Sweet pepper · Puente Alto, Santiago Metropolitan, Chile
When to plant sweet peppers in Puente Alto
Main outdoor window
5-26 Nov
The window this page is built around.
Timed from last spring frost
14 September
In Puente Alto, on your chosen risk.
Ready to pick
4 Jan - 3 Feb
If you plant at the start of the window.
The average last frost. Half of all years are later than this.
Step by step in Puente Alto
Each window is a range, not a single day. Earlier in the range buys you a longer season; later in it buys you a safer one.
Start indoors
20 Jul - 10 Aug
Eight weeks before your last frost, under cover or on a windowsill.
Plant out
5-26 Nov
Held back until the soil is warm enough for this crop. The frost date on its own would say 28 Sep, which is too cold for it to start.
Harvest
4 Jan - 3 Feb
Sweet peppers through the year
Against the frost risk in Puente Alto
Why these dates
Peppers germinate slowly and unevenly below 24C, so start them two weeks ahead of tomatoes. Bottom heat makes a bigger difference here than for any other common vegetable.
Frost kills peppers outright, but the more common failure is chilling injury: a week of nights near 5C stunts a young plant for the rest of the season without visibly damaging it.
Seed packets and extension guides express timing as weeks either side of the last spring frost, because that is the only reference point that travels. Sweet peppers are timed from 8 weeks before that frost for an indoor start, with planting out 2 weeks after it, and this page simply resolves those offsets against the frost date computed for Puente Alto.
With one correction, which is the note at the top of the page: the offset alone would put this crop in soil that is still too cold for it. Where the frost date and the soil temperature disagree, the dates here follow the soil, because a seed in cold ground either rots or waits, and a sowing made a fortnight later usually overtakes it.
The median frost-free season here is 265 days, against 60 to 90 days to maturity for this crop counted from planting out. That margin is what decides whether a late sowing is worth attempting.
Also in Puente Alto
Other vegetables to time
Growing sweet peppers in Puente Alto
When should I plant sweet peppers in Puente Alto?
Aim for 5-26 Nov in an average year. If you would rather not gamble on the weather, wait until 4-25 Nov - by then frost has finished in nine years out of ten.
Can I plant sweet peppers earlier in Puente Alto?
Frost is finished by about 28 Sep, but the soil is still too cold. Sweet peppers will not start until it reaches 18°C (64.4°F), and here that is around 5 Nov. Going in earlier usually means seed that rots or transplants that sit and sulk, and a later sowing catches them up.
When will sweet peppers be ready to harvest in Puente Alto?
Expect to start picking around 4 Jan - 3 Feb, based on 60 to 90 days to maturity from the planting date calculated for this location.
How much frost will sweet peppers tolerate?
Frost kills peppers outright, but the more common failure is chilling injury: a week of nights near 5C stunts a young plant for the rest of the season without visibly damaging it.