I grow a few sweet peppers.
California Wonder - bell
Big Bertha - bell
Buran - Polish heirloom
Korona - white blocky bell

The hot peppers I'm growing this year are:
Fish - varietaged
Jefe - mild jalapeno
Concho - jalapeno
Chilipeno - large jalapeno
Anaheim - large mildly hot
Satan's Kiss (Bacio di Satana) - round hot cherry

I may be forgetting something...I've got 22 plants this year which is a record for me. I think I got hungry for peppers as I was digging out the seeds!

Lynn

Hey folks,

Dawn reminded me that I haven't been on this forum for a while. Oops! Guess I forgot to check in.

Since I grow my peppers for seed I limit my varieties so I can give them a few hundred feet of isolation distance. Probably could fit in another variety since the Habaneros are not in the same family as the regular chiles. Here's what I grew this year.

Thai Hot: This is the one pepper I've grown every year for the past five. This is not like Park's Thai Hot. It has 1/2 size or slightly smaller Cayenne type fruit. The plants are not overly large, only reaching about 24" this year (so far). But they are a regular bouquet of peppers. This is a great one for drying on strings and a good all purpose chile for seasoning.

My kids bought me my first two plants, back in 2002, for Fathers' Day. They were from Frank's Nursery in Howell, NJ; and cost an outrageous (to me at the time) amount of $2.75 each. But... I saved seed. It gives me my jollies, each year, to grow these from my saved seed. Usually I put in half a dozen plants, sometimes in a flower bed, as they are so ornamental. This variety loves our Oklahoma conditions.

We lived in Mexico for 14 years. During that time I spent a fair amount of time in the hills, visiting rural and indigenous churches. In certain areas in Southeastern Mexico, they grow a Jalepe type called Chili Rayado. It is normally smoked and used like chipotle. I have to say that it is normally REALLY hot! But it's my wife's absolute favorite for salsa. Since we normally got the chiles smoked, their seeds were not viable, and I tried for six years to find seed, without success. No one ever had it when I was looking. But in February of this year I was back in the state of Hidalgo, teaching for two weeks. Word got out among my students that I like seeds.... One of them presented me with a couple of ounces of this seed! I put in a half dozen plants and we have been very pleased with it, even when it's not smoked. The peppers are like Jalepeños but with lots of tiny cracks in the skin, and, I believe they are hotter.

The other pepper we grew this year was from seed given to me by someone who liked it, but didn't isolate plants. He called it Red Savina, and told me that it's a Habanero type. It has grown well, though I believe it's either crossed or was a hybrid. I got both orange and red fruit. The few I tried in salsa were not as hot as I like. But we'll give it another try. My personal favorite is the Habanero; because of it's great flavor and the slow "bite" that it has. Most peppers like the Chiltepin or Cayenne have an immediate "bite" which quickly subsides. The Habanero often seems not to be hot, and then .... wham! It gets really hot! And the heat stays around for a while. The aftertaste is fantastic.

So that's what we grew this year. Next year I'll grow a lot more of the Rayado. Jerreth, my wife, intends to try her had at smoking them.

George
Tahlequah, OK

George,

If your Red Savina wasn't hot enough to blister your lips, then it obviously crossed with something mild! Red Savinas are so hot that I can't cut them open or handle them without wearing gloves. And, if I inhale their fumes while making pepper jelly, I have an asthma-type allergic reaction, although I don't have asthma.

I grow EVERYTHING too close together to save seeds, but sometimes bag my tomatoes so I can save seeds of a special variety that I am hoping will adapt more to our climate over time.

Have you ever tried bagging peppers? I haven't, but I should think it would work, if you have the time to do it.

Good to see you back on the OK Forum.!!!!

Dawn

I've never really needed to bag peppers as I can usually space them around the yard to avoid crossing. Though we eat plenty of hot food we have no trouble raising enough chiles.

There are so many good forums on Gardenweb that I just don't get to them all! Take for instance Tomato Growing forum. That's a great place. But I have hardly been there in six months!

I'll have to try tasting these "Savinas" again. First time I tried I put two into a quart of salsa and it wasn't very hot at all. Normally one Habanero is about right for me, for a quart of salsa. I used to eat REALLY hot food (even beating out my Mexican friends). But I got gastritis and had to go on a year long bland diet. After that I decided I didn't need to work all the way back up to "Fire eater."

