My husband will eat hot chillies on just about anything, so we grow a handful of varieties each year. Last year, we tried a Carolina Reaper, and after weeks of waiting for it to set fruit, it finally put out one solitary, extremely EVIL looking pepper. It *looked* hot. Knowing that the plant had put all of its strength into that one diabolical little fruit frightened us from trying to eat it, so we'll never know just how hot it really was.
I've just finished my season down here in Australia and here a few tips I had for my success. 1 don't plant your chilli's till the soil is warm. If the days are nice but the nights are cold in spring wait a bit cause peppers hate cold soil and they will go dormant and then you be delays for weeks or months. 2 once you get a few flowers and the bush is a little small pick them off make the bush bulk up so you can get a bigger halvest from you plant. 3 aphids are your worse enemies so get on top and try and stop ants as they attract the aphids 4 hotter peppers take longer to grow and ripen so remember that 5 enjoy the ride and the fruit. I was lucky and my jigsaw and death spiral produced a heap of good fruit. Potassium is great to get the flowers growing. Have fun guys with the chilli's
Ah, with point #1, the secret is to germinate the seeds about a month early, sometimes longer depending if the chili pepper is a superhot as they can take a month to germinate. That way when the weather warms up you've already got a plant or two you can harden off outside and then keep outside. We're unlucky here in the UK as our chili growing season is so short due to the country having exceptionally crap summers.
Great video and channel! This year I tried growing chillies. In one night something ate all my seedlings. Not defeated, I bought some scotch bonnets and Jalapenos. Fingers crossed they survive as larger plants 🙂
Great video as always! Ben, try fermenting some of those beauties with garlic for a few weeks and then blitz and bottle for a delicious hot sauce! I do it every year, adds homemade taste and heat for most anything.
I'm growing my first chillies this summer, didn't buy the seeds, bought chillies for Chilli Con Carne and harvested the seeds from one fruit, only sowed one seed and now it's around 4 Inches tall.
I've had mixed results even getting peppers to set fruit. My biggest success by far has been with tabasco peppers. The plants seem more robust and bushy than other peppers I've attempted. The peppers are also quite tasty, and unlike most peppers they are not hollow but juicy throughout.
That was the oddest pronunciation of Carolina I've ever heard. 🤣🤣 I generally overplant my peppers, at least 32 plants in an 8 x 4 raised bed, I mix seedlings from super hot and mild varieties and save those seeds, with our longer growing season in North Carolina, my plants easily get over 6ft tall, and will quite often be producing fruit between late March and November. If you want a fun exceedingly prolific pepper, try the Pineapple Aji, it has a sweet pineapple flavour to start with, then a little heat rolls in (~25000 Scoville) and goes great in sweet and spicy pineapple based salsa.
We ´ ve got Red Scorpion,already outside, ours is 3 years old,planted from seed and overwinter in the office. I got great tip from a friend of mine.Try using wider conteiners rather than taller, their roots don ´t go that deep,but to sides 😊
I live in the country that is home to the Moruga scorpion pepper, I cannot eat it, too hot. Right now I am growing finger chillies. I love the small bird peppers the most.
I'm growing chili peppers for the first time this year. Used seeds from a (bio) supermarket pepper. Have 6 plants at the moment (already gave away a few) and really looking forward to what comes next. Thanks for the tips!
I grew ghost peppers last year and Oh. My. GAWD! I can't even describe how hot they were. Just a tiny little piece and it felt like it was burning a hole in my tongue. Don't even handle them barehanded cause if you forget and later touch anywhere near your eyes (or other sensitive areas) you're in for a world of hurt. Made great hot sauce and pepper flakes though!
@@andreahorsch286 Yeah, forgot to mention that. Incredibly prolific. I kind of assumed the hotter the pepper, the less prolific, but if anything it seems to be the opposite. I have a heck of a time getting any sort of results from by Bells, but never-ending abundance from Habs, Ghosts, and Jalapenos.
I would like to see you try to grow some chilies outdoors. Varieties recommended for cooler regions are Hungarian Yellow Wax, Aci Sivri and Rocoto. (I can't do it myself at the moment but hope to be able to soon and an expert gardener like yourself is much less likely to mess it up than I am.)
Wise words Frank! Andrew - thanks for the idea. My summers just aren't warm enough to grow reliably outdoors, but I may try locating one onto the patio to see how it does.
I'm a native New Mexican living in France. I have been craving traditional New Mexican chile (yes, that is spelled correctly). I found a European distributor that can supply these seeds. I am growing New Mexican Big Jim, Sandias, Chimayo. I'm also growing serrano, pepperoncicni, ancho, and garden salsa. This will be my first attempt at growing them here. Thank you for this video, it helps to add to my knowledge and hopefully success with my chiles!
Perfect timing! This year we are growing a whole boatload of them, Lemon citrus jalapeño, serrano, Anaheim , aji cachucha and many more. But not any super hot ones that you'll shoot fire out your mouth like a dragon. Having no gall bladder is a bummer :-(. Happy gardening Ben
I am totally here for the puns! lol We are growing sweet bell peppers but might give this a go, especially if we can over winter them. Also, re the courgettes, we currently have 4 fruits and tomorrow we will get to eat our first one of the season! I really missed eating these over winter and doesn't compare to the big ones from the shops!
I like mildish peppers, and my partner likes them really hot, so we grow a range from bell peppers and heatless habaneros to Trinidad Scorpions every year now. Our Trin is almost five years old and gave the most fruit second year (enough that we still have some dried and in the freezer). We keep them in the open on the balcony in the summer, and though our summers rarely get above 25 C, they still grow well and give enough fruit to last us the year. We just make sure they don’t go out until temp is above 15 C, and take them in again for a while if it gets too cold. We put them in five liter pots first year, ten liter pots second year and so on up to 20 liters. I especially like the fish pepper (fairly mild, interesting plant, nice and fresh flavour for cooking) and the vampire chili (mild-medium, much hotter before cooked, slightly smokey, fruity flavour).
I haven't grown peppers to maturity in a pot for quite a few years now. I did keep a jalapeno plant for three years once, though. I might have to give pot growing with overwintering a go again, even though they grow quite well here (90F rare? That's daily all summer here!). Since peppers can be propagated via cuttings, that would save me the trouble of purchasing hybrid seeds again!
