A lot of cross pollination questions on the site right now. Most years, I grow a pepper patch of mixed sweet & hot peppers - with the two often directly adjacent - and have not observed any heat in the sweet peppers. I don't entirely discount the possibility that crossed seeds might possess some heat... but sweet peppers are not generally eaten without cleaning them. If there were such heat, I would expect to feel it or smell it during cleaning, which has not been the case.

I have some hot cherry bomb seeds if you need them. I don't need anything you have to trade at the moment, but I can send these out if you send me a SASE. Just send me an email from my page.

Jammie, Don't feel bad. It took me a long time to make the connection between pepper production and the cold weather. Far longer, in fact, than I'd like to admit. It was a huge shock when I began experimenting with transplanting peppers later and later and soon found I was harvesting peppers earlier than back in the days when I set out peppers earlier. I think your peppers may be just fine, so don't panic. The effect of temperatures on peppers seems to me to differ from one variety to another. Also, we are talking about two kinds of temperatures--soil temperatures and air temperatures. As long as the soil temperatures were at or above 55 degrees when you put your plants in the ground, they should be alright. It is prolonged exposure to soil temperatures below 55 degrees that often stunts pepper plants or causes them to suffer root damage from the cold soil and then they are slower to produce. However, if air temperatures drop into the 40s for a few days and stay there, that also can cause the peppers to stall and stunt. So, this is where it gets really complicated because I can't tell you, for example, how many hours of exposure to soil temps below 55 degrees will hurt your plants or how much it will hurt them. I can't tell you how many hours of exposure to air temps in the low 40s will hurt them, only that it tends to do so. Of all the plants I raise from seedlings, peppers are the most time-consuming and the most pampered and babied. I hardly let them be outside at all when the air temps are below 45-50 degrees. They spend a lot of their time on the sunporch where the greenhouse effect keeps them warmer than they would be outdoors. One reason I started raising all my peppers from seed was because I would see pepper plants out in very, very cold air temps at the stores and I knew it wasn't good for them. When I started raising my own from seed and I made a point of always keeping them "warm enough", I was amazed at how early and how quickly they produced. Because we have had a late frost or late freeze during the first week of May at our house for abou 6 or 8 of the 13 years we've lived here, I never transplant out my pepper plants until the "May cold spell" has passed. I think tonight will be the last night I have to worry about the cold. Even if it is not, any future cold spells likely will be very brief and I don't worry about brief exposure to cold temps, as long as they stay around 40 or above. Brief exposure won't hurt the plants whereas prolonged exposure will. It is incredibly hard to get the timing of the plants right because you're seeking to get both the right air temps and soil temps in a very erratic climate. There have been days this year that my soil temps were very, very warm...back in March and early April, and yet recently the soil temps have been much cooler. That's somewhat typical of my part of Oklahoma---erratic weather in March-May is the norm. We may have high temps in the mid to upper 90s in March and then low temps in the low 30s in May. Does weather like that make any sense? If I am crazy, it is because the weather here has made me crazy. One key to success is to avoid too much cold exposure, but another is that you cannot plant too late or you are likely to get poor fertilization/production. Here is where we need to split peppers into two groups: hots and sweets. Sweet peppers seem to set fruit best when the nights are 60 degrees or above and the daytime highs are below about 80 or 85 degrees. Unfortunately for us Okies, sometimes there's a fairly brief window of opportunity when the temperatures are just right. I'm not saying sweet peppers won't properly pollinate/fertilize/set fruit at other temps, but just that they do it best at those temps. Once the daytime highs are regularly exceeding 90, it seems like fruit set on sweet peppers tends to drop quite a bit. Now it gets even more complicated, because even though I say sweet peppers, I think it is most pronounced with sweet bell peppers, but not with non-bell sweetes or, as far as that goes, with smaller mini-bells or the Yummy pepper line. With hot peppers, I don't see any real change in fruit set that correlates to warm temperatures, other than sometimes just a brief slow down in the amount of fruit set that occurs once temps are in the upper 90s and hotter. It isn't as pronounced with hot peppers as with sweets. I think it matters too if the peppers are well-watered and well-fed, so I think drought stress may impede fruitset as much as or more than heat does. Your peppers may not be slow to produce at all. Both our soil temps and air temps have fluctuated wildly this year, especially during the last 3 or 4 weeks and it is hard to predict what effect that will have on fruitset. Time will tell. Remember that in gardening nothing is guaranteed! All my life I heard that big (as in bigger than bite-sized) tomatoes don't set well in high heat and I thought it was true. THEN, in 2003 we had the worst drought ever (only a little under 19" of rain the whole year) here in our county. The temps were very high. The humidity was incredibly low. My Big Boys and Better Boys were flowering and setting huge loads of fruit in August when the days were in the 100s and the nights were in the 80s. This didn't make sense because in a hot, humid summer, I don't get fruit set like that in hot weather. Think about what I said. Did you catch the difference? It was the humidity. In high heat + high humidity, big tomatoes set fruit poorly for me. In high heat + low humidity, they set fruit just fine. How is it that I didn't learn that until I was about 44 or 45 years old? You see, no matter how long you've been gardening and no matter how much you may think you know, there's always something new around the corner, just waiting to be discovered. I've decided I don't mind drought as much as I used to because the fruit set is better in low humidity than in high humidity. So is the flavor of tomatoes (and peaches!) Who knew? Not me. I'm glad I finally figured it out, but I've never seen this mentioned in a book in much detail although I am certain it is true. This is why gardening is endlessly fascinating. There's always something new to learn, to experiment with, to figure out. Gardening can be endlessly frustrating at times, but it is never dull, routine or boring. Dawn

Like DMForcier: I say give it a taste. That will rule out bell pepper if there is any heat at all. But my guess is Pepperoncini maybe. If so, it will have some heat, but very little. I would also venture to guess that if it isn't a Pepperoncini that it is still relatively mild. Disclaimer: I am an uneducated novice pepper grower and have no formal knowledge or training in identifying pepper plants and I am certainly not a Horticulturist, Botanist or any other ******ist. I just act like it. Taste at your own risk and let me know how my guess turns out. Bruce