I need fun ideas for peppers next year!

[mansgirl]

I'm looking for unique peppers to grow next year. We love experimenting in the garden and have decided to eliminate some of our lesser used plants in favor of growing more peppers. I'm looking for input from anyone who has grown anything creative.

I'm thinking I'd like to try a white or mustard habenero, chicken heart peppers, a Tabasco pepper, and I was just reading about an atomic starfish pepper. I'm definently doing Peter Peppers again, how fun!

Any input or ideas would be awesome! : )

[digitS']

I've grown a couple of new peppers the last few years.

A selection of hot peppers show up annually in my garden -- garden salsa, jalapeno, super chili, Thai. But, I also really like sweet peppers! Giant Marconi is a special favorite and lots are needed around here. And, I see nothing wrong with putting a hottie in with the sweet to liven a dish up a bit .

Last year, I tried a few Japanese peppers from Kitazawa. The Takanotsume peppers are just blazingly hot!! ETA: The Yatsufusa peppers have a real interesting look http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_238-104.html. I had some problems with the plants but some of them made it thru seedling stage.

The skinny, little Fushimi peppers, on the other hand, are sweet and real tasty in stir-fries!

This year, I thought I'd see how little sweet Italian peppers do and grew Pepperoncini. I guess it had never occurred to me that the wrinkles in a pickled Pepperoncini are NOT caused by the vinegar . Funny little wrinkled things . . . .

Anyway, after picking Thai Hots for a couple of hours and not getting much more than I could stuff in my shirt pockets . . . I'm wondering why I grow so many of these plants! I mean, a pocket full will go a loooong way!

Probably, I will grow more and more sweet peppers since more pounds of them can be included in my diet, along with grams of the red, hot dynamite that we can choose from .



Steve

[Canadian Farmer Guy]

I'm thinking of growing cayenne peppers next year.
If I grow enough I'd like to experiment with drying and powdering them.

CFG

[rainbowgardener]

for bell peppers, I like the rainbow bell pepper seed packets:

http://www.jungseed.com/dp.asp?pID=0315 ... ell+Pepper

from one seed packet, you can grow a bunch of different colors of peppers in your garden. I will say in my 2-3 yrs of growing them, the purples tended to predominate and I never saw the white one. But I did also get reds, oranges, yellows.

[gumbo2176]

I'm looking for unique peppers to grow next year. Any input or ideas would be awesome! : )

Why not give poblano peppers a try? I've had success with them before and will likely plant some next spring. My wife and I like them stuffed with a mix of some ground meat seasoned with cumin, chili powder(just like taco meat), sauteed onion, bell pepper, garlic and a couple of cheeses for good measure. Make the mix kind of dry and let it cool before stuffing the peppers. Grill the peppers till they are cooked and the stuffing is hot. I find it is best to cut the peppers in half to stuff and cook. If you just cut off the top and stuff them, they tend to ooze stuffing out the top unless you cap it with some foil prior to cooking.

[garden5]

A really fun pepper to try is the bhut jolokia AKA: the ghost pepper.

With a scoville rating of just over 1 MILLION, it's the hottest pepper in the world. Also, the fish peppers are neat, especially the white ones.

[applestar]

I second FISH peppers. They're variegated -- plants AND fruits. So you get the beautiful plants with white splashed all over as well as fruits that range from all white (cream, really) to all red and stripes of whites and oranges in between. Green/cream variegation while the fruits are young, of course.

AJI DULCE is another unusual one that I tried growing this year. I'm still trying to decide if I DO like the flavor -- it's supposed to have the appearance and fruity sweetness of Habaneros WITHOUT THE HEAT. It's in a separate category called "spice" peppers in one catalog. It has a flowery flavor that I'm not entirely sure I like. It reminds me of Tanqueray gin in an odd way. I'm going to try making some Hot Pepper Jelly with them mixed in to see if that would work. I do find they work really well in a Chili (you know the stew kind?) recipe, but not so well in a Curry recipe. I'm going to dry them and grind them up so I can just use a pinch here and there. Appearance-wise, the fruits grow from green to orange to red and can be picked in any color stage (slightly different flavor/aroma).

[TZ -OH6]

Some of my favorite oddballs.

Bolivian Rainbow--ornamental, but colorful and easy to grow.
Tastes lousy, maybe good for parrots?

Cumari/yellow jellybean- Pea-sized relative of Habanero. Nice looking compact bushy plant loads up with yellow fruit. Heat equal to a Hab but fades much faster. Some say they taste like fruit loops, but not for me. Good for container patio plant.

Peruvian White Hab/white bullet. Early, productive compact plant. Not much air inside the fruits so they take up little room in the freezer. Heat similar to Cumari, fades before you are forced to go for milk.