We recommend using Mycorrhizal fungi and weekly feeds of fermented comfrey with chillies. The beneficial fungus stimulates the SAR response and this boosts the ping of heat and the comfrey ramps yield
Hello! I’m from Northern Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 and I’m glad I found this channel! We’re going to grow jalapeño, and habanero peppers - we’ve done this successfully outside last year! Thank you for the great videos! - Sara 👩🏻🌾
from nl, grew bell peppers last year. seed packages can deceive. got some bells, and 3 types of hot. enough left for a pot of chili. my garden is all still indoors. 3 degrees today, windchill minus 7. typical june in iceberg alley
Nice one Ben,I made some very nice chilli sauce last year which helped use up an excess amount of tomatoes too,also had good results by freezing chillies whole.👍
I don't have much of a heat tolerance BUT, I'm growing Habanero, Rooster Spur, and Black Hungarian among some milder peppers which are more my speed. My Brother loved hot peppers. He passed away last fall. Let's see if I can hang with the big bro!
Great content! Here, in Southern California, I always get leaf miners…never bad enough to prohibit production/kill them. I’m growing bells, anaheims, bubblegums, Carolina reapers, Trinidad scorpions, jalapeños and habaneros…should make some good salsas and omelettes!
I grew chillies for the first time last year but stuck to a mild variety. This year I've branched out a little with Anaheim's, cayenne, sweet banana and birdseye.
I have started fermenting sirhacha sauce and wanted to try it with purple jalapeno peppers, but none were available in my area, and it is too late to start them from seeds. The most interesting one I am trying looks like a pattypan squash!
Love the vidio haven't grown chillies before just got my alotment snd s small cheep walk in plastic greenhouse next week i will try and get chilli plants and tomatoes inuf spas for 4 tomato plants and 4 chilli can't wait im new to all this thanks from uk
Hey Jason - great to see you on here! Yes, I'll be tapering down the watering near to picking. Though I'm not sure that will be necessary with these sadistically spicy numbers! Hope you're doing well.
I've got cayenne and thai chilis from seed this year. I'll be looking in at the nursery for more; I want to add habanero, sweet bells and poblanos for my pepper jelly!
I’d highly recommend the Sugar Rush Stripey. It’s a capsicum baccatum, so takes a while to fully ripen but my God, it’s worth the wait. Beautiful stripey chillies that taste superbly fruity and pack a decent punch too. They’re available from Fatalii Seeds.
Hey ben, reminds me of my year of the chilli experience, i bought a tin with 10 packets of 10 seeds of the hottest chilli, wow at one point i was picking 50 to 70 chillis a day, i chopped them roughly in processor and froze them, lasted years,. Batches of allsorts of sauces, occaisional unedible dishes but great fun, nowadays I'm growing a couple of jalapeños, must admit keep looking in my seed tin at some seeds i saved from some rather nice fatali chilli, maybe next year, love your videos, all the best
A tip for storing surplus chillies: freeze them. It is more straightforward (and I find more successful) than drying them - you don't have to do lots at one time. You just them to a recycled takeaway box with a lid in the freezer when they are ripe, a few at a time if you like. They last for ages. You can take them out one at a time when you need them and they unfreeze in seconds. A query about Scotch Bonnets. Last year I grew some for the first time, and they produced the mildest chillies I have ever eaten. It wasn't just my homegrown chillies, last autumn we found it difficult to buy spicy chillies and the scotch bonnets on offer were very mild and frankly tasteless. This lasted three or four months. Has anyone else had this problem with scotch bonnets or any other chilli? Was there something I might have done in their cultivation?
Thanks for the preserving tips. Re the Scotch bonnets, I've not come across this before. As always, keeping plants on the drier side as they ripen should help to develop that heat.
I grew 4 plants and they were hot and fruity. I also pruned them back to a twig, put them in a cold cupboard for a few weeks, then got them out again and they're already producing flowers. They got hit by frips but I washed them with a little agricultural soapy water and they've been grand since. So it can be done on a window ledge indoors, but need a little tnc!
I think you owe it to us to have a hot pepper tasting video at harvest time. Although, I'd advise having some emergency services on standby somewhere off-camera.
Haha - yes, I think you'd be right there! I'll be revisiting the peppers at some point - perhaps on another garden tour. They're growing away nicely now so hoping to have something outrageously spicy to try - with caution - at some point.
We're growing Jalapeno chillies for the first time this year. They're doing well so far, and have been grown from seed. Looking forward to seeing how well they do, as growing bell peppers here in South Wales, UK has not been my strong point. Thanks for the information Ben, love, love, love following your videos! 😊
If you want mild peppers harves a day after water if you want spicy cut back on water before harvest. Jalapeños are great green and red well depending on the variety.
....and never put your contact lenses in after chopping Scotch Bonnets. Believe me, the after burn lasts many hand washes later! Ben, you'll have to do a video of you sampling your chillies once you harvest them :-D
Ben I love your vids & youve helped enhance my knowledge.. however your british accent on Carolina reaper had me dying!! 😂 In the states, we pronounce it "Care O Lina" not "Karo Leena" . & my east coast US accent would probably make you laugh the same. 😆 Keep puttin out the great vids, best gardening channel on Ytube by far 👍👍👍
Haha - cheers Matt! Yes, I realised as soon as the video went out I'd been saying it all wrong. I hope you'll forgive me. :-) Thanks for watching, and here's to a very productive season!
I am growing 2 Jalapeno plants this year. I started those very early, so they already have large green peppers. I also have 4 plants of an unknown yellow pepper. It is simply grown from store bought peppers I really liked the fruity taste of
If I may, it’s pronounced “Cār-o- lyna.” I live where they originated, and it grates on my nerves every time you say “Caroleena.” LOL Thanks for your understanding. I’m growing habañeros this year, along with bhut jolokia (ghost peppers). Great video, Ben!
I immediately realised I had been saying it wrong once the video went out. I went to school with a girl who whose name was pronounced as I said it - I think that's why I kept saying it wrong. I hang my head in shame for getting the great states of N. and S. Carolina pronounced wrong. :-( But so pleased you enjoyed the video! :-)
@@GrowVeg I always enjoy your videos, Ben. It is pronounced that way among Latin languages. So it’s not wrong in that regard. But for us, here in the Carolinas, It is a shocker L O L
Cayenne peppers for me. I had trouble getting hold of the seeds for the long red peppers used in Thai cooking. Cayenne peppers are the nearest in taste/heat, apparently.
