortunately. But if I'm going to keep it small, it's going to need nice thick stems in order to hold up those big bell pepper pods! I'd really rather not have to stake the plant up or put it in a tomato cage. 

Of course, here I go counting my peppers before they flower... 

It's fun to imagine the possibilities, but for now I must remain patient. I will continue to post as things change. 

Until next time,

- Jess