Hi never-give-up. Piquin/tampiquin/chiltepin peppers are among the oldest and the hottest peppers grown. They are about 1/2 in. long x 1/4 wide and depending on the type round/blunt/pointed. If you put one in your mouth, believe me, you'll never do it again. I grew a couple bushes ( they're about 2 ft. tall, 16 in. wide and bushy) 20 years ago. I fill 4 cup jars with dried peppers and gave baggies full away to some brave friends all from 2 plants. I have been using them, a couple at a time, in soups and stews, curries, and chili since and am almost out, so time to grow some more. Birds like them so you have to keep an eye out ( they're called bird peppers sometimes). Tam jalapeno are about 1/5 as hot as a regular jalapeno, otherwise they are the same. I like to stuff them with fresh herbs and cream cheese and two bites and gone. I've never grown pasillo bajio before, but from what I've read they are 1/5-1/10 as hot as a jalapeno. They are a chili type pepper, about 6-8 in. long, all twisty and wrinkled, and turn burgundy/brown when fully ripe. They have a smokey flavor and are used raw, cooked, or dried for use in mole. As I like my peppers raw or dry some for cooking they sound interesting and I cant wait to try some on the grill. The giant marconi is kinda like a cross between a cubanelle and a bell. Longer and more tapered than a bell but just as blocky and meaty. It is a sweet pepper. The corno di toro ( bull's horn) is long and tapered, not quite as big at the shoulders, has kinda a twist to it like a bull's horn and meaty. It is a sweet pepper also. Commercial growers start their seed in flats, sprinkling seed on a bed of soil, then covering with a 1/4 in. or so more. When the first true leaves show they "prick" them, lift them with a thin spatula deal and transplant them into cell packs. Many home gardeners do the same. I did it for years. Today lots of BIG commercial growers use plug trays and then sell them as plugs (7/8 in. around 2 1/2-3 in. deep) for the green house or nursery to plant out to larger pots. I have noticed in recent years many more tomatoes and peppers sold by greenhouses in 6 pack. Hence you really don't need to transplant if you don't want to. I like to repot my tomatoes because I can bury most of the plant and it will root and when I plant out I'll have a nice big healthy root ball to boost it's growth. I'll strip most of the bottom leaves and bury it a foot or more deep. So that said, unless they are seriously pot bound, if a greenhouse can grow supper peppers in a six pack so can you. You must try different things and find what works/is comfortable for you. I will watch my peppers and may or may not repot. Depends how they look and whether the spring is going to be long and cold and wet or if it warms up fast and stays that way. Also if you're thinking of planting some in containers save yourself the hassle and extra transplant shock and just repot to the container when they're ready. If it gets cold and crappy you can always move the container inside. A little bit of fish/kelp fertilizer won't hurt. As most growing mediums contain nutrients you probably don't need to but 1/4-1/2 the regular dose periodically will supply some trace elements. The most important thing for all flowering and fruiting plants is phosphorus. It promotes strong roots, flowers and ergo, fruit. potassium is next. It promotes strong, healthy stalks, disease resistance, and helps the plant use available nitrogen. Nitrogen is good but too much makes all leaf and no fruit or flower. The best thing you can do is test your garden soil. Buy a cheap multi use soil test kit and test spring and fall. "Most" vegetables prefer slightly acid soil, potatoes are one exception. Beans don't like too much nitrogen (they make their own) . If your soil needs phosphorus, a handfull of bone meal worked into the soil around the base of the plant will provide a natural, slow release source all summer. If you don't mind "not quite organic" methods, shultz's Tomato Expert can be used on all your vegies, from seedlings, right up to harvest. Hope this helps. Happy gardening.

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

Pepper Joe advertises a Black Jalapeno."A really cool Jalapeno Pepper. All Jalapeno's are prone to getting a black 'blush' on their shoulder...the side facing the sun. This Black Jalapeno was bred to be almost totally black. It is sweet and tasty. Show this beauty off to your neighbors and gardening buds. It is very easy to grow and is ideal for container gardening. Very prolific. Ever try a Black Jalapeno pepper sauce? Delicious.." Never tried it. Many varieties are almost black just before ripening to red. Taste is relative. Hottest I have grown is Jalapeno M. Billy Biker is reported as hotter. I prefer Jalapenos in the 5000- 6000 scu range. Mildest that I have grown TAM mild. Hvae not tried Fooled You or False Alarm as a jalapeno with no heat has little appeal for me. Most rare, Smoke would have to answer that as I mostly look for disease resistance and productivity which means commercial varieties. I am currently growing Chichimeca, but am going to trial El Ray or Colima next year if I am still around. Possibly even PS 11435810. As for a list of names, one of the most complete is in plantfiles. We are not allowed to link to that website here. Ixtapa

