Thanks! i am almost tempted to bring my 7pot/Bhut to my office which is 10 miles inland and 5-10F hotter than at my apt and put the outside my office window so they can get lots of sun/warmer weather to help them along a little bit! HAHAHA i hope your plants dont get all shriveled up on you! that would be terrible!

Eric

They perked up nicely when shade hit today, but it is scary how much they wilt in 93 degree weather. I wanted to water them but the soil was moist, I am just glad to see them come back when the sun is off. It does worry me though, I hope I am not replanting for the fall season! I am going to up the frequency of my Pro-teKt feedings.

i truely hope you dont end up have to re-plant! that would be TERRIBLE! this is my first year growing at my apt as i just moved in back in Sept so far its good, but we will see just how good it gets next couple of months!
Eric

Its a Caribbean Red btw, I have a Jamaican Hot Chocolate too, doh!

Eric, I am having fun making as efficient use of my small space as I can, I just wish I had more! I will be able to move the pots in the real heat so they should be ok, I am more worried about the ones in the ground. I did plant the more important ones in pots, though. All of the real hot ones!

Beautiful photos and cat! Plants look great!

Plants are looking good.Phildeez, I feel your pain on the heat. Felt like 105 yesterday with 110% humidity. Gonna be nasty summer here in Florida.

That is really nasty Romy, even when it is 90 degrees in florida it feels like 100. The odd thing for me was that the plants in pots faired better in the heat, the ones in the ground wilted a lot more and in less time. All of them are doing alright though, aside possible sunscald on one cajun belle.

Still no ripe peppers! They are teasing me at this point.

Hot Cherries look so ready to turn.

Cajun Belles are getting to be the size of small apples, I didn't realize how big the fruit get.

Hungarian Hot Wax with peppers finally, it dropped the first set.

My Aleppo is finally popping!

Caribbean Red Hab with a nice set, hopefully they don't drop in this heat!

-Phil

Excellent, Phil!

My Caribbean Reds dropped tons of flowers and small pods last year.
Eventually they will set, though.

Josh

Went away for a few days and got some thunderstorms while I was gone! Found a LOT of new pods, got a few pics of the ones that were not in direct sun at the time. More to come!

de Arbol!

Cayenne 'long slim'

Thai Mystery

Big Jim!

Phildeez...Your plants look great! I am like a kid in a candy store looking for new pods every morning.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Pepper Guy's Garden

Thanks Pepper Guy. Here are a few more

-Phil

Really nice pics Phil. Kep em coming!

Man, how hot are those tiny ornamental peppers?
They look hot...

Josh

Nice job Phil. Grow them where you can!

Thanks All! Got a hot week coming up which won't help with the blossom drop. Trying to convince my apartment management to let me build a shade structure. It cannot attach to any of the apartment though, and it has to look "like patio furniture," whatever that means.

Josh, That is the first ripe ornamental in the picture. I am going to let it go a couple more days and give it a try. The guy I bought the plant from said they pack quite a punch and would be good for making Thai sauces with a mortar and pestle. Being so small I plan to pop the whole thing in my mouth and see what happens, can't be too bad!

Still waiting on the few super hots that I have to put on some pods.

-Phil

Fantastic! I'm a big fan of the mortar and pestle muddled Asian pepper sauces....

"Can't be too bad!" - famous last words ;-)
My prediction is that the pepper will be tangy at first, perhaps even a bit of juiciness in the pod.
Then a stinging sort of heat will take over. Probably a good five minute burn or so.

Josh

Great pics Phil. I just harvested my first batch of Big Jims this week and they were great :)

rob

{{gwi:1171542}}

Josho, a good 5 minute burn that comes on slow eh? I hope you are right because I am on the look out for a medium hot pepper with a slow burn instead of immediate heat like a jalapeno. My girl is beginning to like spicy food and she says she prefers a slow build to the in-your-face stuff that I like to make.

Rob, that is what I like to see! I wanted a huge grilling/stuffing pepper and found the Big Jim locally. Do you like them green? I hear they don't get much heat until they start to turn red.

