My chilli farm

Been growing several varieties of chilli plants in pot, one bought last year is brilliant, very productive, lives on kitchen window will over winter and producing fruit up to Christmas.

After a rest it starting flowering again and I've been picking chillis from it for the past couple of months - that's Prairie Fire, below.

prairie-fire.jpg

Prairie Fire have small bullet shaped fruit that sticks upright and starts off white then yellow/orange before going bright red. Very attractive and the plant has fruit at all stages as well as flowers all at the same time. Just keeps producing, must have had more than a hundred off it. (I'd just taken 20 off the plant when I realised I should have taken a photo first)

Pleasantly hot chilli with good flavour.

Saved some seeds from it before Christmas and planted them in April and they're coming on nicely, but I don't think they've breed true as plants are developing at different speeds, some are producing fruit and others haven't started.

As well as the sedlings I bought compact varieties Spike and Sparkler as plugs. They're developing well and I harvested the first red Sparklers today. Thin fruits, upright white turing to red when ripe.

sparkler.jpg

This pic was taken four days ago and there are now several red fruits. Another attractive plant.

Not sure the first two were as hot as Prairie Fire, but they probably weren't fully ripe

Along with Spike I bought two other plug plants, Spike with a RHS AGM (Award of Garden Merit) in their 2013 compact chilli trials. This is similar to Sparkler in shape of fruit but the fruit starts off green before turning red so not as attractive as the fruit is hard to see until it goes red.

spike.jpg

The other plug was a whim, Dorset Naga the world's hottest chilli*. I'd seen this in a exhibition line of chilli plants ranging from mildest to hottest in The Eden Project biodome and the Naga was enclosed in a metal cage for 'safety' reasons.

The fruit is growing now and I'm waiting for them to go red. I've not tasted one but I have tasted a hotter one (yes, they're breeding hotter one all the time). A tiny sliver of the Scorpion Morunga had no effect at first and then grew hotter and hotter till almost unbearable and that was a bit smaller than a finger nail cutting.

At the weekend farmers market they were selling green Dorset Naga fruits for £1 each, which is amazing since one plant can annually produce over 2000 fruits

dorset-naga.jpg

*http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2006/04/03/chilli_feature.shtml

The other two varieties I am growing are Demon Fire from seed. This is another compact RHS AGM recommended variety. 8 seeds cost £3.69 and I only manages to germinate 2 of them, and they're growing tall and spindly so I'm going to severely cut them back. I doubt I'll get much if any fruit this year but I hope I can overwinter one.

Last is a Habanero I bought as a tiny plant when I took pity on it on the remaindered shelf of a home store garden department. I'ts now fruiting and I'm waiting till I get a red one before trying it.

habanaro.jpg

I prefer long thin chillies, perhaps because they're the type I grew to like in Thailand. They're easy to snip with scissor over food and into fish sauce to make nam pik nam pla to splash over rice.

An acquaintance gets back from Bangkok on Friday and I'm hoping she is bringing back a packet of Thai chilli seeds for me.

That Prairie Fire plant is beautiful!

Last is a Habanero I bought as a tiny plant when I took pity on it on the remaindered shelf of a home store garden department. I'ts now fruiting and I'm waiting till I get a red one before trying it.

Hmmm. The peppers in the photo aren't shaped liked any habanero I've ever seen but I suppose there might be a lot of variation. Without anything for scale it's tough to guess how big those are but I would have guessed from shape alone jalapeño or something along those lines.

Peter, I think you have a jalapeno plant there, not habanero. Jalapenos, a staple of Mexican food in the USA, are the fat, thick-skinned "green bullets" in your photo. They turn red when mature but are usually sold and used when green. Habaneros are small, thin-skinned, roundish, and wrinkled. They are also called Scotch Bonnets because of their resemblance to a Scotsman's cap. They are green when immature, yellow, orange, or red when ripe. They are also orders of magnitude hotter than jalapenos.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

What Paul said. That aside, Peter, those are gorgeous plants. I'm impressed that you're able to grow chiles (American spelling for the fruit, the stew with meat and or beans is chili) in England!!! I have had no luck here in the Pac NW. Some people do grow them but our cool climate doesn't allow the proper development of flavor (and heat).

Paul, Jenise

The fruits are two inches long.

I don't know enough to say what is correct but the plant pot I bought has a laminated label saying it is a Habanero with a picture of similar shaped red fruits.