Bon, I am glad you found the article helpful. The amount of pepper varieties available is mind-boggling and you can have fun growing new ones every year for the rest of your life if you want. There's so many that you'll never run out of new ones to try. In fact, there are 5 new hybrid pepper varieties among the 2015 All-American Selections national winners. I've never seen 5 different varieties of any one vegetable win in the same year. With almost all peppers, I prefer to let them stay on the plants until they reach their mature color, but I'll harvest bell peppers in the green stage and use them in Annie's Salsa if the tomatoes, garlic, onions, cilantro and jalapenos are ready to use.....I'm not going to hold up the whole canning process waiting for the bell peppers to go from green to red, orange or yellow. I just like the richer, fuller flavor of colored peppers. I suspect it is the commercial growers/grocery industry that has convinced us all to eat our bell (and other) peppers green---because green peppers have a longer shelf life. If growers wait and harvest the peppers at their mature color, the shelf life is much shorter. Carol, We've had that happen before, even when we've warned someone "don't take a bite of that one, it is really hot". They always think "how hot can it be" and then they find out exactly how hot. Some years I have grown the regular orange Habanero pepper as well as NuMex Suave Orange Habanero, which was bred to eliminate almost all the heat. (I think it is around 300-500 Scoville Heat Units.) To someone who doesn't raise these peppers, these two can be hard to tell apart, although the Suave Orange is more of a yellowish-orange than the regular orange Habanero. I always harvest them separately, placing them in plastic containers in the garden that are clearly labeled at the moment of harvest, and I store them in clearly-labeled zip lock bags, and still there will be some point at which a person mistakes the hot one for the low-heat one and lives to regret it Carol, Talking about peppers made me crave poppers too. I've made three batches since this thread began. Every year I am getting better yields than before with poblanos, which is interesting because for so very long they just would not produce much here. They have produced well since either 2011 or 2012. I'm growing a new one this year called Mosquetero. They are supposed to grow to 6" long x 3" wide and the plants are supposed to be heavy producers. I guess I'll find out if those things are true. Amy, I love finding varieties that I remember my dad, grandfather or one of my uncles growing. My dad told me once that "you can't find Amish Moon and Stars watermelon any more", and that was long before I found and started growing heirloom varieties, so I was thrilled when I found it and was able to grow it. I also grow at least one Big Boy tomato plant every year because he always grew it. He loved Big Boy and often about half the tomato plants in his garden would be Big Boy. I like having it in the garden because it reminds me of him. I generally dry some of each type of hot pepper that I make and make my own flakes for use in cooking. When properly dehydated, they store forever, and I can choose which kind of flakes I want to use while cooking. There are lots of pepper plants that I think are worthy of growing as ornamentals whether a person likes to eat the peppers or not. The black and purple ones are my favorite ornamental types, mainly because they contrast pleasantly with the edible ones I'm growing that mature to yellow, red or orange. . I grow Black Pearl and Purple Splash every year, whether I intend to or not. One year I didn't sow seeds of either one, but got some volunteers from the previous year. I've also grown tons of the NuMex ones over the years, like NuMex Sunrise, NuMex Sunset, 6-4, Sandia, Suave Red, Suave Orange, etc. The last 3 or 4 years I've really had to rein in my desire to grow 2 or 3 dozen pepper varieties because I was planting conservatively in the face of anticipated drought. This year, since we are having some winter rain for a change, I'm going to pretend we won't have drought this spring and summer (hey, it could happen!) and I'm going to plant a lot more different kinds of peppers. I need to make some Tabasco sauce and other things that I don't make every single year. Y'all, the NMSU Chile Pepper Institute sells the seeds of lots of the varieties developed there at the university as well as the seeds of some varieties they didn't develop. They include shipping and handling in the price per pack, so keep that in mind when you see their prices. I"ll link its website below. Here is a link that might be useful: Seeds @ NMSU Chile Pepper Institute