In this guide, you will learn how to make the best soil for growing peppers in containers. When you grow chili in pots, the soil and its composition are far more important than commonly believed.
Furthermore, a good soil mix also has a significant impact on the availability of plant nutrients. That is, the best soil will provide your precious chili plants with the “food” they need, but it will also have good drainage, as well as keep a balanced moisture level.
Typically, I start creating my pepper soil mix after I have germinated my chili seeds and they begin to sprout. Germination of chili seeds can be achieved using heat mats, peat pellets, or directly in the soil, among other methods (see my post here, for instance).
Table of Contents
Choosing the pepper to grow
First, before discussing how to mix the best chili soil, I will provide some tips on selecting the correct type of chilies. Depending on taste, you can grow everything from mild to extremely hot chilies. Maybe you just want to grow them for ornamental purposes.
I have found growing Poblano peppers, a mild chili variety of the Capsicum Annum species, straightforward. Poblanos are also very good in chili dishes! You can, of course, opt for an extremely hot pepper, such as the Carolina Reaper. This Capsicum Chinense variety may be a bit harder, and you will need more patience. It takes longer for the seeds to germinate, the seedlings to grow into full-grown plants, and for the fruits to ripen.
The best soil mix for chilies
In this section, you are going to learn how to create the best soil for growing chili peppers. A good start is buying soil for roses, and then mix your perfect chili soil.
First, the composition of the soil is very important because if it is poor, it does not matter how good the fertilizer is. Why? Well, because then the chili plant cannot take advantage of all the good food you have provided in the soil.
Second, chili plants are very much like other plants growing; they need plenty of nutrition to grow. Nutrients added to the soil are dissolved in the water. Thus, if the water flows too fast through the pot, there is a high risk that the soil will not retain good nutrients.
Hot peppers have shallow roots. This means that the best soil should have a loose texture, allowing the roots to spread easily. Good news! There are some substances that can be added to your soil to alter its texture. For instance, you can add hydrograins or, my personal favorite, perlite.
As mentioned earlier, if the water flows too quickly through the soil, plants will be unable to absorb the fertilizers. Again, good news! If you add Vermiculite, the water and nutrients will be retained in the pot.
Perlite
Now, when making the best chili soil you should definitely consider adding Perlite to the soil. Why should I add Perlite? There are several advantages to using perlite. Adding Perlite to the chili soil will increase the drainage. This, in turn, will have the effect that the roots will not rot by sitting in excessively wet compost, which can be very useful if you’re using a peat-based compost.
How much Perlite should you add? The pepper soil can be improved by mixing in about 10% Perlite. This allows you to oxygenate the growth medium better, and the plant finds it easier to develop roots.
Vermiculite
Vermiculite is another excellent addition and should be included in every chili pepper soil mix! Adding vermiculite to the soil increases water and nutrient retention, while also aerating the soil. This will result in healthier and more robust plants. We want our chili plants to grow healthy and produce a lot of nice hot peppers, right?! Add about 10% Vermiculite to your chili potting soil mix, and it should do the trick!
Fertilizers
If you have compost available, you can mix it into the soil mix. However, growing peppers indoors may, of course, mean that you don’t have a garden and, consequently, don’t have any compost. Don’t worry! You can buy fertilizers and add them to create the best chili soil mix. Get hold of some Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) and bone meal. Add the Epsom salt and bone meal to the chili soil mix, which contains Perlite and Vermiculite.
Why should you add Epsom salt to the soil mix? Well, Epsom salt is very rich in phosphorus and magnesium. These two nutrients will give you strong, healthy plants. This is excellent news! The chili plant is a magnesium-hungry plant, and magnesium and phosphorus are important for chlorophyll production.
Bone meal (NPK: 3-15-0 up to 2-22-0) is made from crushed animal bones and contains nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. In addition to these essential nutrients, they also contain micronutrients crucial for the chili plant’s well-being. The nutrients from bone flour are slowly released and are a perfect long-term fertilizer for your chili plants.
Now that you have mixed your perfect chili compost, it’s time to plant the chili seeds. Especially, after you have germinated them.
Vegan-Friendly Chili Fertilizers
If you are a vegan chili grower, you will want to avoid adding bone meal. A vegan-friendly alternative is to use the ash of cucumber, which will give your plants a boost, and you’ll also get a lot of potassium (0-11.28-27.2). Soft Rock Phosphate (up to 0-18-0) and Rock Phosphate (up to 0-33-0) may also be helpful.
Note that I have never gotten around to testing the addition of cucumber ash, Soft Rock Phosphate, or Rock Phosphate to any chili soil mix. Please, drop a comment if you have any experience, as I think it will be helpful for my readers.
Now you know how to mix the best soil for peppers. Remember, it’s also important to know how to water your chili plants.
Best Chili soil pH
The best soil for growing chili peppers has a moderate to slightly moderate pH (5.8 – 6.5). If the pH is too low, you can spread some lime on the soil. Testing the chili soil mix can be done with a pH testing kit. There are numerous inexpensive pH test kits available. Many can be bought at your local hardware store, for example. There are also a lot of pH testing kits on Amazon
These kits often consist of a test tube placed in an optical chamber. After a simple button push, you will receive a result, and you can refer to the supplied booklet to learn how to adjust the pH of your chili soil mix.
Summary
Now you know how to create your own hot pepper soil mix, including adding nutrients and testing the soil’s pH level. To create the best pepper soil for growing indoors in pots, you need:
- Chili Seeds
- Soil (rose soil, for example)
- Perlite and Vermiculite
- Nutrients (e.g., compost or Epsom salt and bone meal fertilizers)
- A pH test kit
I hope you found this guide to the best chili soil mix informative. If you are interested in how to grow hot peppers, see this post. Please let me know if you have any chili-growing tips, a good pepper soil mix, or any questions about growing chili. I am happy to answer.
Finally, if you did find the post informative, please share it!
This post is also available in sv_SE.