The taste was good, but there was not much heat in the peppers themselves. I made a sauce with store bought salsa, cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, and cilantro from my garden (Regular tomatoes not ripe yet), so the sauce had a kick

I will definitely leave some on to ripen. It is hard for me to believe how prolific the one plant is!

Glad to hear yours is prolific, mine is in a pot so I am not sure how many peppers it will produce at one time but it looks good so far with lots of flowers and a few pods. I plan to get a cutting in the ground ASAP.

mine is in an approx 5 gallon self watering container. Before I took that last harvest there were 18 fruit on it!

Phil,
if you surprise your girl with that ornamental pepper, she might not forgive you for a while ;-)
I think the heat will hit within ten seconds, peak somewhere around two minutes, and begin
to calm down around five minutes. It will be hot. But I find the heat to be more like a sting than
a scorch or a burn. Imagine, if you will, a stinging, tangy, black pepper flavor attacking the
inner surfaces of your lips and mouth.

Now I'm eager for you to try it and report back....

Josh

I plan to eat one of the little fireballs tomorrow, I think I will do it drinkless to make it interesting. I need to break in my taste buds for the onslaught that is going to ensue as my various peppers ripen. I've noticed the time to maturity gets longer as the peppers get hotter, so it will be a nice upward trend as my season progresses.

In the mean time, I am trying to figure out this photography thingy, any advice would be appreciated.

Josh, do your Hot Waxes ripen upright? These are getting pretty large and they are stickin' straight up!

-Phil

Phil, your photography is very nice ;-)
Peppers on the plant are difficult to photograph with all the leaves, et cetera, in the way.
Plus, green pods are camouflaged by the leaves and don't offer much contrast in the early stages.

As for the Hungarians....
They start to ripen upright, but eventually they bend downward under their own weight.
These pics are from 2008 when Hungarian Wax was all that I grew. In the first pic, you can
see the buried pot in the ground....that's the same Hungarian plant I have in the garden today.
The latter two pics are from later in the season, September 2008, showing the final crop.

Josh

Your plants look really nice especially for your first year growing them. What did you do with all those hot wax peppers? I hear they make a mean Pico de Gallo if you let them ripen.

Those peppers are also fantastic pickled. Thats what I plan to do with mine.

Mission accomplished! I am still sweating. Those peppers taste very very good. I would call the flavor similar to a jalapeno but sweeter, VERY sweet. The first thought that came to mind after biting it was that it tasted like a pickled jalapeno with twice the heat. The heat took longer to build than a Jalapeno and I would compare the pain of eating that 3/4 inch pepper to the pain of eating an entire raw Serrano. The initial sensation was that of sugar and fruit, which was really good. Josh, you were right about the stinging. The duration however, more like 20 minutes if not longer. It was extremely juicy as well, popping like a grape, I bit it all at once between my molars and it was surprising how much of a mouthful of juice I got.

I will definitely be making a great sauce from these, I am very happy with the flavor considering it is "ornamental." I would almost eat another one right now!

Should I pot it up for a better yield or is it too late? It is only a 1 gallon pot but the plant supposedly tops out at 12 x 12 inches.

-Phil

Hey, hey, great work, Phil! ;-)

Yeah, the juice inside the pod is great, giving it that sweet tanginess...
but dang, a 20 minute burn!? Good thing you didn't have your girlfriend try it!

You certainly could pot it up without disturbing the roots, or you could bury
the lower inches of the pot in the ground so that the roots can escape. That'll
allow the plant to grow larger. However, it is a small variety, in-ground or not.

My first year with the Hungarians, I brined them in pepperoncini juice with salt,
pepper, and elephant garlic for using on sandwiches. I also stuffed the red peppers
with sausage, rice, and cheese, and roasted them. I put them on salads, in salsas, and
in soups like tortilla soup. I also dried the peppers for powder and for decoration.
This year, I'd like to make my own Hungarian gulash soup.

I'll try a Pico with them, too. I love Pico....fresh cilantro, clean white onion...mmmm...

