How hot of a pepper is too hot

[armyofda12mnkeys]

I’ve prob grown 150+ diff kinds of peppers. Definitely don’t like the ‘extreme heat’ peppers (although 1 year I put fresh ghost peppers in olive oil and it made an extremely smoky-flavored oil i loved).

I created 2 of my own hybrids to create

1. a low-heat mostly not-hot pepper
2. but has the strong fruity flavor of a Habanero
3. and in a snacking form-factor shape (like Aji Charapita where you have a hundred of ripe little pea-shaped to pick from every week).

There’s a few of these ‘notHot + flavorful’ peppers like Habanada, AjiDulce (#1,#2,#3), TrinidadPerfume, GrenadaSeasoning, Bequinho Yellow, but none of the shapes are very small (well if there are any like this, I haven’t seen them promoted in any seed catalogs). My #1 hybrid used a small hot pepper to try to get ‘small shape’ genetics into the bloodlines (although Im not sure if this is true, but i think i read one post saying shape genetics can range from smallest pepper you crossed in).

‘NotHot’-ness is an interested genetic trait. I viewed it as a simple recessive/Dominant trait as once the “capsican knockout” gene is expressed then other genes don’t matter and you will have no-heat (and that seemed mostly true as I got 25% exactly on the number of hot/NotHot plants in F2 generation, like my chart in the linked post below). I talked to the creator of the more recent Habanada pepper and one other pepper-genetics pro and they said when the hotness trait is expressed (which i guess is when really the notHotness ‘knockout’ gene is off), then a range of hotness occurs influenced by other gene[s] (but its hard for me to detect Habanero to Ghost Pepper heat-levels so I just labeled my plants ‘hot’ or ‘NotHot’).

Here was my initial seed giveaway if anyone wants seeds of the F3 generation of the selections i made last year.

Developing a hybrid pepper (free seeds!)

Hey all!, Just thought I’d offer some seeds if anyone wants to grow a hybrid pepper I made. It actually helps me out as I can tabulate results and see what variations I get in this year’s generation to then collect seeds of to stabilize next year. I made two hybrids actually that I will try to stabilize (this year is the 2nd, aka F2 generation). I already gave out 2000 seeds to 150+ people (although some of those gardeners are beginners who requested more seeds than usual but prob only growing…

I gave away seeds to 150 people (under the group Pepper Testers in Facebook) but only about 10-20 got and reported results. Alot of newbie gardeners hehe. Most of the results were from my 128 plants (and a Backyard Fruit Growers acquaintance in Harrisburg who was the only person to get close to the 3 traits I wanted).

Here was a video of some of my hybrid results (note the plant distance [3 per pot], I don’t care too much about cross-pollination since its sooo rare (think I’ve only had 2 accidental hybrids in 10 years). I cared more about growing as many F2 plants as I could to get interesting results then save as many seeds from many pods as I could thinking most will not be cross-pollinated and try to get seeds from pods not touching the other plants):

peppers 2023 Sept25

Here were my selections:
“13-#1-2” (13th pot, hybrid variety #1, 2nd plant in the pot):
Kinda small, not exactly Aji Charapita pea-sized but still very small acorn shape.
Average hot, but very curious if next generation will have ‘not hot’ genetics and retain ‘smallness’. I think most people grow out F3 to retain stability from previous generation which they then stabilize… but Im hoping to get a few different results in this generation to actually stabilize in the 2025 F4 generation:

23-#1-1:
not-Hot flavor and a peach-orange color (hard to see the peach color in this pic). Shape is long and crinkly. I liked the flavor and the peach color is more rare so decided to grow out.

8-#2-1 and 8-#2-2:
All of the Hybrid #2 varieties were Yellow and notHot hab flavor and mostly medium-large size with slight variations. About the same size or larger than Bequinho Yellow, with shapes ranging from the ‘fat top’ Bequinho Yellow has, longer-and-taper-off-to-a-curved-stinger shapes, and more habanero/caribean-type pepper shapes.

Here is a small-medium sized notHot pepper my only grower got in Harrisburg, so the only result that got close to all 3 traits (the notHot one is on the left, and the one of the right was hot but had a small-medium round shape, wondering if i can get even smaller + notHot in next generation so I may also grow that one out):

There was only 1 plant of mine that got the ‘very small’ shape I wanted but it was hot (a bit smaller than the acorn one) … I may grow out next season to see if i can get notHotness in next generation (I only had 2 peppers of these, very late ripening so wondering if i can get earlier ripening in next generation). The small-size trait seems hardest to get, think around 5 plants total were in the small-medium range from all the plants me and others grew:

Here is a pretty 5-lobed notHot pepper that i may grow out (have to double-check which pepper this was in my Excel records):

Here was a notHot one that one of my growers grew in-ground, very productive:

Out of 128 plants, 2 still were still holding onto their leaves around early-mid December while everything else leaves turned to mush after 1st couple frosts. Not sure if it was a fluke, but I am overwintering those and will grow them out for seeds next year (I started that seed batch separately past summer and planted them way too late possibly and hence why didnt get any fruit/seeds).

Anyway, let me know if anyone wants seeds and how many plants you can grow and i can send ya some seeds of many different varieties i saved seeds of. The more people growing a quantity of plants helps my mini project :).

-Arian