Hi there! My name is Israel and I'm in zone 4b in southern Québec. This is my first year growing a vegetable garden and was given a few hot pepper plants early in the season. Two are supposed to be Scotch Bonnets, two are an ornamental variety with small green-purple leaves, purple-blue flowers and small (about 0.375" long) egg-shaped purple-black pods. The fifth plant, I was told was an "Italian pepper". To me, it looks more like some sort of Thai ornamental or Piri Piri (African Bird's Eye). I just can't figure which it most closely resembles. What I'm certain of is it being a variety of Capsicum Annuum. Here's a shot:

This picture (not a great angle, sorry!) is from a couple of weeks back. It's currently about 8" high, fairly bushy, with 5 mature, but unripe, pods, ranging from 1.5" to 2" in length, and a few smaller ones that just popped out. Any idea on what plant I have? The larger pods have lots of dark pigmentation (normal reaction I hear) after having been all-green. They have yet to show signs of changing colour.

The above plant and the Scotch Bonnets were out in the garden for a while, but I potted them as weather conditions were fairly crappy outdoors, with many cloudy days and very cool nights. I used a mix of fir bark, perlite, sphagnum peat moss, top soil and compost, which seems to drain quite well. I have them indoors under a 42W daylight CFL for about 15 hours a day. The Scotch Bonnets were not growing much outdoors and one wilted and died. The second is growing well indoors, if slowly, and looking healthy. It has yet to bud, but that's OK.

I plan to keep them indoors and see if I can keep them productive into the cold season, under UV lights. I've also sprouted Jalapeno seeds (from store-bought green pods, 90%+ germination rate!) and have a few healthy-looking seedlings. I'm also trying to sprout seeds I was given, labeled as "Indian pepper", "African pepper" and "Thai pepper". I'll see what comes out of that!

A few days ago, I started seeing aphids on my C.annuum. Not infestation-level yet, but I must have killed about 10-15 by hand the first day. These were isolated individuals, no "colony" yet. I decided to spray the plant with 3% peroxide. It appears to help, as I only see and kill 3-4 "new" aphids per day since. The foliage and pods support this treatment quite well, but blossoming flowers seem to drop at a higher rate since I've started the daily spray. I'll see what comes out of this after a few more days. I haven't seen any aphids on the Bonnets and I hope it stays that way!

As for the two black-pod ornamental plants I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to fuse their stems over about 1.5". I've scraped a bit of bark and "flesh" off each and joined them with tightly-wound plastic-wrap. This is more for the fun of experimenting, maybe making it into a bonchi if the procedure takes. The pods stay quite small and have little flavour, but are pretty hot OTOH. I'll be looking to my other plants for fruit production.

Thanks for bearing with this longer-than-I-expected post!