What it is
Jalapeño (Capsicum annuum) is in the Solanaceae (Nightshade) family. The workhorse hot pepper. Productive, heat-tough, and happy in a five-gallon bucket on a Texas patio.
How to grow it
It wants full sun, water it moderate, even, and give it well-drained loam soil. Target a soil pH around 6.0–6.8. Space plants about 18 in apart. Expect roughly 70–85. Warm-season annual.
How it's used
Jalapeño is used: fresh, pickled, smoked (chipotle), stuffed.
🔎 How to identify it
- Thick-walled dark green pods ripening to red
- Small white flowers
- Compact bushy plant
Edibility
How to grow & propagate jalapeño
Everything I've worked out about starting this one, keeping it alive through a Texas year, and turning one plant into many — free.
How to propagate jalapeño
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and their cousins are warm-season crops started inside 6–8 weeks before your last frost, then transplanted out once nights stay above 50°F. Tomatoes are the exception to most rules — you can bury the stem deep or root a side shoot (a 'sucker') in water to clone a plant mid-season. Potatoes skip seed entirely and grow from seed potatoes — chunks of tuber with an eye or two.
Growing jalapeño in Texas
Give it full sun and well-drained loam soil. Match the spot to the plant and most of the battle is already won.
This one thrives in heat that flattens other plants, so it earns its space through a Texas summer. Get it established before the worst of July, keep water steady, and it'll produce when little else will.
In a container it'll dry faster than in the ground, so check the top inch of soil daily in summer; pots on a hot Texas patio can need water every single day.
Harvesting
Figure on roughly 70–85 before you're harvesting. Harvest at peak and keep harvesting — most vegetables produce harder the more you pick, and one left to over-mature tells the plant its job is done. The part you're after: ripe fruit.
Making more for free
Every seed we sell is open-pollinated, which means you can save your own from the best plants and it'll grow true next year. Let a few of your strongest plants finish and go to seed, dry it fully, and store it cool and dark. That's the whole point of heirlooms — buy once, grow forever.
Part of the free Texas Roots plant database, compiled by Jordan Polasek from his greenhouse in El Campo, Texas. Free to read and share. If it helped, the best thanks is to grow something.