I eat a Carolina reaper in curry almost every day, fantastic taste but it will hurt your stomach if you have to much. Is the best tasting chillies I've ever had and my wife to, she's Asian. So I highly recommend growing them if you like Chile. Word of warning though, if your cutting them , especially if removing the seeds for growing, ware gloves, immediately washing hands is not enough . It will burn and itch your hands for hours after. Our second favorite is the Tabasco chillies, also got heat but a great flavor and prolific producer.
You can prune your chile plant to get a bushier plant but only works for small papers something like a Ancho Grande pepper needs a taller plant. And you can pickle Chiles my mom would pickle them with carrots onions and Jalapeños, that's how we would eat them besides salsas in Mexico.
Good morning Ben. Jalapeño is about as hot as I get. Sort of low on the heat scale. One of my brothers loved habaneros and ghost chilies. I believe he had an iron mouth and stomach…. Lol.
I'm growing jalapeños, serranos, Ancho Grande, Tabasco, chiltepin, habanero, cayenne, and chile de arbol. The chiltepin is my best one it bushes like crazy and has a ton of peas size and shape that packa punch.
Hello, my fellow chili-head! When growing chiles, the hotter the temperature the hotter the pepper. If you have a cool growing season, the peppers won't be as hot. Also, peppers cross-pollinate easily, which can dilute out a lot of the heat. One year, I had milder peppers next to my jalapenos and there was no heat whatever in the jalapenos! You could eat them like a green pepper. Grrr! It's best to plant a row of peppers, then say, a row of tomatoes, then you can plant another kind of pepper. Just make sure they're separated by some other plant that will keep them from crossing. As for putting up your harvest, peppers pickle beautifully. So, if you have a peck of pickled peppers, you'll be able to enjoy them all winter. This year, I'm growing Carolina Reapers for the first time. So excited.
I'm in Oklahoma, USA so peppers grow well here. I'm a wimp though and jalapeno is about as hot as I like. I am growing a couple that are a *bit* warmer to make sauce - Filius Blue, Fish and Aurora but chilli afficionados (sp?) consider those sweet. 🙂.
Ive just sown some seeds (about 3 weeks ago) but ive not got any signs of life yet. I know they wont fruit this year but does this mean they are not going to germinate?
It does seem like they may not germinate. They are usually up within a week, or 10 days maximum. If you'd like to grow them this season, I'd maybe start with young plants at this stage in the spring.
Actually, the Dragon's Breath chili pepper is the hottest in the world at the moment at 2.48m SHU, a massive 280,000 SHU hotter. 1.56m SHU for the Carolina Reaper? Your supplier is wrong, it's 2.2m SHU.
Thanks for the heads up on that Zeb. I don't know why suppliers all quote different SHUs. I've never heard of the Dragon's Breath - I'm going to look that up now, thanks! :-)
Another great video! Last year I grew jalapeños and one trick I heard was plant two plants as one (so two plants rather close together and then space out your next set if two). It worked really well! This year I’ve been trying to start jalapeño seedlings but I’ve not had much success with my seedlings so far this year. I’ll be off to the nursery in a couple of weeks for jalapeños and hot Hungarian peppers and maybe some poblanos.
Hi Ben this year I’m growing jays peach ghost habanero, only 500,000 on the scale. I’m lucky thatI’m getting them sent to me. Chuffed! I said I’d eat one on camera 🤯🔥🌶️🤠👍🏻
In Florida and I'm growing the Carolina Reaper, Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, Bhut Jolokia, Datil, Habanero, and I have some mystery seeds my wife started but hadn't labeled. I may cross breed the Datil with the Reaper for seeding next year. So, we'll see how it goes.
Another great video, Ben! I'm attempting to grow Lemon Drop and the much milder Biquinho peppers this year. After a rapid start in the heated propagator, a few of the seedlings died off when taken into our suntrap of an annex. The survivors seem OK but are growing very slowly in their individual pots. Fingers crossed they take off now we're moving towards summer 🤞
Some great tips! I am starting Thai "Birdseye" chili plants. Fell in love with them when I lived in Northern Thailand. For your edification...both normal Thai chili and true Thai birds-eye chili's are called the same in many Western circles. They are NOT! Though possibly kissin' cousins, a true birds-eye is only as long as your pinky finger nail, at full maturity. The name comes from the fact that the finches and maybe swallows begin to eat them of of the bush...only when ripe! They will show you when you need to harvest, but you must shoo them away. The "other" and more popular Thai chili's are just that. Thai Chili's. Maybe 1 inch to 1.75 inch, (25mm to 45mm) A true Thai bird's-eye chili is sweeter and more like 150,000 to 200,000 Scoville, about double a traditional Thai chili but 1/3 the size or less.
Mmm, peppers! Almost 1/2 of my garden space is dedicated to salsa & sauce ingredients, so I grow lots of peppers...red & yellow bell, jalapeño, Serrano, Anaheim, Poblano, habanero, a few others...and Carolina Reaper + Peach Reaper. All of them I started from seed in late January, been hardening them off for the past few weeks & going to plant them outside soon. While they're beautiful plants, I'm legitimately scared of the reapers. 😬
Great video Ben. I'm not brave enough to eat the super hot ones. I'm growing Habaneras, Jalapenos and Scotch bonnets. I luv the flavour of the scotch bonnet, if I want it hotter I just put more in the recipe. Good luck with your chiles de la muerte ( chillies of death). Ha ha. 🌶🌶🌶
I was able to add heat to the soil by planting a pepper in a 2'x2' square surrounded by 2'x2' concrete pavers. This plant grew twice as tall and produced far more than my others even though it received only late afternoon sunshine. This was a good experiment that worked!
Thanks for these tips! Very helpful as I just planted my Moruga Scorpion Chocolate seeds this week. Hopefully these will work as I've already tried Carolina Reapers twice without any luck so far.
Good luck with those. I think that the hotter the chili pepper, the longer the growing season needed. So slightly less hot varieties may give more success.
I love this, thank you. I also love your channel, you have great content. Can we please get less music whilst you’re talking? As a hearing impaired person, it’s exhausting sometimes to try and pick out your voice and follow the captions with music messing up the audio. Thanks for all you’ve taught me thus far.
