Growing Doomsday
Pepper Bell
This page is about growing doomsday pepper bell in particular. It gives details on how many peppers to grow for one person to survive on a 2000 calorie diet a year eating only bell peppers. Hopefully there is more to eat than just bell peppers.
There are many types of peppers. Most are not suitable for eating alone or the benefits of growing do not outweigh the energy to grow.
A hot pepper is one of these. You may want to grow some for added spice. Reaper and Ghost pepper can be grown for defense against humans, animal and insects.
They can be mixed with food to give your food added spice. But do not eat alone.
Bell peppers are full of nutritious value. You can look all of these up for yourself on numerous websites.
Dried peppers can be kept for one to two years. They will not lose any of their nutritional value.
One
cup of bell peppers is about one bell pepper. There are about 39
calories in a cup of bell peppers. That comes out to about 52 peppers
a day one would need to eat to survive. 2000/39 = 51.29.
This is about 19,000 peppers a year. 52 x 365 = 19,000.
You can get about ten peppers per plant. This means you will need about 1900 plants per year to feed one person.
One pepper will produce about 100 seeds so you would need 20 plants for seed production. Another 20 plants for reserve. A few more for trading and emergencies.
Let's say one would need 2000 plants to grow bell peppers to eat and for seed production.
You would need about 1/8 of an acre to grow this number of plants.
Space out your growing so that they do not mature all at one time.
Fresh bell peppers will last about 7 to 10 days. They do not ripen after being picked, in my experience. Some say they do.
Practice these techniques:
- Split your seeds/crop up into three groups.
- Hide and use symbols that only you know the meaning of.
- Do not make well worn paths to your hiding locations.
- Make one semi-easy to find -- when you look well fed, scavengers are going to know you have food.
Since everyone knows that bell peppers come in a multitude of colors, trying to fool a scavenger probably will not work in growing doomsday pepper-bell.
You would need to grow extra. Try to camouflage your crop. Plant it with other things. But in reality, it is going to be very difficult to hide your bell pepper crop.
But let's think about this for a minute. Color in the stores are green, red, yellow and orange. What other colors are there? There is Purple Beauty, Sweet Chocolate and White Diamond. Using an unusual color is good because a lot of people will not eat something that is not familiar.
More About Growing Doomsday
Pepper Bell
Before beginning, read our pages on germination, soil testing, and soil temperature.
There are three main groups of peppers: sweet bell, sweet specialty peppers, and hot peppers.
While sweet peppers are limited to bell and specialty, hot peppers have a lot of choices.
There are the usual hot peppers but then there are cayenne, chili, jalapeno, serrano, and ornamental peppers. There are probably more but these are the ones we focus on.
Hot peppers are graded on their Scoville rating. This rating gives the heat level of each pepper. However this rating is an estimate of how hot a pepper will be. It is not an exact science since growing environments play a role in how much "heat" a certain type of pepper will have.
Bell pepper seeds will generally come up in 14 to 21 days. They will pretty much all come up within a few days of each other.
Hot pepper seeds can take 21 to 28 days to come up. However, from the day the first seed comes up, it can take one to two weeks to achieve complete germination.
Reapers and Ghost peppers are two that fall into this category.
Peppers grow at various speeds. Bells grow fairly fast while hot peppers are slower with the reaper and ghost being some of the slowest. It can take months to get even a six inch plant.
Peppers can be harvested when green or let them ripen to their mature
color. You can eat many
of them fresh, while some will need to be dried, pickled, and with the
proper equipment, roasted.
I do not recommend eating Ghost and Reaper. You may burn your mouth beyond all repair.
And if you do, drink milk, not water, to cool it down.
Peppers love the heat and hate the cold. They do not like temperatures
below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Sow seeds 8 weeks prior to planting outside. Pepper seeds should be planted ¼" deep in a fine-textured seed-starting mix or vermiculite to provide good drainage.
Even though they can be directly sown, I would suggest starting inside.
I like to recommend using 4 x 4 square black pots or 3 inch CowPots to start the seeds in.
When the seedlings are about 7 to 8 weeks old, they should be 6 to 8 inches tall.
Ideally, they will have some buds but no open flowers.
Harden off the plants before planting outside.
Peppers perform best in well-drained, fertile soils with a pH of 6.5. Abundant levels of phosphorus and calcium will result in better yields.
When the weather has settled and the threat of frost has passed, the peppers can be planted into the garden.
Bury them in the ground at the same level they are in the pot. If you plant them any deeper, you risk rotting the stem.
Peppers have perfect flowers, meaning each flower has both male and female parts and the plants can self-pollinate. Bees and other pollinators are not necessary for fertilization and fruit production but if in a greenhouse they will need a light breeze.
The books say to prevent bacterial spot and Phytophthora, drip irrigate only, plant in well-drained soils and minimize soil compaction. We use a spray irrigation system and have no problems with any diseases.
Sunscald is caused by an inadequate foliage canopy. Prevent blossom end rot with adequate soil calcium and regular moisture. Do not prune.
Big bushy plants with few peppers can be caused by an excess of nitrogen, hot or cold temperature extremes during the flowering period.
Most peppers can be picked green or left on the plant until they mature to their ripened color.
Hot pepper plants will grow to a height of 12 to 24 inches while sweet peppers can grow from 12 to 48 inches tall. I did have some hot pepper plants last year that grew to 48 inches tall. Reapers can grow up to 4 foot tall.
You can survive a doomsday event. But you are going to need to prepare ahead of time. If you have never gardened, then practice growing one. Start small. If you are an experienced gardener, keep growing.
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