The average crookneck takes about 50 days to make edible fruit, but in the fall the plants take longer due to shorter daylight hours, so I would suggest that you count back about 70-75 days from from your fall frost date to plant. Unless you have early frost, you should get 10-15 days of harvest maybe more if you cover your plants on frosty nights. They are very susceptible to frost. Germination has not been a problem for me.

I'm with Edymnion (I'm pretty sure he means proper scientific testing as well). I stumbled across a blog posting earlier this year where the writer cited comments from Jim Duffy of Refining Fire Chiles and the grower of the HP22B, Ed. Link below. Personally, agree with a lot of Jim Duffy's comments. I became very leery of this "new" hottest mystery pepper when the hype machine kicked in. It's interesting that the promoter of this new wonder pepper does not want to put out the coin to have Guinness officially certify the claims. Heck if it was me I'd want to get the certification so I could hype the crap out of it and easily double my investment. Here is a link that might be useful: The Pepper Seed blog

Many spring-flowering bulbs obviously fit the bill, so I'll skip those. AS far as perennials, for early spring foliage and bloom I must recommend Pulmonaria (lungwort). There are various species, of course, but I love those with variegated foliage. And the early flowers are a treat (visually for me and food-wise for early bees)as they turn from blue to pink (or is it the other way round?--no matter--there are always some of each happening at once!). As a sucker for blue-flowering plants, for fall one of my favorites is Plumbago (leadwort), which in my garden began blooming a few weeks ago & is going strong. It would go wonderfully with my yellow fall-blooming crocus located elsewhere in the yard, so I must try to get more & plant them to come up in & among the plumbago. And of course hellebores are a must! I have them blooming sometimes even in February, sometimes under the snow. The foliage is, of course, evergreen, and as it is very sturdy provides nice winter interest. My perennial foxgloves are good too; stay greem a long time and bloom pretty early. Then there is "mystery [or "surprise"] lily"--aka "Naked Ladies" -- Lycoris squamigera. The hardy bulbs put out a lot of robust foliage in the spring (like daffodils on steroids - LOL) and then fade away but the real kicker is the way the fat stems (sans foliage!) come shooting up suddenly in mid- to late August and burst into slow pink fireworks for about a week. I love the silly things; they are ubiquitous here in central Ohio and many of the old farm yards (or older small-town homes)have them. Christmas fern is evergreen, though flattened by snow; ostrich fern sends up edible fiddleheads fairly early and is quite dominant in the shade bed till late (it's still going strong). I have a very large white bleeding heart here when we moved in 3 years ago; I noticed that it keeps self-sowing so have transplanted a number of the young-uns around and these sometimes bloom the first year. It lasts a lot longer in the garden than the wild native in the woods but soon yellows and then disappears when summer arrives (the ostrich fern happily stretches its fronds to fill in the empty space). Sweet woodruff is a wonderful ground cover with a wonderful fragrance & delightful little white flowers in May. I much prefer it to various other alien ground covers like Pachysandra terminalis, periwinkle (vinca vine), English ivy, etc. I do have a bit of our native Pachysandra procumbens (Allegheny spurge), but it spreads much more slowly than the others. That's enough--I'll let others jump in! CK

Theoretically, the glads, acidanthera, freesias and cannas should be winter hardy in your climate but even in my much milder zone, these bulbs do not fair very well if left in the ground after a normal planting time and growing season. Planting now, in cold soils, exposed to the moisture levels most winter soils maintain and having no established root system is just not very likely to produce any sort of positive results. Without roots (and they will not grow roots in cool/cold soils at this time of year), the bulbs/tubers are more inclined to rot than do anything else. That's why these sorts of bulbs are not commonly sold in time for fall planting but rather in very early spring. Combine that with concerns that these bulbs seem to have been held/stored for an extended period of time and at probably less than ideal storage conditions, I think your chances of success are slim. If you have no garage, cellar or cool/unheated basement to store the bulbs in a potted condition - the preferred approach - go ahead and plant now. But do not be surprised if this generates very iffy results.