Josh

NICE Phil!!! My Pinguita de mono plant has 2 peppers on it and i am waiting for them to ripen! they are about 3/4-1" the plant is VERY prolific! i have 5 flowers on it with another 20flowers growing! i am very interested to see just how hot these guys are! Phil you are lucky to have peppers to even try! LOL i hopefully have my first devils tongue pod as the flower pedals just dropped and i see i tiny little pod growing! :) i cannot wait to try that one! LOL

Eric

Well, I think I better pot the ornamental up. It started looking sad in the heat today and I found this.

Here are some more pics! New pods! Orange Hab, Aleppo/Halaby, and Poblano.

The first mystery pepper seems to have stopped growing at about 5.5 inches, although another on the plant is well over 6" now.
{{gwi:1171556}}

I am going to make a thread for this, but check out the weird pedals that turned into flesh on the ornamental!

-Phil

Phil,if anything we should be asking you for advice on taking pictures. Beautiful peppers you have! Nice pics. Make my pics look like they are from 1970 something.

Been a while! Still waiting on anything really hot but I have been enjoying the cherry peppers, jalapenos, wax peppers, thai, Fresno, and Cajun Belle. A number of things are coming up fast to try out! This is fun for me because I have not tasted (fresh anyway) the majority of the peppers I grew. So far I have liked every one, but do have some ideas of what I will replace next year.

Some pics:

Hungarian Wax is definitely a keeper, I love the mild, sweet flavor of the few orange ones I have eaten stuffed with cheese and roasted garlic.

Aleppo/Halaby Peppers are getting very large and a surprising amount of pods for a 2.5gal pot. This thing needs a bigger pot but I do not have one and I am not sure it is worth stressing it.

Ornamental Thai is with a new, bigger pot and loving it.

These orange habs will be the first super hot peppers to go into my mouth.

Caribbean Red pods are finally showing up after a LOT of flower drop!

NuMex Big Jim is really loaded with pods, I tethered it to the bamboo to keep the branches from snapping if the pods get too heavy.

Hot Cherries exhibiting very strange growth, it is like the pepper is a growth tip and then the plant brances out just below there. The stems of the peppers are extremely thick, guests keep saying they look like mushroom peppers, not cherries.

Phil,
all of your plants are in excellent production!
Your Hungarians are really incredible...heavy pod set!
I agree about the Hot Cherry stems - very, very thick.
I can't wait 'til mine are red.....

Josh

I swear these pods have been full sized for a damn month, but finally we got some color! I ate one of them a couple days ago when it was half orange and it kicked my butt, way WAY hotter than the store bought ones I have been using, even half ripe. Much better flavor too, less chemical smell.

Aleppo, finally! Lost the first few pods to a pest.

Cayenne 'long slim'-Made a sauce out of a handful of these and they have a surprising kick to them. Chomped one after I found the sauce to be so hot and yep, they are impressive!

Bushy little Fresno giving me 5-10 pods a day, insane producer and the pods are nice and hot. I had a talk with the produce manager at my local store because their Fresno peppers literally taste like belle peppers every time, maybe I will bring him one.

Caribbean Red is lagging behind but the plant is a BEAST, about 50 pods on it if not more. A lot of nodes have 3 peppers like seen here (blurry third one in the back).

Thanks to everybody for the help getting this season going, my plants are kicking butt and it will only get better when the weather cools down a little.

Plants and pods looking good Phil!

And Yep i bet things will get even better when it cools down.

Jim

Great looking plants/pods! you want it to be cooler and i want it to be hotter! its been 72 the last 3 days and cloudy!

Nice looking peppers Phil. I am so jealous. I've gotten 2 Hot Portugals and 4 serranos, and those I picked green. Still waiting for others to ripen, and except for the serranos and cayennes, there aren't (m)any new pods. Weather here was wet all June, hot and dry in July, and so far August has been cool (some nights mid-50's) and wet again. We had 50% more rain than average in June, 25% of the average in July, and halfway through August we've had our average rainfall for the month (most in the past week -10 days).