Last year I got some Carolina Reapers from my neighbor for the seeds and to try. My husband thought it was a nice looking pepper (he didn’t now this was a hot one, he thought it was an old Cayenne 😉) and made fried rice with it. We really cried during diner.
Chillies grow better in containers anyway, they like to grow roots first, foliage later, so if you give them big container, they can stop focusing on roots after reaching borders and in the ground it is not possible with the same efficiency. That's why peppers grow bigger in containers.
Do you know if ts best to bring chillis inside house on these cold days (for ripening?) Or does that just sacrifice the fact there is not as much light indoors. I wonder if the 8c evenings here are stopping them ripening.😊
I would leave them outside or in the greenhouse for as long as possible as the light levels indoors won’t be great. But if it’s very cold then a sunny indoor windowsill would be worth a try.
Hi Ben . Very interesting,however, please no sticky cards, these also catch all the beneficial insects. I used them until I found three bees stuck to them within a couple of hours of hanging them up. They were put straight into the bin.
spray the inside of greenhouse floor on extra hot days works a treat also like you said spider mites hate it, im growing Corbaci, 7 pot douglah, cayenne, piri piri, Jalapeños and scotch bonnets in an autopot system in the green house, Trinidad scorpion, aji lemon drop, habaneros, bishops crown, naga in fabric grow bags as I struggle with watering In normal pots (tend to over water) heard that if u hold back on the water and let them wilt it stresses the plant and ups the heat to the fruit but doubt the record holders need that 😂
I'm glad you explained why my "hot" peppers weren't so hot last year - I probably overwatered. I'm doing jalapenos, serranos, and poblanos this year. They're off to a great start, so fingers crossed.
I have an 8 x12 greenhouse but have issues with aphids on my pepper plants all summer. It was tiresome spraying the leaves with soap and hosing them down. I'm guessing this comes with the territory?
Hi Ben, I'm planning on using straw bales (as per your video) to grow tomatoes in the greenhouse this year, do you think chilli peppers could grow in the bales or would it be best to plant into a container?
I've got 5 Carolina Reaper plants growing now... not sure what I'm gonna do with all of them, but it's my first year gardening and I wanted to give a try to the hottest I could get my hands on lol.
Ben, you absolutely made my day with the "give it away, give it away, give it away now" Red Hot Chilli Peppers reference 😁
Me too!! Lol
Yes!! 🤣
thats why am in the comments rn! 😂
Brilliant video!!
I"m going to give it a go give it a go now 🙂 Never planted chillies before, but I"m going to give it a go this year.
Haha - glad you appreciated that! :-)
The tip about peppers not being too wet is great. Thanks
I love Ben's videos , and I always learn something new each time . ( growing Scotch Bonnets from seeds , they're doing well ! )
My husband will eat hot chillies on just about anything, so we grow a handful of varieties each year. Last year, we tried a Carolina Reaper, and after weeks of waiting for it to set fruit, it finally put out one solitary, extremely EVIL looking pepper. It *looked* hot. Knowing that the plant had put all of its strength into that one diabolical little fruit frightened us from trying to eat it, so we'll never know just how hot it really was.
Oh wow - that's quite something to be intimidated by its looks - you may have escaped a searing burn!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂👉😡😂
Lol I grew scotch bonnets ,just to sit there and look at them,didn't have the guts tbh
@@voiletwhitehorseI LOVE scotch bonnets!! Cook them in curry you’ll like it!
I've just finished my season down here in Australia and here a few tips I had for my success.
1 don't plant your chilli's till the soil is warm. If the days are nice but the nights are cold in spring wait a bit cause peppers hate cold soil and they will go dormant and then you be delays for weeks or months.
2 once you get a few flowers and the bush is a little small pick them off make the bush bulk up so you can get a bigger halvest from you plant.
3 aphids are your worse enemies so get on top and try and stop ants as they attract the aphids
4 hotter peppers take longer to grow and ripen so remember that
5 enjoy the ride and the fruit. I was lucky and my jigsaw and death spiral produced a heap of good fruit. Potassium is great to get the flowers growing. Have fun guys with the chilli's
Ah, with point #1, the secret is to germinate the seeds about a month early, sometimes longer depending if the chili pepper is a superhot as they can take a month to germinate. That way when the weather warms up you've already got a plant or two you can harden off outside and then keep outside. We're unlucky here in the UK as our chili growing season is so short due to the country having exceptionally crap summers.
Great tips, thank you!
And yes Zeb - exceptionally crap summers are often the way!
@@YesiPleb absolutely for you guys definitely get everything ready then when the soil is warm bang them in. Good luck with the seasons
Great video and channel! This year I tried growing chillies. In one night something ate all my seedlings. Not defeated, I bought some scotch bonnets and Jalapenos. Fingers crossed they survive as larger plants 🙂
Hope they make it Emma - fingers crossed for you.
Great video as always! Ben, try fermenting some of those beauties with garlic for a few weeks and then blitz and bottle for a delicious hot sauce! I do it every year, adds homemade taste and heat for most anything.
Brilliant idea - cheers Matthew.
I'm growing my first chillies this summer, didn't buy the seeds, bought chillies for Chilli Con Carne and harvested the seeds from one fruit, only sowed one seed and now it's around 4 Inches tall.
That’s a great result already. 😀
I've had mixed results even getting peppers to set fruit. My biggest success by far has been with tabasco peppers. The plants seem more robust and bushy than other peppers I've attempted. The peppers are also quite tasty, and unlike most peppers they are not hollow but juicy throughout.
Try topping of your plant to make them bushy. But not for a big variety tho cause you need it to tall for those
That was the oddest pronunciation of Carolina I've ever heard. 🤣🤣
I generally overplant my peppers, at least 32 plants in an 8 x 4 raised bed, I mix seedlings from super hot and mild varieties and save those seeds, with our longer growing season in North Carolina, my plants easily get over 6ft tall, and will quite often be producing fruit between late March and November.
If you want a fun exceedingly prolific pepper, try the Pineapple Aji, it has a sweet pineapple flavour to start with, then a little heat rolls in (~25000 Scoville) and goes great in sweet and spicy pineapple based salsa.
Thanks for the recommendations Eddie. I'll be sure to pronounce Carolina properly next time! :-)
We ´ ve got Red Scorpion,already outside, ours is 3 years old,planted from seed and overwinter in the office.