I'll try to check in more often : )

George,

If you haven't made it over to the Tomato Growing Forum for about six months....wow, you have a lot of catching up to do! :)

I can't imagine a forum with more activity than the Tomato Growing forum. I don't get over to it as often as I like, and I never manage to catch up on all the threads I've missed there.

Dawn

My stomach gave out on hot peppers a long time ago, still my DH grows his own but I don't pay attention to variety. What I do care about are my Bell Peppers. I have an outstanding "secret" stuffed pepper recipe from my mother and when things cool down in fall I actually have time to cook again. Who knew that home grown Bell Peppers would taste so much better then store bought? Anyway after trying various seed types over the years I've settled on "Juniper" as my favorite. For one thing, in a stuffing pepper you want something that is 4 lobed so that it will stand up well in the baking container. Juniper has had the best production of uniform size (large) and lobes that I've tried. It also has a nice green pepper taste. Now if all you veggie seed savers would tell me how to save my Zinnia seeds I would be happy. The one lone plant I grow now is from the last seed I had and I can not find that variety for sale any more.

I've got a short list: Ancho/Poblano, and 3 Red Beauty,1 Whopper, 1 Jalapeno plant.

Dawn, I am glad you posted about peppers, I didn't even realize that the Ancho were not considered Poblano until they turn red. I want to use them to make enchilada sauce. Now I am wondering do all green bell peppers turn red too?

I also didn't realize that some ornamental peppers were not edible. I had heard of some being used in flower beds, but thought they were edible.

After reading everybody's list I am already excited about next spring. I thought Macmex's pepper plant was so pretty, that I started making plans to put peppers in my flower beds for next year, the only place I will have enough room.

Hi Everyone!

Mary,

Thanks for sharing the info on Jupiter. I haven't grown it but have heard it is an excellent variety.

I'll answer your zinnia seed saving question on a separate thread, so the zinnia info doesn't get 'lost' here on this peper thread and will be easily found by anyone doing a 'zinnia' search on this forum.

Sheri,

Most sweet bell peppers do turn red at maturity, but not all do.

The green bells that ripen to red as they mature include, but are not limited to, the following: Jupiter, Yolo Wonder, Bell Boy F1, Big Bertha F1, Bell Captain F-2, California, and Northstar.

Although many gardeners think of peppers as a 'vegetable' and I often refer to them as a 'fruit' or 'pepper pod', they are, technically, berries and come in many colors--green, red, brown, white, yellow, purple, and orange. In most commercial varieties, they start out green and then turn either red, orange or yellow. There are a couple that turn from dark green to yellow to orange to red. Almost all sweet purple and white peppers start out purple or white and stay purple or white, although a lot of purple hot peppers will eventually turn red.

Most sweet bell peppers start out a dark green and stay that color for quite a while before turning a light green and then a sort-of-chocolatey-brown shade which is actually just a combination of red and green pigments at that point. They then turn a deeper red. Once they reach the red stage, I wait for then to soften slightly before I pick them.

When we eat green bell peppers, we are actually eating immature, or unripe, produce. I don't know for sure just why we so happily eat a green pepper that is not fully ripe when we won't/don't eat a green tomato that is not fully ripe (unless eating them as fried green tomatoes or in chow-chow). I suspect it is because we all grow up eating green peppers and think it is 'normal' to do so. I also think it is probably the commercial veggie growers that are responsible for this practice--peppers picked green are firmer, suffer less bruising and damage during shipping, and have a longer shelf life in grocery stores. (These are virtually the same reasons grocery-store tomatoes are picked and shipped green.....and don't taste so great either.) By contrast, peppers picked and sold in their ripe or partically ripe colors of yellow, orange and red bruise easily and rot fairly fast if not purchased and used soon after they turn to their non-green color. The flavor of the fully ripe peppers is sweeter and less bitter than the flavor of green peppers.

As far as the issue of the 'berries' of ornamental peppers, many can be eaten, although they usually aren't. Ornamental peppers tend to produce VERY HOT peppers that are too hot for most people. If the ornamental peppers are edible, most catalog descriptions OR seed packet info so states.....or you can google a given ornamental pepper to find out if it is edible, or you can ask the pepper afficianados on the pepper forum here at Garden Web.