Hey, did you ever get ripe tomatoes off those gigantic Glaciers? Mine are putting out (some split b/c of rain) but have green shoulders. Again, I'm still waiting for a ripe heirloom...

Fantastic update, Phil!
My Caribbean Red was a late-producer for me last year.
I didn't have a ripe pod until the end of September (so you're ahead of the game!) ;-)
Once the summer heat breaks, we'll have a great final wave of pepper production.

Josh

Phil my man! Your plants look super healthy. Nice pics.Your gonna have your hands full with all those habs. Once they start producing they don't stop.

Thanks everybody, the heat is causing some serious flower drop again but at least I have some pods set. So far I have not seen any fruit drop from the heat.

Ajsmama, where are you located? It has been a horrible year for tomatoes here in the Central Valley, I got about 20 Glaciers before the plant stopped producing. I will look for a better indeterminate next season I think. The Glaciers were more like cherry tomatoes and I am getting a lot more cherry tomatoes off of a few volunteers from last year.

Josh, you were right about the Caribbean, it just didn't want to set fruit for a while but now it is ready.

Jamie, I already have my hands full with a tiny fridge of habanero hot sauces that I made from store bought peppers to prepare. Time to marinade some stuff and waste some hot sauce. I need the space in the fridge and also the jars!

I made a ridiculous roasted mango hot sauce with a few habaneros, I will post the recipe if anybody is interest. It jumped to the best sauce I have ever made immediately, we will see how it ages.

Phil

I'd sure take a look at the mango / habanero sauce, Phil! I tried a mango fatalii sauce once and it was certainly hot, but, not much flavor. Well, not the flavors I was hoping for anyway. So, if you found something that went to the top of the list, I'm all for it!

I would not put it at the top of the list of all sauces I have tasted, but definitely of any I have made and I have made some good ones. It is in between a salsa and a hot sauce, very thick but still pourable. No chunks at all but not strained either.

I could have used a lot more peppers to get more heat and I will next time, but I wanted to make something my girl could enjoy so I went light. The key to this sauce was the roasted mangos, much different flavor than fresh and it melded a lot better with hot sauce ingredients.

I used two huge and very ripe mangoes and halved/pitted them carefully to keep the flesh intact. Preheat oven to 400F, place mangoes in shallow baking pan skin side down. Roast for 45 minutes, until they just begin to brown is perfect.

While the mangoes roasted I halved and deseeded 2 red Serranos (not to be underestimated) and 2 orange habs. Thickly sliced 2 shallots and skinned 4 gloves of garlic.

When done, remove mangoes to cool and keep the oven at 400F. Put the other ingredients in a small baking pan to roast while the mangoes cool enough to handle, they store a lot of heat. Roast for 10 to 15 minutes, enough to soften the garlic and shallots but not burn the peppers.

Add roasted peppers/shallots/garlic to a blender with 1 cup Rice vinegar (white may be fine), and puree coarsely. Now remove the mangoes from the skin and puree the vinegar mixture with the mango flesh. Add water or more vinegar if you want to thin it out, it came out thick but that is how I wanted it. I plan to mess with this recipe and perfect it because the roasted mango is something special and I have lots more habs on the way!

I'm on the other coast (well, not the coast - in the hills of NW CT). Hoping to get some ripe peppers by beginning of Oct - first frost is usually 1st week of Oct, though could be earlier. I posted some pix of my garden, was trying to figure out what some of the peppers I got from my cousin were. Check it out - some of the plants are 3 ft tall, I've got a Hinkelhatz that's 2ft tall and 2 ft wide but no peppers yet :-( but I've got 3 plants with huge peppers that look like anchos, I think they're Numex Sunrise but I'm waiting for them to turn yellow.

Too bad about those Glaciers - I've gotten more than 20, though lots have split with the rain, and they are on the small side but 1 is just enough for a small (1-person) salad or a sandwich. Usually run about 2-3oz each. Couldn't sell any (didn't bring the split ones) at farmer's market last week, will try again this week. Might have to make a batch of Annie's salsa. I'd like the mango-hab sauce recipe, see how it is with a different type of pepper. I guess I gotta grow some habs next year.

