Yesterday’s harvest of Aji Chombo and Brazilian Starfish looks better while on the plant than in a bowl, despite only half of the canopy is depicted.
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First off, I’m no chili head. I like spicy things in the rotation but I like to still be able to taste things.
I’ve grown a handful of pepper varieties the last two years. Mostly for drying and making my own powders. I like a good pure flavored chili powder. I grow Red Knight red bells to make sweet pepper paste for my sausage. And just to use for whatever bell needs I may have.
Waltz, a zero heat long paprika type with good flavor.
Arapahoe (Cheyenne) a cayenne type but bigger and wrinkly, 50k Scoville.
Krimzon Lee is my favorite, sweet and super fruity with just enough heat to be interesting 2.5-3.5K Red Ember, new to me this year, another cayenne type supposed to be better flavor. It smells fruity and the heat was nice, we’ll see how the powder turns out.
Amazing, this was my least favorite last year, but for some reason I grew it again this year. Kind of an off fruity taste with some heat. The powder was good when it was the last bag I had left, better than most anything at the supermarket. If I find time I might add them to a variety jar of sliced fermented peppers. I don’t plan to make powder from it again.
Pizza Pepper, last year this pepper really produce a lot of short thick walled green peppers. Somewhat like a really fat Jalapeno. This year the production was horrible. Over-all I think I will just grow a medium jalapeno next year in place of this one and get way more production.
Cozumel Caribe type, I didn’t grow this one this year but I think I will grow it again next year. Advertised as a sweet tingly heat. It was actually quite pungent and much hotter than I expected. I originally thought I wanted to use it in sausage but changed my mind. I didn’t think I would like the powder but ended up using all up fairly quickly. The pungent profile really fit well into many of the dishes I made.
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Pizza is a variety I’ve grown for many years. Very prolific and the fruit is really good at any stage, but really shines once red. Extremely thick walls and ohh so juicy.
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Hmmm, see, now I want to give it another go. Last year it was great and this year not worth the space it occupied while everything around it did great. Maybe it was just a varied bad seed.
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I do mine in soilponic wicking/air pruning buckets…
My Thai in front Jalapeno behind it
Thai close up…
Love red (ripe) Jalapeno!
Cayenne bush – monster producer!
Hot Banana
Yum!
Extras go to neighbors or dehydrated.
And, of course, these critters too
But I get tree frogs in the peppers too, kinda cool. They like to go down the watering tube and hang out in the water… Then come up to eat critters
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The only peppers that cope with our cool weather
Hungarian Yellow Wax
Jimmy Nardallo.
And even those didn’t do very well this year.
We had a very cold spring and a short summer.
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I’m enjoy some spice in my food, but I would say I chase the heat lol. That said, I kind of got hooked on growing peppers this summer starting with just a Serrano, then added bonnies red chilies (all it said on tag) and red ghosts. To overwinter my peppers, instead of bringing the containers inside with all the bugs, I just took cuttings, stripped most leaves off, cleaned them from tip to tip, then rooted them to grow and mature inside.
Then a couple weeks ago I got a couple Carolina reaper peppers and saved the seeds from. Then I made a couple orders for some more varieties, though it’s a new company and I didn’t find much about them. They were sold out of a variety I really wanted, then they got more right when I got confirmation that my order shipped. So I made another order lol.
If anyone has some white ghost pepper or yellow Carolina reaper seeds/cuttings they want to trade, hit me up hehe.
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Where did you get your aluminum raise beds from? They looked very nice.
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It took some searching to find them – those are Jungle Jane beds; at the time I got them, they had a listing on amazon. I think they sell direct now: https://www.junglejanes.online/raised-beds – I was originally attracted to birdies beds (Australia) but what was available here didn’t meet my size requirements as well (https://shop.epicgardening.com – for America). The JJ beds I have I built to 4x7 – you can do different sizes with them based on how you put them together. Wanted a clean look/low maintenance since they’re in my front yard in a suburban setting… almost forgot to mention – a big factor was height too 16" tall. Plenty of room for soil and a thick mulch layer.
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My hottest pepper plant this year, Carolina Reaper, was snapped at the base in one of the storms we had 
The rest are regular hot peppers. I forgot to cover the two in-ground Thai chili peppers so part of it got frozen in the snow yesterday. I cut off all the branches, brought them in the house and took peppers off the plants.
Got a couple of lbs of them. My Indian neighbors love the green ones. I prefer the red ones so it will work out perfectly for our 3 families.
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Hungarian Yellow Wax tolerates our cool weather up here. Many Peppers fail.
Cayenne pepper does Okay also.
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It seems periodically people are asking about peppers on the lower end of the spectrum, so here goes. I like spicy, but still have fairly low tolerance so the superhots seem to be not worth the real estate in my garden yet. I prefer to get more flavor out of it if I use less spicy chile than a carefully measured 2 flecks of fire.