Mixing pepers (both ornamental and conventional 'edible' varieties) into beds and borders is just one form of 'edible landscaping' that you can do. Like many people, I integrate veggies into many of my beds and borders where they blend in with the shrubs, perennials, annuals and ground covers. You can grow lots of herbs in your beds and borders, which leaves you more space in your traditional veggie garden for the veggies. I have grown the following veggies in beds or borders that are not, technically, vegetable gardens: chives, onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, Swiss Chard, eggplant, melons, gourds and squash (on the fence behind a mixed bed of shrubs, perrenials and annuals), and carrots.

Edible landscaping is a great way to squeeze in more veggies than you have room for.

Dawn

Just remember, if you wish to save seed, that peppers should have more isolation distance than tomatoes. I give mine a minimum of 50, but usually at least 100' distance from other varieties, if I'm going to save seed. There are a number of scientific families of peppers. For instance, Habaneros are c. chinese and most of the hot and sweet peppers we normally grow are Capsicum annuum. Thus, you can plant Habaneros right with a bell pepper, for instance, and they will not cross.

The Thai Hot I grow is from the the usual c. annuum family. Hence, for isolation purposes, it often makes sense to plant it in a flower garden, away from other peppers. One year, in NJ, I put in a mass planting on the berm in front of our house. It was spectacular!

George,

I don't usually save pepper seeds myself because I cannot give them the proper isolation!

This year I wanted to have a huge mass planting of all kinds of ornamental and edible peppers in a a pepper-only border, but the excessive rains that lasted for so long kept me from getting that raised bed built and planted.
I still had a lot of peppers in the veggie garden, and about another 30 plants in containers. I am hoping that next year I will get to fulfill my plan for a massive pepper-only bed.

Hearing that your mass planting on your berm in NJ was spectacular just makes me more determined to do it!

Dawn

If my fingers and my brain ever worked in concert I might actually make sense. The Bell pepper I like is Jupiter, not Juniper.

I need to grow some fooled you jalepenos next year, regular Jalapeno are too hot for us. I was wondering how hot the Serrano and Thai Hot is?

Mary, Well, my eyes saw 'Juniper' and thought "Jupiter', so I guess it all worked out. :)

Sheri, Fooled You is terrific if you don't want ANY heat. Even I, pepper wimp that I am, like some heat.
So, if you want to grow one of the milder jalapenos, Texas A & M University has developed two that are relatively mild, in comparison to other jalapenos. They are TAM Mild Jalapeno and Jalapa.

You might try to make your salsa with a mix of either of the mild jalapenos and Fooled You so you could have some delicious flavor from Fooled You and mild heat from TAM Mild Jalapeno or Jalapa. Or, you could make your salsa with Fooled You and add a small amount of canned jalapeno peppers, diced (wear gloves!) for some heat. Canned jalapenos are not as hot as fresh ones. And, if you ever want to make something really, really unbearably hot, use dried jalapeno powder!

Several years ago, Texas A & M announced they were developing a mild hybrid habanero pepper that would only be 2,000 to 3,000 Scoville heat units but would have that great habanero flavor. That's one I'll try when it finally makes it onto the commercial market.

Scoville Heat Units are approximate only. The more stress (of any kind, but especially heat/drought) a hot pepper plant is exposed to, the hotter the peppers it produces. Here are some Scoville Heat Unit Numbers:

Bell Peppers 0

Pimento, Pepperocini 100-500

Anaheim 500-1,000

Poblano 1,000-1,5000

Rocotillo 1,500-2,500

Jalapeno 2,500-8,000

Serrano 10,000-23,000

Aji (most, there are some that are milder), Cayenne, Tabasco 30,000-50,000

Chiltepin, Thai 50,000-100,000

Jamaican 100,000-200,000

Habanero, Scotch Bonnet 100,000-350,000

Red Savina Habanero 350,000-575,000

Hope this info helps in the selection of types to grow.

Dawn

I would place Thai Hot at about the same heat level as Cayenne. But, for those who don't like a lot of heat, just use fewer peppers.

I beg to differ on the Rocotillo rating, if that's the same as Rocoto. In the sierra North of Puebla (Mexico), where we lived for some years, this pepper was very popular, sometimes reaching heights of over 15' (yes, feet)and bearing perennially. The pepper itself is pretty mild. But if any seed or tissue holding seed is left in the pepper, then it becomes incredibly hot! In the town we lived, young men, wanting to show how macho they were, would have "eat offs" of this pepper prepared as fried slices (rajas). NO ONE EVER ate it with the seeds in it! That was considered unthinkable. I believe someone tempted a somewhat tipsy tourist to chew one down once. He died, ... literally, right where he stood. His wind pipe closed down in reaction to the capsicum overload.

