When I say peppers you can grow at home in your kitchen garden, you might first think of either bell peppers or jalapeños. Well, if you haven’t already become acquainted with shishito peppers, I’d like to introduce you and make my case for shishitos being the perfect peppers to meet every gardener skill level. Then, I’ve got some quick tips to help you grow shishito peppers in your garden.
It seems like peppers are on everyone’s wish list for things they want to grow in their kitchen gardens—that’s certainly the case for my Rooted Garden clients. And I know peppers are one of the few vegetables I can reliably get all four of my kids to eat.
I can understand why bell peppers would seem appealing, but you might be in for a frustrating experience if you’re a beginner gardener. Bell peppers are big and round, which means they have to grow to a pretty nice size before you can harvest them in 60 to 90 days. While they’re growing, all kinds of things can go wrong, from blossom-end rot to pest pressure.
On the opposite end of the challenge spectrum are jalapeño peppers. You can get tons of them off of just one plant, they're much more forgiving about over- or under-watering, and because they're smaller, you don't have to wait as long to harvest them. Obviously, not everyone can stomach jalapeño peppers though.
So we need a pepper that’s somewhere between those two—something that’s easy to grow and flavorful without packing the heat. Enter the shishito pepper. Shishitos have a nice, sweet flavor, and each plant produces tons of them.
how to grow shishito peppers
Peppers grow best in the warm season, which means you can’t put them outside until the threat of frost has passed (and you want to harvest them all before the first frost of your next cold season arrives). For most of you, that makes peppers the perfect plant to grow in the summer.
I like to either start my pepper plants indoors or buy a healthy plant from a local grower, farmer, or CSA. Pepper plants take a long time to grow from seed, and by the time I could sow the seeds in my garden after my last frost, I could already have a plant growing.
Peppers are medium-size plants, so give them a bit of space in the garden. Give them food by adding a little bit of extra compost around the base of your plants every couple of weeks while they’re starting to grow.
Plants in the nightshade family often grow too tall to hold themselves and need support to prevent falling over during a big storm or heavy wind. I like to either grow my plants close to my obelisk trellis or use garden stakes and twine to hold my plants upright (preferably starting before they get established). This protects the branches from breaking and ensures you’ll get as much production as possible.
how to harvest
As soon as you start to see the first shishitos form on the plant, especially ones around the bottom, you want to come in and harvest those. Then, keep harvesting regularly. If you leave peppers on the plant for too long, the plant spends all its energy supporting those peppers instead of making new ones.
That’s about all there is to growing tons and tons of shishito peppers right in your own garden. I hope you find delicious culinary uses for this sweet and flavorful pepper because you’re about to be harvesting your own bushel!
Kitchen Garden Academy
Become a kitchen gardener. More than eight modules of garden instruction are waiting for you inside the Academy, and you'll be welcomed into the private community, where you can ask questions and get encouragement from other students learning alongside you.