Hi Joseph! Below is a link to a site with some good pepper information. And yes, the Ghost Pepper is very hot! Here is a link that might be useful: Just How HOT Are My Chiles?

I can't use frozen because of what I use them for. They need to be very dry in order to make them into a powder in the Chili powder. I did not know peppers needed to be blanched before drying them, so thanks for that. All the times on the box are much shorter, tomatoes 10 hours, Apples 6 hours, Bananas 5 1/2 hours, etc. Why would peppers take so long? Not that it matters, just curious. This is 500w one, I saw on Amazon that they do make a 700w and others. The unit says it is 135 degrees on the veggie setting, 155 degrees on the meat setting. Should I try using the higher setting? I would not hesitate to eat raw peppers that sat at room temps for a couple of days, but dried is different? Sorry for the questions but this process is new to me. And thanks for taking the time to give me the information you did. I already learned a couple of things. :)

Tulsastorm, You're welcome. It took me years to figure out that peppers produce less well if they get too cold too early in their life. When I lived in Texas in zone 8 where the air and soil warm up about 4-6 weeks earlier than they do here, I could transplant tomatoes and peppers at the same time, most likely because once it warmed up, it tended to stay that way. The peppers and tomatoes would flower and set fruit at the same time. After moving here in 1999, I learned I couldn't plant them at the same time here because tomatoes are a lot more cold tolerant and can handle our wildly fluctuating spring temperatures here, but peppers cannot handle the recurring cold nights. Tomato plants will tolerate temperatures in the 30s (as long as they stay above freezing and are free of frost, which can form at temps as high as 38 or 39 degrees under some conditions). Peppers, though, if exposed to soil temperatures below 55 degrees for even just a few days, can be damaged. You may not see any visible damage on the plant, but the plant growth often will stall and then once the plant begins growing again, it just never really kicks into production very well. I am very careful to keep my pepper seedlings inside when the weather is cool, and even if I carry them outside to soak up the sun every chance I get, I still carry them back inside on any night when the forecast low goes below 55-60 degrees. I get huge yields from my plants and I believe that's because I never let my pepper plants get cold. I also harvest peppers amazingly early....last year I got the first big harvest of sweet bell peppers on June 22nd, when I harvested 6 lbs. and the first big harvest of jalapenos on June 15th, when I harvested 10 lbs. 2 oz. Last year, I stopped weighing the pepper harvest at some point (probably early August) because I just thought to myself "enough is enough" but I know I had harvested well over 75 lbs. of hot peppers and over 30 lbs. of sweet peppers by late August and continued to harvest from in-ground plants until the first frost in October. I harvested my last pepper from container-grown plants that I was overwintering (in the garage at night, out on the sunny patio on days when temps were above 40) in January, and then the plants in the garage froze this week. I'm giving you those numbers to show it should be easy to get good pepper yields from plants transplanted into the ground in late April or early May after the soil and air temps are in the right range. Peppers are prone to many kinds of diseases including those that make the leaves puckered, twisted and mottled. Pepper Mosaic Virus is often the cause of these issues. You also will see yellow or brown splotches on the leaves, and these are caused by many different bacterial and fungal diseases. Also, if you have sandy soil or sandy loam, root knot nematodes can cause the plants to stunt and be unproductive. One way to know if you have root knot nematodes is to check your plant roots when you pull up the plants in the fall. If you see knots and galls on the roots, you have nematodes. You can do everything right in terms of meeting the plants' needs, but if you have root knot nematodes, you may not get many peppers. I am confident that if you make sure your young pepper plants never are exposed to cold temperatures early in their lives, you can get a really good harvest from them. Dawn

I dehydrate all my peppers after cutting in half. A mix gives a good bit of flavor I find. In some I leave the seeds, in some I remove the seeds. Kind of depends on who I am drying them for, whether their a wimp or not. You will get much more flavor, and substantially less heat without the seeds though. Mixes made last year included Red Savina, Scotch Bonnet, Jalapeno, Ancho, and a few others that I can't seem to remember without my morning caffeine.