Oh, I finally got up the nerve to try my "Red" Savinas again. They are indeed HOT! They have that great Habanero flavor too. I don't know what happened to that batch of salsa, in which two didn't heat it up. I am fairly sure that my seed was either from a hybrid, or else got crossed. As I have plants produce yellow fruit, some producing orange fruit and some red. All the fruit looks identical in form. I'll just select. It is a very attractive plant.

George

George,

Rocotillo is a relatively harmless, fairly mild pepper for people like me who like pepper flavor but can't take the heat. It looks kind of like a miniature patty pan squash.

Rocoto is, as you have noted, an incredibly hot pepper native to parts of Mexico and Central America. It is often referred to as Peruvian Death Pepper or Tree Pepper. The Rocoto seed sold here in the U.S. usually gives you a 3' or 4' tall plant that is a heavy producer. Although the Scoville Heat Unit ratings are highly subjective (since the 'heat' in a pepper is affected by variations in climate, soil, temperature, stress exposure, etc.), the rocoto is usually described as 50,000 to 100,000 SHUs. I would bet, though, that the peppers you described as grown in Mexico might test higher if they were grown in either a very hot climate or were subjected to an extremely long, hot, dry growing season.

Here in Oklahoma, I can actually nibble at tiny pieces of Habanero peppers grown in an unusually mild, wet summer. But, if I grow habaneros from the same exact packet of seed in a hot, dry, drought-type summer, they are far too hot for me. I have to be very careful when sharing drought-season peppers with non-gardening friends, because they don't realize how much hotter a pepper is if grown in the stress of a drought.

By the way, if any of you carry pepper spray (the law enforcement type, not the pesticide pepper wax spray type), in the U.S. the weapon-type pepper spray is usually at least 5 million scoville heat units. Ouch!

Dawn

You had me fooled with "Rocotillo," as it just looks like a diminutive of "Rocoto." Actually, when we lived in the hills to the north of Puebla, the Rocoto there was known as Chile de Cera (Wax Chile) and the climate was cool to cold at 7500 feet altitude. But those were HOT peppers! The same pepper, in other areas of Mexico, was known as Chile Manzana (Apple pepper), I suppose on account of how they might look on the plant.

Here's a picture of two of the "Savina" variations I've got in my garden this summer. I have red, orange and yellow. The yellow has a different, more slender shape. But they are all hot. I'll select for red and keep this one. My wife is drying them for winter use in stews.

George

Hi George!

Sorry for the confusion....I wasn't trying to fool you, honest! (smile)

Can you imagine how awful it would be to THINK that you were biting into a rocotillo and, instead, you bit into a rocoto?

I love the look of your savinas. I hope to get out to the garden today and pick some peppers to dry for winter. It is perfect weather here this week and I have a lot of gardening chores that need to be done.

Dawn

Wow, there are some great varieties listed in this thread.
I am very much looking for some true Red Savina and Chocolate Hab seeds for next year, if anyone is interested in a trade.

Here are some of my favorites:

Hot peppers:
Bulgarian Carrot (almost apple-flavored, moderately hot)
Cyklon chili (thin walled chili - great for drying)
Chocolate cherry (sweet but mildy hot cherry)
Fatili (Habanero-type, nice citrus flavor)
Feferona yellow (very hot, cayenne-like)
Fish (variegated, dry jalapeno-like)
Fresno (very mild, jalapeno-like)
Jalapeno, Purple
Habanero, Black Congo (chocolate hab that I lost seeds to)
Habanero, Francisca
Pepperone Cilegia Piccante (Satan's kiss, red cherry)
Purira (can be grown as ornamental, orange-red-purple fruits,very hot)
Thai Hot Orange (small, but quite hot)
Thai Red Hot

Sweet/frying peppers:
Buran
Cubanelle
Chervana Chuska
Cowhorn
Tequila sunrise

I have A LOT of seed of Thai Hot is anyone wants. I just need to receive a SASE with a packet to put it in, or $ to cover my materials for mailing. If anyone is interested just drop me an e-mail and we can arrange the details.

This variety is the one one pictured above in this thread.

George