Your Favorite Pepper Varieties

Makes sense! Thanks for the tip! I had a good pepper year. I grow more green chili peppers than anything else, and the hot weather just made them explode like I have never seen.

It’s just sort of of “regular”, not thin, not overly thick but good for salads, cooking and drying. Fruit is about 4" long, plants small, maybe knee high with about 6 fruit/plant.

This year’s bells are X3R Red Knight F1

I like them a whole lot, they may become my regular - huge 4-lobed thick wall fruits that turn red early

Also growing Early Jalapeno, which is very early as the name implies and prolific - and on the hot side for me

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I just picked up some fresh Hatch Valley green chiles from Whole Foods recently, and I’ve got to say that the hype is well deserved. Great medium heat and big chile flavor. I’ll need to try growing these soon. I roasted them and then made some killer pico de gallo. The closest chile I’ve grown in terms of size/shape were Anaheim, but the Hatch are a bit hotter.

MrClint, I have been growing the hatch chiles for a few years. Try the Nu-Mex types. All of them are top rate. The University sells them directly. Seeds that is.

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The peppers I’ve had the best luck with drying are the Thai hot dragons. I pull the plant at the end of the year when the cold arrives and hang them by a rope upside down. Lots of leaves drop over time but the peppers dry very nicely. We threaded them years ago but found there was no need and hanging the plant was much faster.

I don’t have a veggie garden. I have a couple of tomato plants in pots and a Thai chili pepper plant that I am proud of as I have kept it alive for over a year.

The weather has been very hot and dry this summer. This chili plant is one of a few plants that loves this much heat on my deck.

By the way, it does not taste that hot, unfortunately.

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lI have a plant that looks like that but with somewhat shorter fruit, I think. I probably accidentally bred it by combining a Tai plant and a jalapeno (all my other Tais came true to seed). It is not nearly as hot as a Tai but similar to Jal, only with more heat in the flesh instead of mostly in the seed and placentia. It is also tougher with less meat in the flesh, but not to the extent of Tai. I will save its seeds although I wish it was meatier. Jals tend to not be so reliably hot here, some are scorching but others picked from the same plant and time may be mild.

I bought the Thai chili mother plant from home depot two years ago. Last year the mother plant died and this seedling came up. (I think for chili peppers, they are true to their seeds.)

There are a few varieties of Thai hot chili peppers. This one I have is not very hot. Generally speaking, Thai people like chili varieties that produce smaller size chilis, believing that the smaller they are, the better they taste. Also, the smaller ones are for the most part, hotter, too.

I’m growing Blue Mystery this year thought to be a cross between two pepper species. It has blue flowers. Small wild like peppers. Orange to red when ripe. I will probably pull this plant and hang in the garage, in the fall as it is very slow ripening.

Black pearl is producing like crazy, a very cool plant, not sure what I’ll do with the very hot peppers it produces? Red when ripe.

I had grown the black pearl type peppers. Beautiful plants. The leaves were blackish and when the peppers turned red it was a awesome ornamental. My grand daughter pulled one to try and said it was hot but didn’t seem to bother her (she was 4 at the time) I can’t do hot food at all. Wish I could.

After the first year I grew it as a Bonsai. After the 2nd summer I kept it a 2nd winter. This spring I got tired of the care it needed, and put it in the ground. So this is it’s third growing season. It’s still very productive. I may pull it and keep it a third winter. Just to see how long it will live.

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Same. Sorta. If it were the only plant - or maybe 1 of 10 plants, I’d enjoy caring for it and making it look good, etc. I have over 50 house plants (last count) and then add in landscape and veggies, and now fruit. Maybe when I retire, LOL.

So one year some got left outside over winter in a pot and came back! That got me to playing with intentionally overwintering other peppers inside. That was fun but extra work (watering & insect control), and, in the end, did not result in more pepper production in comparison to those I seeded in Jan.

That has not been my observation, Caring for new seedlings is not easy either. Most suggest two seasons for most hot pepper cultivars. The 2nd season the fruits form earlier and produce all season. I would also add production on Black Pearl is at least double what it was the last 2 years. I too have house plants. Currently I have 135 plants in containers Most are not house plants, about 10 are.
I also have this 5 foot Orange Tree habanero plant. I think I may overwinter and get it to a 7 foot tree next year.

Here is the Black Pearl on 2014 09 02. Near the end of the first growing season. You can see from my other post, the plant is about 4 times as large now,

Drew, can you share a few details of how you bring in outdoor pepper plants and over-winter them? And does it work for all pepper types? Something I’d like to try the year.

In theory is should work for all pepper plants. First aphids tend to be a problem. A bad one too. Somehow they always find your plants. So before being brought in you have to make sure they are pest free with soap, oil, DE, whatever you want to use. I tried the former two with limited success, this year it’s going to be food grad diatomaceous earth to kill possible scale, aphid, or mites present.
Bring them in before first frost. A week before bringing in, prune the plant down to a few basic branches, root prune the roots to fit in a small pot. They need as much light as possible once indoors. It’s not easy to do. It is much easier to start over with seed.
The idea is to slow growth down, and try and keep them on basic life support. A little bit of food, water etc. but as little as possible. Keep moist.

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Greetings pepperheads! :hot_pepper:

I mentioned previously how great the fresh hatch valley chilies are --well I picked up some ripe red dried pods at Bristol Farms on a recent trip out toward Palm Springs. Let me say that I made some off-the-charts enchilada sauce with those things! Loosely following this recipe: http://mexicanfoodjournal.com/red-enchilada-sauce/
Yes, the tortillas where handmade. :tools:

@Drew51, I’m about to deep dive into growing chilies along this line. Thanks for your input!

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Thanks for the link, that looks super good. I will be using that recipe for sure. I’m drying red chili’s right now, some still coming in here.

They look like Shishito peppers. The pepper is consistent with your description too. They are great when they are green, but seem to lose much of the flavor and texture when they turn red. Unfortunately, I neglected to pick mine this year. Supposedly they are used in tapas, like the padron pepper. I love them in omelettes.

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