Hello I feel pretty new to the gardening thing outside of buying live plants and nurturing them in my yard at home so pardon my ignorance. Can I use the seeds from a bell pepper from the grocery store for plants? How would I go about doing that? I heard that you need to let it get old and wrinkly before the seeds are usable, is that the case?
As long as the pepper is ripe the seeds should be viable. One thing to consider is that if the variety of pepper was an F1 hybrid then the offspring will likely be different to the parent, and you won't really be able to tell for sure untill the peppers are ready for harvesting. (I don't know how likely a store bought pepper is to be a pure breeding strain rather than an unstable hybrid). It would perhaps be worth the investment to buy a packet of seed, or maybe you know someone who grows peppers and would share some of their seed? Good luck.
Thanks Maf. I guess it can't hurt to try anyway. I just figure if I can get a bazillion seeds for about 50 cents or so at the grocery store for a pepper then it's probably more cost effective.
Yes and no. The peppers you buy to eat are usually still green, that is immature. Seeds may not be viable yet. If you were to buy a pepper with a lot of red on it, and then let that pepper sit long enough to wrinkle, you might get seeds mature enough to sprout. Or maybe not. Too iffy to be cost effective, IMO. Peppers come in all colors when ripe, but your standard bell peppers from the grocery store would probably ripen to bright red.
That's a good point, even the red ones in supermarkets may be picked when immature and ripened in storage. If you can buy your peppers from a farmers' market or similar you are more likely to find peppers that are picked ripe, and also adapted to growing in local conditions.