Maybe the labelling is incorrect or there was a mix up at the nursery.

My book on chillies says that Jalapenos and Habaneros are varieties from different species.

Jalapenos are one of the varieties of Capsicum annuum (country of origin Mexico) which also encompasses varieties Ancho, Bell, Pasillas, Paprika, Serrano and Waxes.

Habanero are one of the varieties of Capsicum Chinese (country of origin Peru/Amazon Basin) which also encompasses Scotch Bonnet and Goat Pepper varieties.

I am really surprised to be able to grow what was, for me, such an exotic plant. But the compact bush Prairie Fire sat on my kitchen windowsill through the winter, producing fruit. I now have a small unheated greenhouse where I keep the chillies, putting them outside on warm sunny days.

[Jenise]

Maybe the labelling is incorrect or there was a mix up at the nursery.

Probably the latter. A labels fell out of some pots, and some dunkhead put them back incorrectly. But that's definitely jalapenos you're growing, no question--the length, the color, the smooth thick-walled flesh--that's jalapeno. Habaneros are fairly round in overall shape but very pocked/wrinkly, thin-walled, and differently colored.

Again, cool that you're able to grow so many things.

http://images.google.com/

look up "habanero" and "jalapeño" which should clarify things nicely.

I buy jalapeños all the time. Habaneros are generally a little too hot for my taste, but I do have a habanero hot sauce that I enjoy once in a while.

I thought I'd have one of my habanero/jalapeno chillies today.

First pic is of the chilli halved and the upper part sliced lengthways.

habaro-jalapeno-cut.jpg

Also of the label which is printed in colour and laminated. The image shows what look like the same chillies turned red. The back of the label says it will be very hot.

The chilli has thick tough skin. I took a slice from the lower part, pictured below, and popped it in my mouth, as pictured, complete with the seeds.

habaro-jalapeno-slice.jpg

It tasted bit earthy and like a bell pepper. I could not detect even the faintest hint of chilli heat. It was dull and uninteresting.

I think its going to be a waste of time, but I'll wait till fruit turns red and give it another try. Very disappointing.

Peter,

I am not there but let me offer a few words. Firstly, the heat of peppers is correlated to sunshine: the more sun, the more heat. So, there is reason to hope for a better result later.

Secondly, I no longer have any idea what you're growing! The pictures of the plant and cut fruit look like jalapeno, the word "habanero" on the package is surely wrong, but the packet picture looks like neither. Hooray for the Marketing Department.

Lastly, just in case they are jalapeno, the color change sequence is dull medium green - shiny dark green - black - red. They are edible from shiny green onwards, and they are hottest at shiny green, too. I just didn't want you to worry when they turn black.

HTH.


Jeff

[Jenise]

Peter, I agree with everything Jeff just said. Though, I would be more direct: regardless of the packaging, those are jalapenos.

[Jenise]

Peter, THESE are habaneros.

http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/cook ... 42944.html

The picture on the package looks like the red Cayenne chili peppers that the Mexicans use to make "ristras."

I thought I'd have one of my habanero/jalapeno chillies today.

First pic is of the chilli halved and the upper part sliced lengthways.

habaro-jalapeno-cut.jpg

Also of the label which is printed in colour and laminated. The image shows what look like the same chillies turned red. The back of the label says it will be very hot.

The chilli has thick tough skin. I took a slice from the lower part, pictured below, and popped it in my mouth, as pictured, complete with the seeds.

habaro-jalapeno-slice.jpg

It tasted bit earthy and like a bell pepper. I could not detect even the faintest hint of chilli heat. It was dull and uninteresting.

I think its going to be a waste of time, but I'll wait till fruit turns red and give it another try. Very disappointing.

From the looks of that photo, those aren't Jalapeños either, though they certainly are a C. annum cultivar. The shoulders are too broad and they're not torpedo-shaped. They could be one of the E Asian varieties closely related to Cayenne. I can't think of a Mexican variety that looks like that.

Mark Lipton

I think the package photo was grabbed off the internet by someone who knew nothing of "chilli" varieties. So the identity of the peppers is essentially irrelevant.

The chiles in Peter's photograph of the platns do look like jalapenos to me, whatever the package photo might be.

-Paul W.

The chiles in Peter's photograph of the platns do look like jalapenos to me, whatever the package photo might be.

-Paul W.

Agreed, Paul. My earlier comment referred only to the photo on the package

Mark Lipton