SPICE UP YOUR LIFE
Chili peppers hot and sweet
There are hundreds of chili pepper varieties from which to choose for the home garden, so it pays to know which deliver the most flavour and which pack the most heat. Others are popular simply for their looks.
“Colour is a big factor,” said Robert Westerfield, a horticulturist with University of Georgia Extension’s Griffin campus. “People are very colour conscious. Most peppers in the garden are green but if you leave them in the ground long enough, they change colours.”
Curiosity also drives purchases, said Dave DeWitt, an adjunct associate professor at New Mexico State University and co-author of The Field Guide to Peppers (Timber Press, 2015). “There’s something appealing about taking visitors out to the garden and showing them ‘the hottest pepper in the world,’” he said.
Super-hot varieties have become the most popular of the 500 different sweet and hot pepper plants sold by Janie Lamson, owner of Cross Country Nurseries in Rosemount, N.J., and the book’s co-author.
“While some buy one super-hot for curiosity, others do enjoy them and buy in quantity,” Lamson said. “Gardeners are making hot sauce like crazy now and giving it as gifts, using all sorts of varieties.
“They also are experimenting with more unusual and different varieties, using them to make new dishes, often from other ethnicities. It does seem that our tastes for different cuisines have evolved and expanded.”
Peppers are tender perennials, but most are grown as annuals because of their vulnerability to frost, Lamson said.
Peppers need sun and warm temperatures, but very hot weather will cause plants to abort their buds.
Peppers can be grown from seed but most gardeners choose transplants for easier planting, she said. “Seeding takes a long time and is not always easy, especially for beginners.”
Some varieties to consider for: Roasting: Colorado or California reds, Giant Marconi. Eating raw: Jalapeno and Jimmy Nardello. Both are relatively mild, especially when young. Canning and pickling: Banana (Big Bertha, Camelot), cherry and Serrano. The latter makes a good salsa. Heat: Habaneros are real tearjerkers. “Unless you dilute them tremendously, the super-hots are not very edible,” DeWitt said. Ornamentals: Chili peppers may never outsell poinsettias for holiday decorating but they’re becoming a hot alternative. Try pink to red for Valentine’s Day, orange and black species for Halloween decorating or red and black for next Christmas.