Yellow Bumpy. A yellow Hab. Different flavor than an orange Hab.
Early and very very productive for me.

Brazilian starfish- Sweet and hot. Can remove seeds to bring heat down. Good little containers for stuffed salad hors d'oeurves. Viney plant needs support.

Fish pepper--pretty green and white variegated leaves and fruit. Fruit turn solid red, good for crushed red pepper flakes.

Aji cristal--different citrussy flavor, heat like banana pepper, texture like peproncinii. Viney plant needs support.

Hot Lemon- Productive, lemmony flavor. Heat level similar to a serrano.



---

Anchos/poblanos are nice because they do double duty for roasted green chilis and dried red chili powder. Which is a bonus in that few ripen before frost for me.

[applestar]

Brazilian starfish- Sweet and hot. Can remove seeds to bring heat down. Good little containers for stuffed salad hors d'oeurves. Viney plant needs support.
..
Hot Lemon- Productive, lemmony flavor. Heat level similar to a serrano.

Ooh! Adding these two to my next year's seeds wishlist.

[stella1751]

I like the yellow Habaneros I grew this year. They are twice the size of the regular Habanero and really neat looking. I don't eat these peppers; they are too hot for my palate, but I think I will try them again next year, just because they give you a lot of pepper per habanero bush and are, well, attractive

I second the member who wrote Poblanos. They are a huge pepper on a huge plant going 5' to 6' tall and, after the first tentative wave of peppers, produce like mad. Best of all, they are a multi-purpose hot pepper that are excellent stuffed, chopped, or eaten fresh. I guess they are the pepper of choice for drying, in that they are called Anchos when dried, so I'm betting people dry them frequently. Good flavor, but maybe too mild if you are looking for a really hot pepper. I seriously like their hunter green, sleek appearance, too.

[soil]

try here for some peppers you cant get most anywhere else, i grew a few from this site this year and will be buying a lot more to try next year. they made for some DELICIOUS chili powder.

http://www.nativeseeds.org/catalog/inde ... qml0kkgp86

they also sell Chiltepines, which are the wild ancestors of peppers.

http://www.nativeseeds.org/catalog/inde ... ath=1_1061

[tedln]

Soil,

I used to work with a guy from Mexico whose relatives would send him jars of wild picked, Chile Pequin, peppers. He would eat them from the jar with a teaspoon the way I would eat Texas style pinto beans. He convinced me to try one of the little pea sized peppers. I thought I was going to die. That was the hottest thing I have ever eaten. Of course I couldn't let him know that I was in excruciating pain.

I don't know if you read the details of the South Texas Chile Pequin you linked to, but the seed is from wild grown peppers harvested along fence rows near McAllen, Texas in the lower Rio Grande valley.

I've seen them as potted plants covered with blooms and later, covered with peppers.

Texas

[soil]

I don't know if you read the details of the South Texas Chile Pequin you linked to, but the seed is from wild grown peppers harvested along fence rows near McAllen, Texas in the lower Rio Grande valley.

yup thats the best part about them mine were pretty hot. but i also have a high tolerance to heat.

most of the peppers( and other seeds) they sell were collected on roadside stands or from native americans tribes. cool stuff if you ask me.

[lorax]

My hands-down faves are:

Aji Macho - long, large hottish peppers that start out fairly sweet with a touch of heat when they're green, go through blazing hot at the yellow-orange state, and then sweeten up again when they're red. The plant is really bushy and it's an excellent high-heat perfomer.

Bombitas (Little Bombs) - round green sweet peppers that gain a mild heat when they're red ripe. A slow starter, but the plants are prolific.

Dientes del Dragon (Dragon's Teeth) - a real crowd pleaser; small purple tooth-shaped peppers that ripen through white-yellow-orange to red. One of the hottest peppers I've ever grown, excellent flavour, and also very ornamental. Another excellent high-heat performer. A newer cultivar, called Lagrimas del Dragon (Dragon's Tears), has the same flavour but round, berry-type fruits.

Auto da Fe (Trial by Fire) - a superhot Aji type; very small peppers that are extremely spicy (ie pick it with gloves hot) and which are normally harvested green and allowed to redden up in the sun on the windowsill as they dehydrate. These are my favourite peppers for hot ceviche - there's enough heat in them to cook shrimp that are marinaded overnight.

[tedln]

I don't know if you read the details of the South Texas Chile Pequin you linked to, but the seed is from wild grown peppers harvested along fence rows near McAllen, Texas in the lower Rio Grande valley.

yup thats the best part about them mine were pretty hot. but i also have a high tolerance to heat.

most of the peppers( and other seeds) they sell were collected on roadside stands or from native americans tribes. cool stuff if you ask me.

Yep, my heat tolerance has increased with age. I eat the hot stuff now, but I do draw the line somewhere below habenero.

Ted