I grew 2, I have not grown Habaneros before so I don't know what to expect, but they seem to be very productive at least for my needs -- I have harvested I would guess 4-5 times what is shown in that photo. As the days have gotten cooler and the season ended they really started the cranking.

Those look cool, do they have the "perfumey" flavour typical of chinense?

Yes, they have a very distinctive flavor/smell.

Finally inspected the high tunnel and gathered more ripe peppers. The plants not covered with Agribon are completely dead. It got down to 19 Deg F the other night. The middle bed with the extra protection of Agribon only fared slightly better. The plants are mostly dead but there were plenty of nice peppers left to pick. There were some pockets of warmth or hardier branches that still were green but limp. I found several nice, ripe Soroski paprika peppers. The only plant that did not ripen many pods was a mystery plant I finally decided must be Tobasco short yellow according to photos on the seed supplier's website. Somehow got mixed in. The tall plant put out dozens maybe hundreds of pods but only a small handful ripened. I'm kind of disappointed because I thought the flavor was fruity.

defrost49,

Pick those green pods and set them out on the counter, they might just get ripe in a couple of weeks and/or dry out, especially if they are mature pods. Green chiles ain't too bad either if not! I have 8-10 of those Jwalas (pictured several posts up) and they all turned red and are now almost fully dry.

Defrost if the plant isn't completely dead you can always dig it up and put it in a pot to finish ripening. Peppers are really easy to dig up with no adverse effects usually.

Thanks for the advice. I might try overwintering next year to extend the growing season to ripen if I have some plants in pots. I still have ripe peppers to take care of so I'm calling it quits on anything that hasn't been picked yet. Next year I will not grow over 30 varieties of peppers.

Yeah I hear you I grow way too many varieties too but I can't help myself! It is so great having varying degrees of heat and different flavor profiles for authentic regional dishes. I won't overwinter either but I brought a couple that i still wanted to grow a bit and to ripen into my house to finish off. The ones that had stated ripening are fine in my sunroom. As soon as the fruit is done they are getting composted though!

Can you guys believe that in like only 2 months we will need to start thinking about starting our long season seeds? Crazy!!

I used to overwinter and grow many different varieties each season, but after having tried most of the ones I was interested in, I have since settled on my main stays and a few different peppers each year. And, I enjoyed overwintering, but have also given that up due to the hassle.

I don't regret going catalog crazy once but since I was unfamiliar with most I ended up with several that are very similar. I'll understand if someone argues with me but right now I don't taste a lot of difference between Sweet Red Fatali and the sweet Datil. I'll never stop trying something new but it will probably be sweet peppers. The "fruity" flavors taste more like perfume to me. Yesterday I minced up a couple with eggs and potatoes. I thought the pepper flavor was good but not the right flavor with eggs and potatoes.

Yes the seasoning peppers can be overpowering and aren't right for every dish. I tend to use them for Latin and Caribbean cuisine and flavored vinegar. Here is an awesome recipe for puerto Rican sofrito that uses seasoning peppers. When this stuff hits a hot pan to make arroz con pollo or something, I think it has to be one of the absolute best food smells on earth. Incredible!

http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Puerto-Rican-Sofrito-1089251

Thanks, hobbyartisan. I actually had that recipe saved but not made. I grew both Aji Dulce 1 and Aji Dulce 2. #1 didn't produce much but Aji Dulce 2 did well and I just added more to the freezer. Which one do you grow?

http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/mild-seasoning/

My experience with the Suave Orange peppers is that they need to be picked as they ripen or they develop spots and rot. Since my tunnel grown peppers are massive shrubs I tend to miss many peppers when picking.

Wow Barrie, is that a commercial installation or are you just an extreme hobbyist? :)

I find that my Scotch Bonnets also go bad if left on the plant too long or even on the counter, as opposed to other peppers I grew which will dry-up clean.

I guess you could say hobbyist who developed outlet through a local farmers' market. Remarkable aspect is that hot peppers in high tunnel grow to different level, some exceeding 5 feet tall.