I got great tip from a friend of mine.Try using wider conteiners rather than taller, their roots don ´t go that deep,but to sides 😊
I live in the country that is home to the Moruga scorpion pepper, I cannot eat it, too hot. Right now I am growing finger chillies. I love the small bird peppers the most.
@@TriniMonstera I don ´ t eat spicy generally. I ´ ll grow it sure,but won ´ t eat it 😁
Thanks for the tip. :-)
I'm growing chili peppers for the first time this year. Used seeds from a (bio) supermarket pepper. Have 6 plants at the moment (already gave away a few) and really looking forward to what comes next. Thanks for the tips!
I grew ghost peppers last year and Oh. My. GAWD! I can't even describe how hot they were. Just a tiny little piece and it felt like it was burning a hole in my tongue. Don't even handle them barehanded cause if you forget and later touch anywhere near your eyes (or other sensitive areas) you're in for a world of hurt. Made great hot sauce and pepper flakes though!
Lol, ditto. One plant made like 300 peppers. It was a beast.
@@andreahorsch286 Yeah, forgot to mention that. Incredibly prolific. I kind of assumed the hotter the pepper, the less prolific, but if anything it seems to be the opposite. I have a heck of a time getting any sort of results from by Bells, but never-ending abundance from Habs, Ghosts, and Jalapenos.
I would like to see you try to grow some chilies outdoors. Varieties recommended for cooler regions are Hungarian Yellow Wax, Aci Sivri and Rocoto.
(I can't do it myself at the moment but hope to be able to soon and an expert gardener like yourself is much less likely to mess it up than I am.)
Wise words Frank!
Andrew - thanks for the idea. My summers just aren't warm enough to grow reliably outdoors, but I may try locating one onto the patio to see how it does.
I'm a native New Mexican living in France. I have been craving traditional New Mexican chile (yes, that is spelled correctly). I found a European distributor that can supply these seeds. I am growing New Mexican Big Jim, Sandias, Chimayo. I'm also growing serrano, pepperoncicni, ancho, and garden salsa. This will be my first attempt at growing them here. Thank you for this video, it helps to add to my knowledge and hopefully success with my chiles!
I hope they do well for you Rebecca and you enjoy a welcome taste of home. :-)
Got Habanero lemon, ancho grandes, poblanos, brown jalapenos, mirasols and havanna peppers going at the moment.
Perfect timing! This year we are growing a whole boatload of them, Lemon citrus jalapeño, serrano, Anaheim , aji cachucha and many more. But not any super hot ones that you'll shoot fire out your mouth like a dragon. Having no gall bladder is a bummer :-(. Happy gardening Ben
Those are still some cracking varieties - lovely stuff!
I am totally here for the puns! lol We are growing sweet bell peppers but might give this a go, especially if we can over winter them.
Also, re the courgettes, we currently have 4 fruits and tomorrow we will get to eat our first one of the season! I really missed eating these over winter and doesn't compare to the big ones from the shops!
Wow - your courgettes have come early! :-)
@@GrowVeg Yes i sowed them on the 26th Feb and kept them indoors under a grow light. They are thriving in the containers outside now.
I like mildish peppers, and my partner likes them really hot, so we grow a range from bell peppers and heatless habaneros to Trinidad Scorpions every year now. Our Trin is almost five years old and gave the most fruit second year (enough that we still have some dried and in the freezer).
We keep them in the open on the balcony in the summer, and though our summers rarely get above 25 C, they still grow well and give enough fruit to last us the year. We just make sure they don’t go out until temp is above 15 C, and take them in again for a while if it gets too cold. We put them in five liter pots first year, ten liter pots second year and so on up to 20 liters.
I especially like the fish pepper (fairly mild, interesting plant, nice and fresh flavour for cooking) and the vampire chili (mild-medium, much hotter before cooked, slightly smokey, fruity flavour).
Great to hear you get good results even without the very warm temperatures.
This is the best gardening channel on you tube so much info, and I go back time and again to old videos as refreshers.Thank you!
Cheers Ryan!
I have a 2yr old scotch bonnet plant thats prolific and this yr i'm doing Jalapenos which are doing well .
Trinidad scorpion is my all time favourite to grow, they look soo good when they go purple befor red 🌶🌶🌶
I haven't grown peppers to maturity in a pot for quite a few years now. I did keep a jalapeno plant for three years once, though. I might have to give pot growing with overwintering a go again, even though they grow quite well here (90F rare? That's daily all summer here!). Since peppers can be propagated via cuttings, that would save me the trouble of purchasing hybrid seeds again!
We recommend using Mycorrhizal fungi and weekly feeds of fermented comfrey with chillies. The beneficial fungus stimulates the SAR response and this boosts the ping of heat and the comfrey ramps yield
Great advice, thank you!
Hello! I’m from Northern Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦 and I’m glad I found this channel! We’re going to grow jalapeño, and habanero peppers - we’ve done this successfully outside last year! Thank you for the great videos! - Sara 👩🏻🌾
Cheers Sara. Hope they do well for you this season also.
from nl, grew bell peppers last year. seed packages can deceive. got some bells, and 3 types of hot. enough left for a pot of chili. my garden is all still indoors. 3 degrees today, windchill minus 7. typical june in iceberg alley
Nice one Ben,I made some very nice chilli sauce last year which helped use up an excess amount of tomatoes too,also had good results by freezing chillies whole.👍
Have always frozen them in ice cubes, but will try just freezing them whole to save a bit of time. Very impressed by the homemade chilli sauce!
I don't have much of a heat tolerance BUT, I'm growing Habanero, Rooster Spur, and Black Hungarian among some milder peppers which are more my speed. My Brother loved hot peppers. He passed away last fall. Let's see if I can hang with the big bro!
Sorry to hear of your loss Darren. Do your bro proud with those peppers. :-)
Thanks for the tips! We wanna grow poblano, jalapeños, Thai chili and habaneros ourselves. Also the chili peppers joke was 💯
Cheers Ashley - some lovely spicy varieties there.
Hey Ben! Thanks for sharing this...I am growing Trinidadian Scorpion, Aji Cereza, Black Cuban and Black Scorpion...all very very hot. Excited to try!
Some crackers there - hope you get a great crop.
@@GrowVeg thanks a mil!
I have no problem growing hot peppers outdoors here in Canada.
