You certainly can start basically any sort of pepper indoors. They are a plant that doesn't seem to mind being repotted, like tomatoes. I'm not sure what your zone is, since WA has many zones, but check out the farmer's almanac website. They have a planting guide, it's more general veggies, so it will just say peppers, but the rules still apply, regardless the size of pepper. You just put your zipcode in and they suggest dates to plant out as well as to start plants indoors for earlier harvests. Here in Colorado, we have a very short growing season, so starting plants indoors is pretty much vital to success lol. They say to start things about 3-6 weeks before your last frost date, but it depends heavily upon the type of plant of course. Good luck!

Are the seedlings from grocery store plants TINY?? I seeded sweet peppers 3/15 and hots 3/16, only have 1 heat mat (old warming tray) that maybe I've been keeping too low, have been switching them on and off of it once a day, I don't remember my setup in 2011 when I planted 2 trays (didn't start many the last 2 years). Have 1 teeny tiny sprout with cots in 1 cell, it looks like a weed to me not a pepper, will wait until it gets true leaves. Planted in mix of peat moss, perlite, Fafard #2 left over from last year and a little Espoma seed starter thrown in. Possible a tiny seed got into the peat moss or Fafard, perlite and Espoma were in ziploc bags so not likely there. I don't know how long to wait for germination - a lot of these were old seed (3 yrs or so), I read in a couple places seed only good for 1 year. But the jalapenos (Early and Gigante) and Hot Lemons were just bought last year, so were the bells (only 3 seeds left but I planted them LOL), Hinkelhatz were saved seed from 2012, the minis were straight out of the fruit (that had been refrigerated but I gave them a few days out of fridge, then cut them open and took the seeds out, let dry a bit on paper towel for another 5 days or so). Will fluctuations in temp from taking on and off the heat (say soil temp is 80 - I think my thermometer is running about 10 degrees low all this year) to 67 degree room temp (60 soil temp?) cause seeds to die? Or just slower going? Maybe it's best to just leave 1 tray on and the other off the heat? This post was edited by ajsmama on Thu, Apr 3, 14 at 9:02

Nice! So many peppers so little space. After last summer and 2 growing sessions with friends around the US who helped me "trial" some things I'm just down to 1 single sweet pepper project and I'm done with it. It's being "trialed" out by friends as a possible final selection if I get close-enough reports back from these people on the seed/plants. I pretty much have something I want at this point and the experimentation with other breeding peppers just aren't going as swiftly as I liked or predicted. I was really excited about some of my other breeding projects, but things were just too damn variable...especially plant vigor.

I haven't made this one but it sounds good to me. Here is a link that might be useful: Sweet Chili Sauce