Yeah that is an insane set up Barrie! What the heck do you do with them all? Yes I also find my SBs go black from the inside out if left on the tree too long. Weird that it only seems to be that variety, although a few cayennes did it too.

Defrost I grew way too many seasoning peppers... Aji dulce 2 I think, arroz con pollo, cambuci, zavory habanero, tobago seasoning, there may be more I am forgetting. I just love them! Plus the scotch bonnets red and yellow that have a similar flavour but with major heat. Still, I think it is advantageous to try multiple varieties to see which grows best for my climate. For me the cambuci and tobago seasoning were by far the biggest yields.

I have incredible demand for habanero peppers by a few Nigerian customers who live locally. A few have asked for a half bushel every week during the growing season and since I planted 75 habanero and 12 chocolate habanero plants in a high tunnel I've been able to start supplying ripe peppers in those amounts in early July. Then there are the students at Penn State who want the hottest thing I can sell but only in half-pint quantities. But sweet peppers seem to be my best sellers. I planted 1600 pepper plants outside this year but at this point only a few hundred are still covered with row cover and that may end in 3 days.

Barrie, love to read success stories.

Oddly, I wouldn't call my field grown peppers a good success story this year. Drought conditions dampened yields on many varieties and everything seemed to ripen at once which was not good for prolonged sales. The bell peppers were hit the hardest. Not bragging or complaining, just want to set the record straight.

Not a year I would have enjoyed being a market farmer. My husband's family used to own an apple orchard plus did eggs, potatoes and lumber. There was the year the blossoms froze and another year a hurricane hit during the harvest. If you keep farming despite all the hardships and unknowns, I think you are a success. I like to see the photos on facebook that a local farming couple post. Lots of work plus a new baby. I see how nice their high tunnel looks and mine, with all the time a retiree has, is a mess right now. Our neighbor up the road is still a full time logger but has about 120 head of beef cattle as a sideline. He and his son never stop working and the grandchildren are starting to be big enough to help out.

As of today, 11/8 (Election day) I still have kale growing, it actually does better when it is a bit cooler. Also, rosemary, sage and thyme all nice and green. Mums, of course are still in flower. A few snapdragons, a pink dianthus flower here and there, even one lonely little calendula still in bloom. This is after some snow last week and several frosts. In general, the garden didn't do as well as usual, the higher than normal temperatures over the summer with very little rain to blame, I think. But, there's always next year!

That's a crazy amount of plants Barrie! I hope you get better conditions for the sweet peppers next season.

Wow! We are located in zone 6 as well. We only have 1.5 acres. We just started an indoor crop of 250 peppers plants for early spring, but Barrie is really going hard. Inspiring, to say the least.

Nice, Mulato!

Overwintering plants notwithstanding, you're giving a new meaning to "early start"!

On my side of things, my 4 overwintering plants are growing lots of new shoots and the Scotch Bonnet is producing lots of buds as well. My guess is they'll mostly fall-off, unless I take more drastic measures, but it would neat to get a couple of unexpected peppers still!

Not going hard anymore. Tomorrow is my last farmers' market for the year And I'm ending the peppers. I picked and removed all sweet pepper rows and working to remove hot ones next. It is a shame to end it all with so many green peppers still forming. My one customer will buy a half bushel of habs so I'm glad at least for that.

Nevertheless, great work!. We are new to growing on a large scale. It's always been a hobby for years and now we (my wife, myself and our two daughters) are trying to be where you are, but we understand that we must take baby steps until we learn more. We are working on seeds, seedlings and indoor mini herb gardens. ...So much enthusiasm, so many ideas and so much learning to do. With experience being the best teacher... Thank you for sharing. Your crops and set up gives us something to strive for.

Thanks, Isgen. As I was explaining to Barrie, My wife and I are just so enthused with our new endeavor, Mulato Green Group. We just want to plant and grow something every day. Hopefully the pic of seedlings at the end of the season is not something that will be added to our "history of things not to do". We are just so anxious. Besides, we figured that we would grow, indoors with led lights, all winter to have fresh heirloom seeds to sell for the spring. Hopefully this works. If not, we'll have something to laugh about, years from now when we look back in our Mulato Green Group history book. If you have any advice, we are open. Over the years, I've learned that one of the smartest things anyone can say is, "I don't know".

