Spice Up the Garden
By:� Sarah D.
Keizer
Abstract
Your flower bed is not just for flowers anymore.� A newer trend in gardening is to plant
ornamental vegetables.� Many gardeners
are growing such things as ornamental cabbage, onions, and my favorite ornamentals
peppers.� These additions to the garden
are adding some very interesting color to the flower bed.� Here we will take a closer look at the
production of the ornamental pepper (Capsicum
annuum).�
It comes in many different cultivars with a wide array of colors.�� ��
Introduction
Have you ever been walking by a flower garden and saw
something you just could not believe was suppose to belong there?� Well last summer I came across something that
made me wonder if the gardener had mistakenly planted the wrong seed in their
flower garden and now had flowers blooming in their vegetable garden.� I saw, what I now know as ornamental peppers
(Capsicum annuum),
growing in a beautiful flower bed.
The ornamental pepper plant looks just like the traditional
pepper plants you think of with the large fruit you think of in the local
market except it is much smaller.� The
plant is a miniature of the traditional plant and many of the tiny fruit can be
eaten but be warned it can be quite hot.�
It is an annual plant and can be planted as a border, in a container, or
as an indoor houseplant.
As with most annuals, the ornamental pepper should be grown
in mostly full sun.� It will tolerate
some partial shade but it does much better in full sun.� �The
peppers will grow to be small to medium height (ten to twenty inches tall)
depending on the cultivar.� Fruit can be
found on the plant from summer to the first frost and comes in a wide range of
colors (red, orange, yellow, purple, white, cream, and black).� Not only is the fruit very colorful on the
ornamental pepper plant the leaves can also come in different colors like
green, blue-green, purple, and a yellow-green.�
The plant can tolerate the heat and drought conditions but it does best
when grown in rich, moist soil.�
Methods of Propagation
As of right now the ornamental pepper is only propagate by
two methods, seed and stem cutting.� Seed
propagation is the most common but stem cutting was mentioned in some of the articles
I came across.� Overall thought, it seems
as though the seed propagation was the easiest and most reliable for a strong,
healthy plant.
Seeds
The traditional method of growing ornamental peppers is to
grow them from seed.� The seed is
pollinated by open-pollination and thus by nature, such as insects and wind,
you will produce fertile seed on each pepper plant. A pepper seed is a type
three seed and thus it is a large amount of work to extract the seed from fruit
and store it for the next season.� I
recommend purchasing seed from your local greenhouse or nursery.�
When
you go to plant the pepper seed you have a couple of options as to when to sow
the seed.� If you want the plant for
Christmas time, some think it is a festive plant around the holidays, plant the
seed around the beginning of May and the plant will be full of colorful fruit
by December.� However if you want the
ornamental pepper to be fruiting during the summer, you must plant the seed
indoors before the last frost and transplant them into your garden in the
spring.
Once you have planted the seed do not cover the seeds with soil
because they require light for germination and keep the soil at about seventy
to seventy-five degrees.� In about
twenty-one days you will have little seedlings and in about sixty-nine to
eighty days the plant will be at maturity.�
When the plant reaches about eight inches tall begin feeding
the plant with a monthly all-purpose fertilizer.
Stem Cuttings
The other type of propagation for ornamental pepper is done
by stem cuttings.� There is not a lot of
this type of propagation done simply because the seed probation works so well
and is so easily done with a high percentage of germination.� However, with stem cuttings the germination
period is virtually eliminated and the grower has an established plant much
quicker then he or she would from seed.
With a stem cutting you begin by cutting a three to five
inch long stem from the plant with leaves on the upper end of the cutting.� Adventitious root growth is enhanced by
dipping the cutting in an auxin, such as indolebutyric acid (IBA), and then planting the dipped
cutting in soil.� In just a few weeks
roots should be formed at the base of the cutting and fruiting will begin when
the pepper plant is well established in the soil.� But as I said before not much research has
been done on this method so the percentage of germination is not known.�
Here are a few of my favorite Ornamental Pepper Cultivars:
Filus Blue
This cultivar has dark green to a purple variegation with
patches of purple on its leaves.� Its
fruit is round, about three-fourths of an inch around, and comes in the color
purple changing to a peach and finally to a red.� The showy fruit can be found on the top of
the plants foliage.
�
Marbles
With green foliage, this pepper
plants real draw is it round, half an inch to an inch, yellow, orange, and red
fruits.� I love how they really do look like
marbles on a plant.
Medusa
This plant has olive-green to dark green leaves.� It fruit ranges in color form yellow-green,
yellow, orange, and red.� The fruit is
found in tight clusters and ranges in length from two and a half to three
inches.
Future Work Needed
Due to the fact I could find so little information on other
types of propagation for the ornamental pepper besides seed production, I think
there should be more work done on establishing stem cuttings.� The method of stem cutting seems to be a way
to promote faster growth and a more established line of ornamental
peppers.� It is always fun to plant a
seed and wait to see what you are going to grow but with a stem cutting you can
continue to grow a type a pepper you truly enjoy at a faster speed.�
In addition to more research needed on the how well stem
cuttings of the ornamental pepper grow, I think more work should be done on
finding ways to lessen the heat of these peppers.� Many people probably will not plant
ornamental peppers in their flower gardens because of small children and pets
around.� By eliminating the danger of the
spicy pepper more people would be able to enjoy the wonders of this ornamental
pepper.
Works Citied
Dave�s Garden http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/2689/index.html
Gardener�s
Forum, The http://www.thegardenhelper.com/cgi-bin/ubb/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/28/1.html?