Raised beds 8x4 Soil - Dirt from the dump, left over top soil from bags, steer manurae, old potting mix from dead plants and plain dirt from the yard. Just about everything is in those beds. My soil is black and the beds are about 5 years old. I just posted-"Satsuma plum in bloom" and in the photo you can see part of the raised beds

Technically, there is no real chile variety known as "Hatch". Hatch is a small town between Albuquerque and Las Cruces that is famous for green chile growing and has a yearly Chile Festival. If you bought chile seeds labeled as "Hatch" variety, it may have been a variety called AgCo Fire Green which are labeled as "hot Hatch green chile" sold here in NM. There are a lot of other varieties commonly grown in this area, though, such as NuMex Heritage 6-4, Big Jim, Barker X-Hot, Joe Parker, and Sandia to name a few, with varying flavors and heat levels. Then there are some northern NM varieties such as Chimayo and Espanola. These are just the varieties I am growing this year. Big Jim is a good mild to medium variety that you can use in your recipes calling for roasted green chile and it makes great rellenos. So I guess to answer your question, yes, there is a big difference in taste and heat level between the varieties, but Big Jim should give you what you need unless you want more heat. Enjoy :). There is no better smell in the world than roasting green chile :) Emily

Salevane, very nice container and plant. I think you do not need to add more soil, it looks perfect to me. I think there are so many varieties of "standard red chili peppers". According to the different variety the sizes of the plants are also different. Bigger container grow bigger plants and yield a lot of fruits. If the container is small the size of the plants usually compact. I have read 5 gallon is a good size for chilli but most of our chili enthusiasts here in DK use about 2 gallon, they are doing pretty good. Some times my small container plants have early flowers and pods, when I re-potted to bigger containers they grow bigger/healthier and produced a lot of pods. Some of our forum members may have better opinion, so just wait. Good luck Caelian

if the pepper have been green 60days after flowering they may have the oilive green genes and they wont ripen red .so the seeds would be ok.