I usually don't plant anything until the weekend before Memorial Day or that weekend. Our average last freeze is between May 21 and May 31.
Although I am thinking about starting some sweet peppers from seed so I should be looking into that, never done it before, any tips on doing this would be appreciated though.
I've grown sweet, hot, and very hot peppers for over 50 years. When you are limited to what few are in a seed packet, I'd start them indoors as a couple seeds per tiny (about 1 cup volume is my preference, gives them room for 1-2 months worth of growing) with a mix of miracle grow seed starting mix (or DIY one of many brown cellulose organics and fertilizer as this portion) and the other half of the mix, your rich garden soil after sterilized in oven or microwave.
Plant the seeds about 1/4" deep, water every couple days and don't overwater to the point where the soil surface stays damp as it will grow fungus, then gnats. You can speed up germination by initially, directly soaking seeds alone for a day in a
very weak solution of tea and (barely any) dish detergent, but frankly I'm not in that much of a hurry unless getting a late start. I do not mean soak them until they sprout, just give them a day to soften up their seed coat before sewing into their starter pot.
If you instead have a lot of seed, like I do every year, I don't bother with the above. I just shotgun into the outdoor area, a lot of seed, scratch up the soil surface so a good % gets under the surface, and let nature do her thing. I do water the soil, can't depend on nature to rain on a schedule.
Once I have many sprouts, I thin the area out, more and more as they get larger.
I've greatly oversimplified the above. Oh yeah, starting indoors you are usually going to want a grow light so they don't get too leggy, and they'll sprout faster too, if your grow light keeps the area warmer, like around 85F is good. After the sprouts get roughly two inches tall (or taller still if they were leggy), it helps to have slight fan forced airflow, increasing the flow as they get larger. This deters gnats and fungus, and strengthens their stems.
Make sure your soil has plenty of magnesium and calcium. I usually use egg shells composted directly into the soil a few months ahead of time, and epsom salts for the magnesium, and/or I also compost all my extra seeds as they are magnesium rich too. A lot of this is work done at the end of the prior year's season, composting old dead plants, coffee grounds, kitchen scraps, anything and everything I have at the time, over the winter and early spring, to refortify the soil for next years' growing seasons.
Like others I still have about two more months before I can start things outdoors, but may start some tomatoes and whatever else will fit under my grow light enclosure (probably super hot peppers as they tend to take the longest to germinate but the tea/detergent mentioned above, speeds them up more because their seeds tend to be oil coated), within the next month.
