Peppers 2024

[Branching Out]

Recently I swapped seeds with another enthusiastic gardener in our area, and she gifted me seeds of three kinds of peppers that are all new to me: Marconi, Sheep Nose, and Arapaho. Today I will start pre-sprouting them-- but she also brought me seedlings of each variety, which is amazing. I ordered a couple of other new varieties this year, including Pumpkin Spice Jalapeno. It is from a breeding project that began in 1995 at New Mexico State University; this cross has a bell pepper and a jalapeno pepper as its parents.

Does anyone else have exciting developments on the pepper front for 2024?? 🌶️

 

[ducks4you]

Keep us updated on you 2024 pepper adventure, pls!

 

[flowerbug]

i am excited every season for growing peppers. in the past we've rarely grown many hot peppers because Mom has no tolerance and we didn't have too much extra space for me to play around (plus i really like beans ).

this season i'm looking forward to putting in more Beaver Dam pepper plants so i will have more of them to eat.

i had plenty of seeds to make up samples to give away so they will hopefully be going out to more people.

 

[digitS']

Probably the excitement may just be in having some peppers in the best place for them to grow. This may be the year for having peppers through the growing season in a greenhouse bed. It may only amount to a "row" since the south "bed" is only 18" wide (20 feet long). Removing the bench over a wider but shorter piece of ground is very possible but I'm not sure if it would be peppers that I would use that area for. Eggplant?

Why would this be exciting? Well, I had peppers in two places, several years ago. The peppers in the open garden struggle every year with our cool night temperatures. The pepper plants in the greenhouse were HUGE! They were rather out-of-control since they leaned over the path and, by the end of the season, it was close to impossible to move around, water and harvest those peppers. Gardeners in proper pepper growing regions would probably see them as normal but my peppers had never grown like that. I have most success with little, ground-hugging, early varieties. They just never have much of the chance that continuing, season-long protection affords them. And, they must really like the heat because I have only the door and one high vent 16" x 16" to open through the Summer days. They obviously didn't need more than that.

Steve

 

[ducks4you]

Happy problem!

 

[Phaedra]

I seldom grow peppers and usually pick one or two varieties of chili. However, the seeds I received last November includes jalapeño, two different sweet peppers, and pepperoni. I will sow them today.

 

[digitS']

Planted seed yesterday for:

Giant Marconi​

Joelene​

Park's Whopper​

Big Bertha​

Early Jalapeño​

There are so many dried 2023 hot peppers that there's no reason to grow them this season. The successful production of Thai Hot and Super Chili really caught up with us. So, we will go with peppers for fresh use and freezing. You know ... i have never tried drying and using, sweet peppers. Hmmm 🤔.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

Planted seed yesterday for:

Giant Marconi​

Joelene​

Park's Whopper​

Big Bertha​

Early Jalapeño​

There are so many dried 2023 hot peppers that there's no reason to grow them this season. The successful production of Thai Hot and Super Chili really caught up with us. So, we will go with peppers for fresh use and freezing. You know ... i have never tried drying and using, sweet peppers. Hmmm 🤔.

Steve

all of my Beaver Dam samples sold out at the seed swap along with me giving away some of those hot peppers you sent. most of the people who got the Beaver Dam peppers were looking for something like Jalapeno level of heat and then a few really dedicated hot chili eaters did not want the tiny hots because they were looking for the super hots which are way above the tiny hots level of heat. still i probably gave away five or six of the tiny hots.

 

[ducks4you]

I Might grow a handful of jalepanoes. Nobody in our households Really likes hot, so I am growing Fooled You this year again, but starting the seeds earlier, so that we can get a real harvest.
I dehydrated and jarred up some jalepanoes. EVERY SINGLE TIME I use my old coffee grinder and grind pieces into powder, they are J.ust A.s H.ot as the day that they were harvested.
No Real reason to harvest a lot more of them.

 

[Branching Out]

I came across a YouTube video this morning that illustrated a method of germinating pepper seeds in just one day, which is ridiculous. Given that I had an abundance of seeds I decided to give their method a try. You begin by snipping the pointy part of of the pepper seed coat, and then you place the seeds in an alternating bath of hot and then cold water. After that the seeds are placed between damp paper towels in a warm environment, which in my case was a propagation dome placed on a seedling heat mat.

After just 14 hours both the Basque Hot Pepper and Lesya Sweet Pepper seeds (middle photo) showed signs of germination, which I find to be quite remarkable. How is this even possible??