Most of my indeterminates aren't doing too well but that's my poor soil in new field. I do have 2 that got mixed in with the Glaciers but I can't tell yet (if ever) whether they're Pink Brandywine or German Johnson. Getting huge tomatoes but not ripe yet. Brandywine isn't supposed to be a heavy producer, though it has huge fruit. I like GJ - my cousin gave me some to taste last year so I decided to grow them this year. I've got 4 Cherokee Purple that are small plants (2ft) but have fruit, might take a month or more to ripen since I planted so late. Lots of people like them, I think they're supposed to be better producers than BW, you might want to try them.

Last year I grew Mr. Stripey - didn't care for it (not acid enough for me) - and 6 good ole Celebrity from Home Dep*t, made tons of sauce and salsa from those. No problems with blight - I think the hybrids do much better though they don't have the taste the heirlooms do. I'll probably throw some of those in next year for market, just to have something bigger than Glacier and more reliable than heirlooms. Might grow Glacier again since I have seed, but I also picked up some Bloody Butcher (yech, what a name!) to try as an "early" tomato.

Gee, sorry for turning this into a tomato thread!

No worries, I bet most of these pepper fanatics have a few 'maters, whether they will admit it or not :P

Sounds interesting! Roasting the mangos sounds good. I'm going to have to give that a try! Thanks!

I've got about a 50/50 split, peppers and tomatoes. :-)

Bloody butchers are smaller than I expected. I grew them this year for the first time. They are good, but, not as big as I thought they would be. Cherokee Purple is good. I like the size and flavor of that one. BW - I wasn't wild about the strain I got and low production just wasn't worth the space in my small garden.

I have twelve large tomato plants ;-)

Josh

I have three tomato plants and they are larger than all my 30 pepper plants combined. I have a Sungold that is trellised onto the walkway for the 2nd floor apartments above me. The tips have to be about 12 feet and climbing. Not many tomatoes though, maybe too much Nitrogen from the fish emulsion.

I need to research some tomatoes now that I have the peppers semi-covered.

Josh, forgot to mention I want to get some seeds for those Cherry Bombs, mine are from Lowe's and they are not producing much heat. I got a few "Big Bombs" today at the market, have not tried one but the man said they have good heat and I plan to save seeds. About 4x larger than my cherry peppers too.

Phil

You've got lots of cherry toms, though, right? I'd say too much N for 12-ft tall Glacier and low production. The Glaciers have probably died off now, since they're determinate (though this link says indeterminate, Fedco says they're determinate and the ones my cousin took have all died off already).

Where mine are planted (garden near the house we've been amending for 3 yrs with wood chips, compost and lime) N is "Medium High" - mine are only about 4ft (but over 3 ft wide, sprawling). You don't feed the peppers as much? Sometimes I think looking at the size of my pepper plants the N is too high for them, but I *am* starting to get some flowers on the big ones (and the scrawny bananas) now, and have some decent-sized pods on the Numex (I think it is an Anaheim type, sorry I said ancho) and the serrano.

Depends on what you're looking for in a tomato - go hang out over on that forum again, here's a link to types from the FAQ over there. Maybe look for something that has fruits under 1 lb each since you have to trellis?

Now back to your regularly-scheduled pepper thread ;-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato type FAQ

Phil,
I grow a massive Sungold tomato on my back deck every year.
I use a 20-gallon container, and I let the plant grow up the lattice and into the Liquidambar tree.
It's funny...this year, my plant doesn't have very dense foliage, yet it's loaded with tomatoes.

I'll save you seed, Phil, for sure. I ate the first Hot Cherry yesterday, and it was warm.
The flesh is super thick and sweet, but the seeds and membrane carry the burn. My first
bite had a lot of seed and upset my stomach going down. So I drank some water from the hose
and then finished eating the pepper. The rest of it went down smooth. I picked some basil
and dill to chew with it.

Josh