Hi Ben those are some great looking chilli peppers I think Myne wil be going in 10l buckets this year 👍 🏴
Great job! They took a while to get going but have started perking up in the slightly warmer weather.
Great content! Here, in Southern California, I always get leaf miners…never bad enough to prohibit production/kill them.
I’m growing bells, anaheims, bubblegums, Carolina reapers, Trinidad scorpions, jalapeños and habaneros…should make some good salsas and omelettes!
Some lovely ones there!
I grew chillies for the first time last year but stuck to a mild variety. This year I've branched out a little with Anaheim's, cayenne, sweet banana and birdseye.
I have started fermenting sirhacha sauce and wanted to try it with purple jalapeno peppers, but none were available in my area, and it is too late to start them from seeds. The most interesting one I am trying looks like a pattypan squash!
Sounds like a very interesting variety you have there.
A friend at work gave me some Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Chillie) seed's to plant this year.
Love the vidio haven't grown chillies before just got my alotment snd s small cheep walk in plastic greenhouse next week i will try and get chilli plants and tomatoes inuf spas for 4 tomato plants and 4 chilli can't wait im new to all this thanks from uk
Nice one Ian. Enjoy your new allotment.
Little tip - The best way to maximise heat is to deprive them of water as they approach picking time.
Hey Jason - great to see you on here! Yes, I'll be tapering down the watering near to picking. Though I'm not sure that will be necessary with these sadistically spicy numbers! Hope you're doing well.
Thanks Ben. Love the subject matter :)
Ben, you do an absolutely fantastic job on these videos and tips. These truly mean a lot to me. On behalf of all gardeners, thank you! Happy growing!
You are very welcome Jordan. Thank you so much for watching.
Hi Ben! I am growing Aleppo & Jalapeño along with mild Jimmy Nardello’s in my New Jersey garden this year. 🫑 🌶 🌶🌶
Lovely stuff!
Trying Joe's Long Cayenne. Supposed get up to 8" long or more!
I've got cayenne and thai chilis from seed this year. I'll be looking in at the nursery for more; I want to add habanero, sweet bells and poblanos for my pepper jelly!
Pepper jelly - what a super idea!
@@GrowVeg Pepper jelly has become a favorite condiment. On toast, scones, baked ham or lamb chops - yum!
I’d highly recommend the Sugar Rush Stripey. It’s a capsicum baccatum, so takes a while to fully ripen but my God, it’s worth the wait. Beautiful stripey chillies that taste superbly fruity and pack a decent punch too. They’re available from Fatalii Seeds.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Hey ben, reminds me of my year of the chilli experience, i bought a tin with 10 packets of 10 seeds of the hottest chilli, wow at one point i was picking 50 to 70 chillis a day, i chopped them roughly in processor and froze them, lasted years,. Batches of allsorts of sauces, occaisional unedible dishes but great fun, nowadays I'm growing a couple of jalapeños, must admit keep looking in my seed tin at some seeds i saved from some rather nice fatali chilli, maybe next year, love your videos, all the best
Definitely next year Pete - go for it! :-)
Any excess chillis go straight in the freezer whole. They defrost within minutes.
A tip for storing surplus chillies: freeze them. It is more straightforward (and I find more successful) than drying them - you don't have to do lots at one time. You just them to a recycled takeaway box with a lid in the freezer when they are ripe, a few at a time if you like. They last for ages. You can take them out one at a time when you need them and they unfreeze in seconds.
A query about Scotch Bonnets. Last year I grew some for the first time, and they produced the mildest chillies I have ever eaten. It wasn't just my homegrown chillies, last autumn we found it difficult to buy spicy chillies and the scotch bonnets on offer were very mild and frankly tasteless. This lasted three or four months. Has anyone else had this problem with scotch bonnets or any other chilli? Was there something I might have done in their cultivation?
You can pickle them too in Mexico we pickle them with carrots and onions you can add other stuff too. They taste amazing try it out.
Thanks for the preserving tips. Re the Scotch bonnets, I've not come across this before. As always, keeping plants on the drier side as they ripen should help to develop that heat.
I grew 4 plants and they were hot and fruity. I also pruned them back to a twig, put them in a cold cupboard for a few weeks, then got them out again and they're already producing flowers. They got hit by frips but I washed them with a little agricultural soapy water and they've been grand since. So it can be done on a window ledge indoors, but need a little tnc!
Thank you for the video! I'm growing Purple UFO chillies for the first time and am very curious how they'll turn out. Great pun work, by the way! :D
Good luck with them. :-)
I think you owe it to us to have a hot pepper tasting video at harvest time. Although, I'd advise having some emergency services on standby somewhere off-camera.
Haha - yes, I think you'd be right there! I'll be revisiting the peppers at some point - perhaps on another garden tour. They're growing away nicely now so hoping to have something outrageously spicy to try - with caution - at some point.
We're growing Jalapeno chillies for the first time this year. They're doing well so far, and have been grown from seed. Looking forward to seeing how well they do, as growing bell peppers here in South Wales, UK has not been my strong point. Thanks for the information Ben, love, love, love following your videos! 😊
If you can make it down to Devon, South Devon Chilli Farm is great!
If you want mild peppers harves a day after water if you want spicy cut back on water before harvest. Jalapeños are great green and red well depending on the variety.
Thanks for the kind words Gaggles. Looking forward to seeing how the chillies do - slow start but they seem to be beginning to pick up speed now.
3:28 Tell that to my hydroponic chili peppers, because they're drinking up way too much water this is getting expensive.
....and never put your contact lenses in after chopping Scotch Bonnets. Believe me, the after burn lasts many hand washes later! Ben, you'll have to do a video of you sampling your chillies once you harvest them :-D
Oh wow - that's going to sting!
@@GrowVeg Plants revenge 😂
Ben I love your vids & youve helped enhance my knowledge.. however your british accent on Carolina reaper had me dying!! 😂 In the states, we pronounce it "Care O Lina" not "Karo Leena" . & my east coast US accent would probably make you laugh the same. 😆 Keep puttin out the great vids, best gardening channel on Ytube by far 👍👍👍
Haha - cheers Matt! Yes, I realised as soon as the video went out I'd been saying it all wrong. I hope you'll forgive me. :-) Thanks for watching, and here's to a very productive season!
