How I Started My Small Pepper Garden in Port Harcourt

Once Upon a Gardening Time, I grew Peppers in Sacks and containers. Growing Pepper in Sacks at Home has been a very interesting Journey for me as a peasant gardener.

In 2024, I decided to plant habanero pepper in my small kitchen garden, but i didn't have enough money to buy commercial seeds, so I decided to go for seeds inside a store-bought pepper fruit.

I was so naive! It was my first time trying to grow a spice crop that produces fruits like pepper.

I paid more attention to increasing the numbers of pepper plants as much as I could with little or no attention to space, diseases, pest and nutrient requirements.

A healthy habanero pepper from RoyalGreenDiary 

It was all beautiful at the initial stage but things didn't go well when the first set of the peppers went from flowering to fruiting.

A lot of the plants began to wilt, some turning yellow, others having leaves that were shrinking, some having heavy discoloration e.t.c. 

To me, this was very disturbing because I didn't have any experience at all. No fertilizer, no pesticide, nothing at all.

I lost my first set of pepper to plant disease and they didn't produce any significant quantity of pepper. But that didn't stop me from going again.

Pepper Gotten From ARC Farm in 2024

In 2025, I did the exact same thing I did in 2024, but this time I paid much attention to space optimization and pest observation. I noticed that there was a combination of white flies, thrips and aphids flying around the leaves of my pepper plants and resting at the back of the leaves. These pest were feeding on the sap of my leaves thereby causing my plants to die of dehydration. I knew something was wrong because I had seen similar things on the pepper I planted last year. Then I thought it wasn't a big deal but this time I wasn't taking it with a pinch of salt.

Image of Thrips and White Flies. Source: Gemini

I consulted a friend and member of the gardening community on Facebook and she directed me to an agro-vendor. The agro-vendor recommended that I used either Imiforce or Laraforce to chase the white flies and some organic fertilizer to boost the production of the peppers. I also made a video on YouTube.

That I did with Laraforce and it worked out great. I now have some tall standing woody pepper plants that produces pepper for me at home.

Pepper Harvested from Royal Chiokwa's Garden 

Some observations I made are as follows.

1. The plants produced less spicy fruits than the parents of seeds I planted.

2. The plants had high susceptibility to white flies because the previous generations was grown with loads of inorganic pesticide.

3. There was lack of proportion in the pepper production. It produces a few flowers and peppers when compared to the size of the leaves present.

4. Planting one pepper per sack was just all I needed to have a strong plant. During my first year of growing Pepper, I planted more than one pepper per sack and the result was not good at all. One plant per sack is the ideal thing to do.

5. The time I had a white flies infestation, a lot of black ant became attracted to my plant. (I learned this was a commensalism relationship where the ants eat some fluids produced by the pest and they will neither help nor destroy the pests)

6. I noticed that peppers thrive well when given a balanced nutrients. A good soil composition with a good watering can guarantee you'll have a healthy plant

Thank you for reading through

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Written by Royal Chiokwa