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Home-grown pepper is not to be sneezed at
Make September in the garden smell and taste sensational by planting your own pepper trees. These versatile, attractive and aromatic plants are surprisingly hardy, says Mark Diacono
Of the few titles I can lay claim to, I think I’m most definitely a front-runner for Most Aromatic Pockets of the Month. September is when most of the pepper bushes I grow ripen their peppercorns to a lively crimson, causing me to pause on the morning and evening dog walk to squeeze a few handfuls into my pockets for the days ahead.
Virtually every kitchen table has a pot or mill filled with pepper, yet few of us grow our own. The black pepper most of us use is from a climbing plant (Piper nigrum) native to Kerala and commercially grown in other tropical countries – Devon is a climatic leap too far, unfortunately, even for this optimist. Yet a good number of Sichuan, Japanese and Nepalese varieties thrive here, offering the unique flavour and scent of the peppercorns and leaves, entirely unlike anything else I grow.
Each of these peppers follows a similar arc across the seasons. Tiny leaves break early in spring – pick some to add wonderful spikes to salads; even at this stage, before they reach the kitchen they’ll leave their heavy pepper scent on your fingers with degrees of citrus (depending on the variety). Once buds burst, the leaves grow quickly to resemble those of the ash tree, which along with the plant’s spikiness gives rise to one of its common names – prickly ash. Tiny flowers held aloft in clusters follow in June. They are a peculiarly powerful magnet for bees and there’s a zing to the early honey we take from the hives that may be the product of my imagination or perhaps the work of stripy, peppery creatures. As if a switch is tripped, the bees suddenly stop coming, as, similarly to elder, the flowers form the tiny bobbles that will swell into the fruit, flipping as they do from upturned to hanging.
Although Sichuan, Nepalese and Japanese peppercorns are commercially harvested when they’ve turned from green through purple-brown into a gloriously vibrant pink-red, you can pick them at any stage from the tiny green spheres to full-sized and vivid red. During Hampton Court week in early July, I usually take a few handfuls of early green peppers from a couple of plants growing in the most sheltered sunny spot. Intense and bright, the peppercorns are slightly metallic, in a good way, with a freshness that, while not better, is certainly different to those picked red and late. A few green peppercorns usually find their way, crushed, into dressings or a marinade for steak. As the peppercorns are so good the leaves are often overlooked but, even late in the season, when the peppercorns are ripening, the leaves can be picked, although at this stage they are better used to infuse flavour as you would bay (pepper leaf mayo is excellent), or ground into spice mixes and marinades.
The time comes when you have to pick the pepper or risk losing it – this can be any time between late August and early December, depending on variety, weather and location. The telltale sign is clear: when the outer casing of the peppercorns starts to split on the first few, get ready to harvest. They grow in clusters – twist them off, and if you aren’t using them immediately, lay them somewhere to dry for a couple of days, so they’ll go through a pepper mill easily.
Be warned, the plants are to varying degrees sharply thorned: most clusters of peppercorns sit a little away from them and with a little practise you’ll find you can pick them without injury, but be careful to start with. When the seed casing splits, the black seed within falls to the ground in the hope of fertile soil the following spring. Almost all of the flavour is in the colourful outer shell, so if some cling to the plant, open and seedless, pick and use them.
These peppercorns have a third gift beyond flavour and aroma. Nibble a peppercorn (half if you’re cautious) at the front of your mouth and you’ll experience an unravelling of flavour: first the pepperiness, followed quickly by citrus, and then your mouth waters in sensory anticipation. A few seconds in, a tingle spreads across your lips and the tip of your tongue, a gentle anaesthetising that is quite unlike any other food sensation. If you imagine the good version of drinking ice-cold orange juice outside on a frosty morning having just brushed your teeth, you’ll be somewhere near.
This unique sensation is carried in varying degrees by each of these types of pepper, a characteristic that’s particularly prized in Sichuan cooking where it is known as ma la: the ma being the tingle, the la the peppery heat. It is delightfully addictive, and long thought in Sichuan province to impart a spiritual lift. In some cultures, that numbing quality has been used to soothe toothache, hence its other colloquial name of the toothache tree.
It’s increasingly easy to find Sichuan pepper in supermarkets, with some online specialists selling Japanese pepper and, while it isn’t bad, both are expensive and lack some of both the ma and la of freshly picked pepper, and hence much of its soul.
Not only does growing your own pepper make economic sense, it is also about the easiest horticultural challenge you could set yourself. If you are the sort who kills mint, so much as looks at a potato and it gets blight or who bites into an apple to reveal half a maggot, a pepper plant is for you.
In the dozen years I’ve been growing them, none of these peppers has suffered with pests or diseases, and despite their exotic origins, each will
grow pretty much anywhere in Britain with a reasonable soil: mine have been down to a chilly 0F (-18C) a few winters ago and suffered not an inch of dieback. I’ve even driven over one in the tractor with a topper on the back and the frayed nub that remained grew back strongly. You don’t even need to prune them: leave these spiky bushes untamed and some species can reach 23ft (7m) or more in height and spread, though 6-10ft (2-3m) is usual. That said, they take readily to pruning if you prefer to keep them small or in a container. Most varieties are self-fertile, though some produce more heavily if they have a pollination partner.
These peppers are, to my mind, beautiful plants, deserving of a place in an ornamental garden as much as an edible one, and can be kept small enough by trimming or variety selection to suit even a small urban garden: keep one near the house, where you can rub the aromatic leaves as you pass, see their flush of peppercorns develop through summer and move from lush summer green through autumnal reds and golds.
I’d recommend starting with a young plant. If you can get hold of seed and are happy undertaking the cold stratification before sowing dozens, you’ll find few germinate and not all of those that do survive. Buying a young plant, which someone else has had the trickiness of getting to that stage, saves you the trouble and gets you closer to harvesting your own pepper, which is, after all, the point of this delightful exercise.
In the dozen years I’ve been growing them, none of these peppers has suffered with pests or diseases. I’ve even driven over one with a tractor