Why do my Jalapenos have no heat?

[731greener101]

I planted five jalepeno pepper plants that were labeled as hot.I let the pepper fruit grow till the seeds just began to darken.the fruit has some heat but not what I was expecting.my soil has a low sulfur content and I think this may be the culprit.ideas or comments?G

[top_dollar_bread]

I consider jalapeño’s as a mild pepper, compared to some of the others ive tasted.
There is actually a scale called the scovilles scale that measures the hotness of all peppers. (jalapeño sits in the middle)
[url]https://www.missouriscenicrivers.com/pepperheatscale.html[/url]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale[/url]

But there are a few things gardeners can do to help develop more capsaicin. (Ingredient that makes peppers hot)

One is be sure there planted in a sunny spot

Second would be to cut back on watering

Third would be to leave peppers on the plant till fully matured (really red)

Fourth would be to reframe from using nitrogen rich fertilizer, nitrogen promotes foliage growth.(reducing yield) You want to feed with a potassium , phosphorus based fertilizer. (fish emulsion, kelp, rock phosphate) These help in the growth of the actual chili peppers.

Fifth would be to add espon salt to the soil.(@ 1-2 TBSP per gallon of soil) Peppers require a little more magnesium and sulfur to grow.( I foliar feed peppers with espon salt mixed with water @1-2TBSP per gallon, when needed)

I have also read that a slight acidic ph level of 6.5 can also effect the heat in peppers. Peppers grow well in a ph range of 6.5 to neutral 7.0

[url]https://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-5-19-1583,00.html[/url]
good read on making peppers hotter!!!!

It is said that capsaicin is a chilies natural defense and that by stressing the plant, you get hotter peppers. So try cutting back on watering.
hope this helped

[stella1751]

The same thing happened to me one year. In March 2006, I was offered a job beginning in August in Casper. Devastated at the thought of no garden for that season, I planted roughly four dozen containers of peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers, and when the time came to move at the end of June, I moved them up here in a Penske truck. The container peppers never did develop any heat. It was very curious and pretty embarrassing, too, because I had promised my Casper cousin some seriously hot peppers. I finally decided I was over-watering them, but that ray of light came too late in the season for my reputation as a hot pepper gardener

In light of this incident, I found Top_dollar_bread's posting to be very interesting and supportive of my analysis. They were in full sun. I left them on the plant until red. However, the only fertilizer they received was fish emulsion with a 5-1-1 NPK ratio. Therefore, I'm now betting it was a combination of the watering and the nitrogen. The containers may have had something to do with it too.

[Homesteader]

An old gardener friend gave me this advice for hot peppers. When transplanting to the garden place half a dozen or so unstruck paper match heads at the bottom of the hole. I`ve been growing hot peppers for a long time this way and they always come out HOT!

[a0c8c]

Homesteader's method introduces more phosphorus as tpb meantioned you needed.

[opabinia51]

Jalapenos have been inbred so much over the millenia that a lot of the heat heat has been bread out of a lot of the varieties.