Hey, I live 50 miles south of you.

I have had tremendous luck growing jalapenos, japones, and various sundry other peppers until landing on my favorite, the habanero. and that is doing great too.

i think you'll find more peppers will grow fine here than wont.

the only thing i have a hard time with is my soil. you are probably in the same situation, i.e. sugar sand. all my lawn is 2 inches of soil and grass sitting on sugar sand. I mainly do container (3-5 gal) plants since i can control the moisture level and the soil better, but i did grow some corn in raised beds and that seemed to work OK. The only issue is watering. since the sand out here holds no water its always feast or famine, and i havent set up an automatic irrigation system, but i plan to.

Anyhow right now I have habaneros still growing strong, recently I took my old and ailing habanero plant and gun off all the nodes and cloned them, so now I have about 10. some nodes took off better than others, somee died, but I have 2 nodes that are turning into very prolific plants.

ok i'm rambling. to end this, FL is great for peppers, we have a huge growing season.

I do think the "soil" here is my problem.3" of topsoil after removing the sod,then what must be fill,lots of shells,looks like a lot of clay.Drainage is terrible.I dug holes about 1.5'
deep and filled them with pre-fertilized soil.I'll probably go with a raised bed setup next.

I stick with pots here in Florida, mainly because of the poor soil and virtually no water retention in such a sandy soil. Many strange insects that make it a challenge, but Habs seem to grow well here.

I live 50 miles north of you and grow both. Container plants, 5 to 15 gal and have two plants, a hungarian hot wax and a green sweet pepper that are in their third years. I also plant a garden each spring in raised beds. The trick to raised beds is using plastic under the soil. I poke holes in the plastic with a pitchfork so the soil doesn't remain wet. I grow habs, sweets, cayennes, hot wax, hot cherrys and a few others. This will be my first year growing with seeds from TGS, but already have about 15 sprouts with their second leaves in a home made seed starting box with grow lights and a heat lamp.

Thanks,I have an area I plan on setting up for starting plants,didnt know if this was too early to start seeds or not.I dont have much room to keep plants indoors.

I would think this is the best time to start seeds. It'll be the end of January when you transplant for the last or next to last time. I usually plant out around Feb 13. It's still a little breezy but the days are longer and the heat is just starting to build. Keep me posted as to how you make out this year and I'll do the same.

I'm germinating my seeds now. I figure, these habaneros can take a month all by themself to just germinate, so that'll knock me solidly into january right after the last frost.

so yeah, the flag is down, and the race has started already, so get going :)

OK!I better get my butt in gear!I'll keep everyone posted on my progress!Thanks all!

If you all have any questions relating to growing chiles in Florida, I would be happy to help out: email me directly at aboatman(at)hcso.tampa.fl.us

Chance/Allen/Boat

I live not too far north of you in Sarasota, I use pots exclusively after mainy failed attempts of planting them in the ground. I always seem to be starting new seeds independant of whenever the trend is to start new plants, I don't think it applies to FLorida at all. Well Dec-Feb plants arent really producing fruit but I still start plants during this time so I have peppers all year round.