I’ve looked over the thread and haven’t seen these mentioned - of course I could have missed something.
I’ve really enjoyed Santa Fe Grande pepper. It has quite a bit of sweetness to it, and could be fairly mild to quite a bit hotter - but still with the sweetness. What’s even better, it seems to have more patience for my bumbling efforts at growing peppers than many others I tried. Tomatoes? We are best friends! Peppers? I’m still working on getting larger plants and yields.
Cajun Belle is also of the sweeter persuasion, I only happened upon it once and it was milder than Santa Fe then. Would really love to try it again.
Peter Pepper a.k.a. Penis Pepper - the fruit shape is actually more acceptable than name in polite company, I tried to grow it first as a joke, but the flavor is actually great! Forget the joke, now I grow it for the flavor. I actually brought the whole plant inside this year because there were many unripe fruit left. The poor thing sits in a fairly dark hallway and dutifully keeps ripening them up. Or at least turning them red. This one has been quite a bit spicier. Maybe serrano range? It varies a bit too, of course.
Black Hungarian is extremely ornamental, fairly good flavor. It’s shaped a bit like baby jalapeno (a bit more pointy) and goes from green through beautiful blackish purple and will ripen to deep red if given enough time. The flowers are purple! It’s spiciest at red stage, and can get fairly hot then - maybe up to Serrano range but not more. Varies, and mostly has been milder for me. Green and black - jalapeno level or milder. Prolific for pepper bumbler.
And back to the low low end of the spectrum Gypsy. I’ve seen it described as a completely no-heat pepper, but I’ve had a tiny bit of heat in it quite often. Nice when I want to toss a lot of sliced pepper in, say cooked with eggs for breakfast. And regardless, it’s the most easy going of sweet peppers I tried.
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I think peppers need to either be started outside if you live in that climate or timed perfectly and never rootbound or forced into flowering too early and planted outside and just the perfect time. One week is the difference for me between 2’ plants and 4’ plants and usually I plant them too late keeping them too small.
I thought that the peter pepper was named after a guy named peter? As far as the peter pepper goes most humans should not be identifying those as such and if so they should definitely see a doctor. I was given some seeds and told they were a jalapeño level of spice and instead was given a blast that I injected into my nose and was in general a fun time. Same guy who gave me bhut jolakias as a “habenero level pepper”. Since then I look up peppers before planting
For me I need a lower level of spice and use Santakas and red jalapeños as my chili powder.
For spicy eating peppers I enjoy Serrano’s and poblanos and hatch green Chile’s and my favorite probably shishitos
I need to find a bell pepper that grows better and enjoys typical green Chile weather
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Red Knight XR3 does pretty well here. Flavor-wise is not bad, my only complaint is that after some time in storage it develops some off flavors.
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Ahhh thanks buddy. I am honestly just super crazy and will not give my money to someone trademarking or patenting vegetable seeds. I will try a king arthur style and let you know if i find that off flavor in storage developing.
In general i have been doing the california wonders and some years they are pretty good and others they just do not thrive and definitely take forever to put on color (so far that is every bell pepper i have tried though so it may be a patience issue 
)
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I grew some peppers this year from a seed swap that were only identified as being from Nepal. I brought one of the plants in to continue ripening over the winter. Anyone have any ideas as to a variety name? The flesh is thin but ‘juicy’ and the smell is reminiscent of ripe Tabasco type chiles.
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Speaking of Peppers;
Do they mostly self pollenate
or need I worry about hybridization?
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Peppers tend to self-pollinate, but to a far less degree than tomatoes. My usual results are about 95% self and 5 percent cross for most peppers grown right beside other compatible pepper varieties. If you can separate the plants by just a few feet, cross-pollination goes down to under 1 percent. I plant tomatoes and peppers alternating in a row with 3 pepper plants followed by 3 tomato plants and then 3 more peppers. It won’t get pure seed, but they are pure enough for my purposes.
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These super hots were planted about 5 weeks ago and are in dire need of potting up. Who else has their hot peppers growing?
They’ll go into 3.5" pots next, then possibly into gallon nursery pots. Most of these are headed to the PTA plant sale that I donate seedlings to, since I probably only need 2 or 3 to give me all the heat I can stand in sauces, etc. The list includes Trinidad Scorpion, 7-pot Primo, Carolina Reaper, Peach Ghost Jami, 7-pot Jonah, 7-pot Bubble Gum, 7-pot Chocolate, Sweet Chocolate Ghost, a few different strains of Scotch Bonnets and some Fatalli peppers.
Edit: Guess I forgot the picture, lol.
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I wish I could have such healthy plants. Are these extremely hot pepper hard to grow? I tried to grow habanero from seeds. It grew very very slow and weak. This experience really stopped me trying to grow those extremely hot peppers.
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