Well I finally harvested all my ripe peppers from my plants in my sunroom. The plants could have kept going but the temps are going to plummet soon plus the aphids had come back with a vengeance. So now they are outside for the birds to pick over and hopefully spread the seed.

I did save my Vietnamese pepper that is still ripening, plus a tam jalapeño and a senger farm jalapeno that have quite a bit of ripe fruit still on and seem to still be growing. They seem to do well in my living room by a big window. I'm loving having the fresh jals at my disposal!

Congrats on prolonging your growing season as long as you did.

I'm not technically a "northern" grower, but I did pull a bunch of peppers today.

Several hundred Thai chile pods.

It is unbelievable how long your season lasts into the fall/winter. All leaves dropped here over a month ago.

I have a few other plants to harvest, Bruce, and then I'm done for the season.
Had a good long run this year, though!

Josh

Hmmm, as it turns out, I could have probably nursed my plants along into November this year with our warm October, but I pulled them at the normal time in early October. But it is weird how your season seems to start a little later than mine but lasts much longer as well.

So do you dry those or freeze them to stirfry as needed? That's usually what I do with asian types.

Hobby, I dry quite a few, and freeze quite a few. The dry ones I will throw into ramen soups, et cetera. The frozen ones I make into "pepper" dipping sauce for Asian dishes.

Josh

Nice plate greenman28! How hot are those? I'd probably make some fermented sauce out of a bunch of those, but that's just me, I ferment everything! I'm almost out of my milder Scotch Bonnet sauce and it's not even officially winter, I'll be in trouble soon, I use that stuff on everything! I do have 15 or so frozen pods left and could whip up another batch or two though...

They're really not that hot...maybe 50 - 80 thousand Scoville. I got them from my brother's wife's mother in law, a nice woman from Laos. Whenever she sees these peppers, she says, "Oh, it's the not so hot pepper." Hahaha. They have a great tanginess to them, very consistent.

I mostly just mash them up with cilantro and fish sauce, then dip everything in it!

Josh

Fish sauce heh? Sounds good, perhaps it wouldn't be bad to add a small amount in my next hot sauce ferment. I like to taste the peppers and usually avoid extraneous flavours, but I'm thinking a dash of fish sauce might bring some more depth.

My four overwintering pepper plants are all doing quite well, the Rocotos especially are growing lots of shoots and fast!

I started growing hot peppers in 2006 in order to preserve a strain of Scotch Peppers which my uncle (now deceased) had grown all his life. During this period I have grown several types, but still have a preference of Scotch Bonnets for flavour. When I started, I used to overwinter my plants indoors. I would dig, repot, and bring them in, but I started having insect problems. I now just save seeds, and start my peppers on paper towels (that's another process I have refined myself) in early March, and grow the hots and super-hots in pots. The others go in the ground. I find this is early enough to get a good harvest and don't really notice a difference in the earliness, yield,or size of the peppers from the 'new' plants versus the over-wintered plants. I still get too many, and have them stored in my freezer for making sauces used in the Caribbean tradition as a condiment. However, this year I had a problem. The only plants that I usually isolated were the Fish peppers to preserve that albino gene, and this year my plants all produced variations of peppers which I did not recognize, save one that seemed a Bhut/Carolina mix, based on heat on shape but I had a fully yellow one and a fully red one, both with great heat but little flavour. So I guess by growing them together for so many years, I ended up bastardizing them all!! The reason I am on this forum, is to see if I can find some seeds for trade, at least Scotch Bonnets red and yellow. I need Canadian sources and I have found some in this post. In the new year, I will probably make contact so I can make a trade. I have not been on this forum for many years and I recognize one name, Greenman, but those of you here seem to be doing a great job, and I enjoyed reading your posts. Happy holidays!!

@northerner_on I'd be more than happy to trade some Scotch Bonnet seeds with you. I grew 8 different types of SB's this year. I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to send you a PM though. I think we both have to "Follow" each other to do that.