We're growing Jalapeños, Tabasco, and Sweet peppers. They're doing well but I'm going to get some bigger pots after watching this!.
Really enjoyed this video Ben and what a fantastic tip about making your own trap 👍👍 I shall be making my own today
All the best
Russell
Cheers Russel!
I am growing 2 Jalapeno plants this year. I started those very early, so they already have large green peppers.
I also have 4 plants of an unknown yellow pepper. It is simply grown from store bought peppers I really liked the fruity taste of
If I may, it’s pronounced “Cār-o- lyna.”
I live where they originated, and it grates on my nerves every time you say “Caroleena.” LOL
Thanks for your understanding.
I’m growing habañeros this year, along with bhut jolokia (ghost peppers).
Great video, Ben!
I am glad you posted this, as I was thinking of doing the same, but you being from there supercedes my claim. 😊 👍
I immediately realised I had been saying it wrong once the video went out. I went to school with a girl who whose name was pronounced as I said it - I think that's why I kept saying it wrong. I hang my head in shame for getting the great states of N. and S. Carolina pronounced wrong. :-( But so pleased you enjoyed the video! :-)
@@GrowVeg I always enjoy your videos, Ben.
It is pronounced that way among Latin languages. So it’s not wrong in that regard.
But for us, here in the Carolinas, It is a shocker L O L
Cayenne peppers for me. I had trouble getting hold of the seeds for the long red peppers used in Thai cooking. Cayenne peppers are the nearest in taste/heat, apparently.
I eat a Carolina reaper in curry almost every day, fantastic taste but it will hurt your stomach if you have to much.
Is the best tasting chillies I've ever had and my wife to, she's Asian. So I highly recommend growing them if you like Chile.
Word of warning though, if your cutting them , especially if removing the seeds for growing, ware gloves, immediately washing hands is not enough . It will burn and itch your hands for hours after.
Our second favorite is the Tabasco chillies, also got heat but a great flavor and prolific producer.
Thanks for the words of caution. :-)
Do they come back next year in Bristol ?
You can overwinter chillies indoors in the UK.
9:50 the best part of the video, thanks! Great work!
Cheers! :-)
Great video, this year I'm growing carolina reaper, magura scorpion, Joe's longs, tabasco, peri peri, orange and white habaneros.
Some tasty-spicy ones there!
Hi mine name is Susan Aikman.
I planted my own peppers in. containers.Mine fav are madam jeanet
You can prune your chile plant to get a bushier plant but only works for small papers something like a Ancho Grande pepper needs a taller plant. And you can pickle Chiles my mom would pickle them with carrots onions and Jalapeños, that's how we would eat them besides salsas in Mexico.
Might try pickling any excess chillies - sounds like a great idea. :-)
Hi Ben! Do you have any recommendations for places to buy plants online that will ship to Ontario?
I don't sorry. I'm based in the UK, so would only be doing an online search. Hope you manage to find somwhere.
Another great vid, I made the mistake of not labeling my chillies, so don't know whether the cayenne or scotch bonnet. But fruit will tell. :)
I planted a normal chili seed 3 weeks ago, and it sprouted quick! Waiting for the true leaves now. Nothing crazy spicy for me, can't handle that!
Good morning Ben. Jalapeño is about as hot as I get. Sort of low on the heat scale. One of my brothers loved habaneros and ghost chilies.
I believe he had an iron mouth and stomach…. Lol.
Wow - your brother likes them hot!
Thank you, very helpful
I'm growing jalapeños, serranos, Ancho Grande, Tabasco, chiltepin, habanero, cayenne, and chile de arbol. The chiltepin is my best one it bushes like crazy and has a ton of peas size and shape that packa punch.
Hello, my fellow chili-head! When growing chiles, the hotter the temperature the hotter the pepper. If you have a cool growing season, the peppers won't be as hot. Also, peppers cross-pollinate easily, which can dilute out a lot of the heat. One year, I had milder peppers next to my jalapenos and there was no heat whatever in the jalapenos! You could eat them like a green pepper. Grrr! It's best to plant a row of peppers, then say, a row of tomatoes, then you can plant another kind of pepper. Just make sure they're separated by some other plant that will keep them from crossing. As for putting up your harvest, peppers pickle beautifully. So, if you have a peck of pickled peppers, you'll be able to enjoy them all winter. This year, I'm growing Carolina Reapers for the first time. So excited.
Really great advice Deborah, thank you. Very exciting to be growing the Carolina Reapers for the first time!
I have grown finger chillies and English ones in my living room window before and worked out well but great video
I'd love to grow chillis but being in London and having hardly any outdoor space, I'm a bit stumped :(
I grow mine on my kitchen window sills, along with basil works for me.
I'm in Oklahoma, USA so peppers grow well here. I'm a wimp though and jalapeno is about as hot as I like. I am growing a couple that are a *bit* warmer to make sauce - Filius Blue, Fish and Aurora but chilli afficionados (sp?) consider those sweet. 🙂.
Still delicious though, whatever the heat level! :-)
This is awesome video …Appreciate your sharing😊
Ive just sown some seeds (about 3 weeks ago) but ive not got any signs of life yet. I know they wont fruit this year but does this mean they are not going to germinate?
It does seem like they may not germinate. They are usually up within a week, or 10 days maximum. If you'd like to grow them this season, I'd maybe start with young plants at this stage in the spring.
Actually, the Dragon's Breath chili pepper is the hottest in the world at the moment at 2.48m SHU, a massive 280,000 SHU hotter.
1.56m SHU for the Carolina Reaper? Your supplier is wrong, it's 2.2m SHU.
Thanks for the heads up on that Zeb. I don't know why suppliers all quote different SHUs. I've never heard of the Dragon's Breath - I'm going to look that up now, thanks! :-)
Another great video! Last year I grew jalapeños and one trick I heard was plant two plants as one (so two plants rather close together and then space out your next set if two). It worked really well! This year I’ve been trying to start jalapeño seedlings but I’ve not had much success with my seedlings so far this year. I’ll be off to the nursery in a couple of weeks for jalapeños and hot Hungarian peppers and maybe some poblanos.
Great tip, thanks Sarah.
