I bought a pack of 4 Hungarian Wax starts from a local nursery and put 2 in my yard, and 2 in my parent’s yard. I don’t preserve these, I just need some mildly spicy peppers for frying. One of my “Hungarian Wax” peppers is something else. I like it much better. Better tasting, a little bit spicier, and a far more productive plant. I have 2 of the peppers pictured alongside a small Hungarian Wax pepper for comparison. Any idea what it is? I’d like to get this instead of the HW next year.
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Let it ripen more to see what color. Looks sort of like a banana pepper. Then it should be yellow. It could be some cross with wax from collected seed. Best keep some seeds to grow again.
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I have planted seeds saved from good peppers. They usually turn out to be a different type of pepper due to cross pollination. I tried Jalapeño seeds one year, but they must have been pollinated by a bell pepper because they got big and box-shaped…still had jalapeño flavor, though.
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Near this plant are Hungarian Wax, Everman jalepeno, California Wonder bell pepper, Lady Bell bell pepper, and Thai Hot. I don’t think saving seeds will result in me getting anything close to true to seed.
I was hoping this was a case of a misplanted seed or a customer swapping a plant around.
Take a cutting and get it rooted indoors, then keep it in container through the winter to plant out next year. That way you don’t have a big plant that has to go through shock, and you start with a mature plant that’s identical. Plus it’s a lot easier to make sure a cutting is pest free than an whole plant and outside soil. If it produces any bloom indoors, you can shake the plant gently to get it to self pollinate and you can get fruit and seeds from that.
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Thanks, I’m going to try that. This plant is truly a monster sized plant. Some other peppers nearby appeared to get hit with some bacterial spot, but there was no blight of any kind on these. Whatever this is, it’s my new favorite frying pepper. If it is a “new” pepper then hopefully doing what you suggested will mean I can save it.
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All my plants are in containers to being with, so I was going to just bring them in. But then I saw the bugs living in the containers lol. So I’ll be taking some cuttings soon, decontaminate, and stick them under some LEDs. I’m going try experiment and do the same with A dwarf primocane blackberry, see if I can get a mini berry patch to play with through the winter, then just put it out in a bed next spring.
Also, just saw this video, great tips for saving your own seeds
https://youtu.be/blBNfjoZFFg
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Peppers naturally cross at a rate of about 5%. This means your plant would produce 19 out of 20 seed from self-pollination. If you can let a few of the peppers mature and save the seed, you can easily grow plants next year from the saved seed.
That said, from the look of your peppers and description of the plant, there is a very high probability it is an F1 bee made cross. In other words, saving seed might not reproduce true to type plants next year. I would still take a chance and see what happens. Hedge your bets by rooting a cutting from your plant just in case the seed don’t do the job.
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I have been doing this for about 6 years now and it’s a blast. I have not bought tomato or pepper seeds in years. I have a few I like and just keep them going. Only once was one cross pollinated. I went to the year before seeds and got back on track.
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If it’s a hybrid, will it grow true from seed if it self pollinates?
No you have to stabilize it. Grow as many as possible and keep the one’s closest to the original. It takes about 8 generations to stabilize genes. Like I finally got a Sungold from seed that looks like the hybrid, same size and color. I will be trying to stabilize this one.
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It looks a little like a shishito pepper to me, and they are highly productive. Here’s a pic of mine right now.
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That looks about the same. This garden center does start plants for Asian clientele. It’s the only place I know of other than Asian grocery stores where you can find bitter gourd starts. My wife says it looks like the pepper they use for sinigang, a soup. Thing is, the wikipedia says this about that pepper:
About one out of every eight peppers is spicy.
Also, the Scoville rating is said to be pretty low on that pepper. This pepper’s pretty spicy but not overwhelmingly so, to me. It’s a perfect frying pepper.
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To me, the shishitos vary greatly, some are a step above green pepper, others are like a jalapeño flavored potato chip level of spice. Never as spicy as an actual jalapeño, definitely not a Birdseye chili which they can resemble sometimes when small. Some shishotos definitely give off heat. Your observation about them being quite productive is what indicated shishito to me. I just harvested about 40 off 1 plant alone.
Even if you don’t find out what your pepper is, you should try shishitos sometime if you’re looking for a good frying pepper. This is how we make them, blistered in the pan with a little salt and pepper. Also great sliced on top of a pizza.
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