I harvested some lettuce that managed to survive and it was bitter and almost inedible.

The mustard greens are wilted and don't look like they will survive the winter.

My garden is 100% done.

My tiny lettuce, spinach and parsley are all still alive under the low tunnel, despite -10°C nights and no sunlight since early October, but they haven't grown a millimeter. I'm only keeping them to see just how tough they are, plus I'm not going to pull them and turn over my (mostly frozen) soil with a foot of snow out there, lol.

isgen, the lack of 10hrs daily sunlight has put your plants into dormancy. Keep the faith. Ideally, plants are 75% grown by early November when the Persephone period starts according to Johnny's Seeds website. It ends sometime in February, depending on your location, when your plants start getting at least 10 hours of sun again. Parsley is a biennial so it should survive. I've had spinach outdoors on a snowless winter start growing again. Lettuce is much more iffy. I might have a couple of plants come back to life after dying during the winter. I think there's a lot of great information on Johnny's website if you haven't read it already.

Merry Xmas all! Have any of you being partaking in any pepper related festivities over the holidays?

Every time I go into my freezers I am reminded of how many peppers I have socked away. I've got mason jar after mason jar plus many ziplocs full of the different varieties I grew over the summer.

Today I decided to make a batch of scotch bonnet mash. I had a few Trinidad perfumes and aji orchids in there but not many.

I used a tbsp or so of habanero mash I am currently eating to help kickstart the ferment since the peppers were frozen. Other than that just used salt, a tiny bit of sugar and some garlic.

The fact that the peppers were half frozen when I buzzed them up in the food pro was a major advantage. There were practically no fumes and the pepper pieces chopped up very nicely without turning to mush.

Those look great! I can practically smell them.

Brought three of the surviving Chinenses and a rocotto in. Two still outside. I don't expect them to survive, but one is till ripening fruit (under a frost blanket), and one amazingly still looks okay! I made poblano jelly and piquillo jam last week.

I finished up the first hot sauce I made last summer "recipe #1" which was a mixture that I dutifully recorded, thank goodness, so might be able to replicate. I went for another hot sauce made with pears that I don't think I liked at all so it wasn't too bad when the jar took a dive onto the floor. I still have to package up seeds left drying on paper plates. Since I didn't isolate anything, not sure what I'll get if I try to start any of them. My freezers are stuffed full. I'm afraid my family doesn't enjoy this new hobby of mine. Hope I did a better job of labeling things that are in jars. I was very pleased with the mild Asian dipping sauces I made. Have a holiday potluck party coming up in January so I'm trying to decide what to make.

Nanelle, I think your are from the West Indies right? My family is from Guyana so I am interested in making pepper sauce as I remember it. However, I like fermenting more than the vinegar sauces so decided to start with this mash and will probably use some to make a more authentic vinegary pepper sauce.

Your jam and jelly look good, do you have the recipes? All the pepper jellies I make have the flecks in them, yours look more mashed in which looks interesting!

Sounds good defrost, feel free to share any winning recipes! I have tons of seasoning peppers so I am going to make that cuban sofrito I have mentioned before this week. Also going to try that creamy rocoto sauce I think I have posted about before too. Getting all caught up on my projects this xmas break!

Thanks, hobbyartisan, I have to do more tasting and find which pile of papers contain the pepper recipes. I have stacks of folders to get them organized but need to get the loose sheets into the folers.

I'm envious of those who grew up with hot peppers. For me, there are new tastes to discover but it must be wonderful to continue a recipe that has been handed down. I'm afraid here in New England, our mothers started switching over to convenience foods in the 50s and 60s. I didn't even know raw bell peppers were edible until I was newly married and living in a new area.

Over here I'm just eating up what I have left of fermented hot sauce, pepper jelly and frozen Scotch Bonnets. My overwintering plants are doing good. The Scotch Bonnets and Jwala are even flowering now and I would not be surprised if the latter set a few fruits. I'm keeping one Rocoto in a trimmed-down state to save space and will re-pot the other in a larger container as a house plant, it looks good IMO.