How to Grow Chili Peppers by: Sarah 0 Comments Posted:9/24/2022Updated:9/23/2022 Here’s the fourth installment of our How to Grow Chinese Vegetables series: how to grow chili peppers.We’ll be talking specifically about Asian varieties you can grow, though the principles for growing different chilies and peppers are largely the same.We’ve found that chilies are easy to grow from small plants or from seed, as long as you have lots of light and heat!  This series is a collaboration between The Woks of Life and Choy Division, a regenerative Asian vegetable and herb farm in the Hudson Valley.

Check out our previous posts on how to grow bok choy, napa cabbage, and Chinese eggplant.  In this post, we’ll share farmer Christina Chan’s knowledge on growing chilies, Choy Division team member Nicole Yeo’s research on the history of chilies in China and across Asia, as well as what we learned this past summer growing them in our garden! A Primer On Peppers & Chilies Like eggplants, potatoes, and tomatoes, chili peppers are in the Solanceae family—the nightshades.  There are five domesticated species of pepper, the most common of which is capsicum annuum.The name “annuum” may make it seem like an annual—a plant that completes its lifecycle from germination to seed production in one season.However, these plants can actually survive several seasons in warmer climates (i.e.

in the absence of frost).  Capsicum annuum inclu

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