Hi Ben this year I’m growing jays peach ghost habanero, only 500,000 on the scale. I’m lucky thatI’m getting them sent to me. Chuffed! I said I’d eat one on camera 🤯🔥🌶️🤠👍🏻
Oh wow Nick, that is hot! I’d love to see you eat that! 🥵
In Florida and I'm growing the Carolina Reaper, Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, Bhut Jolokia, Datil, Habanero, and I have some mystery seeds my wife started but hadn't labeled. I may cross breed the Datil with the Reaper for seeding next year. So, we'll see how it goes.
Oh wow - that will be interesting. Let us know how the cross-breeding goes.
Another great video, Ben! I'm attempting to grow Lemon Drop and the much milder Biquinho peppers this year. After a rapid start in the heated propagator, a few of the seedlings died off when taken into our suntrap of an annex. The survivors seem OK but are growing very slowly in their individual pots. Fingers crossed they take off now we're moving towards summer 🤞
Keeping fingers crossed for you Sam - hope the rest pull through.
Some great tips! I am starting Thai "Birdseye" chili plants. Fell in love with them when I lived in Northern Thailand. For your edification...both normal Thai chili and true Thai birds-eye chili's are called the same in many Western circles. They are NOT! Though possibly kissin' cousins, a true birds-eye is only as long as your pinky finger nail, at full maturity. The name comes from the fact that the finches and maybe swallows begin to eat them of of the bush...only when ripe! They will show you when you need to harvest, but you must shoo them away. The "other" and more popular Thai chili's are just that. Thai Chili's. Maybe 1 inch to 1.75 inch, (25mm to 45mm) A true Thai bird's-eye chili is sweeter and more like 150,000 to 200,000 Scoville, about double a traditional Thai chili but 1/3 the size or less.
Thanks for explaining the difference - you've educated me for sure. Hope you manage to grow some beauties this year. :-)
Thanks Ben great tips there so looking forward to growing my Chillies
Thanks Ben , just potting on some Apache chillies this afternoon ,great informative video
Great stuff Barry - hope you'll have a tasty harvest.
Mmm, peppers! Almost 1/2 of my garden space is dedicated to salsa & sauce ingredients, so I grow lots of peppers...red & yellow bell, jalapeño, Serrano, Anaheim, Poblano, habanero, a few others...and Carolina Reaper + Peach Reaper. All of them I started from seed in late January, been hardening them off for the past few weeks & going to plant them outside soon.
While they're beautiful plants, I'm legitimately scared of the reapers. 😬
I think I'm going in blind - I've never tried them so will find out I hope (or do I?!).
Great video Ben. I'm not brave enough to eat the super hot ones. I'm growing Habaneras, Jalapenos and Scotch bonnets. I luv the flavour of the scotch bonnet, if I want it hotter I just put more in the recipe. Good luck with your chiles de la muerte ( chillies of death). Ha ha. 🌶🌶🌶
Haha - cheers Billy!
Ben Thank you !!.. you have the best Vids Ever.. love them all !
Cheers so much! :-)
Trinidad scorpions this year!!!
I was able to add heat to the soil by planting a pepper in a 2'x2' square surrounded by 2'x2' concrete pavers. This plant grew twice as tall and produced far more than my others even though it received only late afternoon sunshine. This was a good experiment that worked!
Yes it's more about the soil temperature for pepper if the days are hot but night are cold they won't grow as fast
Great idea!
Thanks for these tips! Very helpful as I just planted my Moruga Scorpion Chocolate seeds this week. Hopefully these will work as I've already tried Carolina Reapers twice without any luck so far.
Good luck with those. I think that the hotter the chili pepper, the longer the growing season needed. So slightly less hot varieties may give more success.
I love this, thank you. I also love your channel, you have great content. Can we please get less music whilst you’re talking? As a hearing impaired person, it’s exhausting sometimes to try and pick out your voice and follow the captions with music messing up the audio.
Thanks for all you’ve taught me thus far.
Thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated.
Last year I got some Carolina Reapers from my neighbor for the seeds and to try. My husband thought it was a nice looking pepper (he didn’t now this was a hot one, he thought it was an old Cayenne 😉) and made fried rice with it. We really cried during diner.
I bet you did - that's going to be some fried rice dish!
Chillies grow better in containers anyway, they like to grow roots first, foliage later, so if you give them big container, they can stop focusing on roots after reaching borders and in the ground it is not possible with the same efficiency. That's why peppers grow bigger in containers.
Great extra info, thanks for this. :-)
I just got a Habenero for my porch back porch. :)
Do you know if ts best to bring chillis inside house on these cold days (for ripening?) Or does that just sacrifice the fact there is not as much light indoors. I wonder if the 8c evenings here are stopping them ripening.😊
I would leave them outside or in the greenhouse for as long as possible as the light levels indoors won’t be great. But if it’s very cold then a sunny indoor windowsill would be worth a try.
Hi Ben . Very interesting,however, please no sticky cards, these also catch all the beneficial insects. I used them until I found three bees stuck to them within a couple of hours of hanging them up. They were put straight into the bin.
Thanks for the heads up on that Kathryn.
spray the inside of greenhouse floor on extra hot days works a treat also like you said spider mites hate it, im growing Corbaci, 7 pot douglah, cayenne, piri piri, Jalapeños and scotch bonnets in an autopot system in the green house, Trinidad scorpion, aji lemon drop, habaneros, bishops crown, naga in fabric grow bags as I struggle with watering In normal pots (tend to over water) heard that if u hold back on the water and let them wilt it stresses the plant and ups the heat to the fruit but doubt the record holders need that 😂
Yes, doubt they need too much extra heat Marcus! You're growing some great varieties there.
I'm glad you explained why my "hot" peppers weren't so hot last year - I probably overwatered. I'm doing jalapenos, serranos, and poblanos this year. They're off to a great start, so fingers crossed.
I have an 8 x12 greenhouse but have issues with aphids on my pepper plants all summer. It was tiresome spraying the leaves with soap and hosing them down. I'm guessing this comes with the territory?
Aphids can be a nuisance, yes. You can try blasting early infestations off with a strong jet of water. But they are a regular nuisance!
Hi Ben, I'm planning on using straw bales (as per your video) to grow tomatoes in the greenhouse this year, do you think chilli peppers could grow in the bales or would it be best to plant into a container?
You could try them in straw bales - I've never grown them this way - but I see no reason why they wouldn't do okay this way too.
I've got 5 Carolina Reaper plants growing now... not sure what I'm gonna do with all of them, but it's my first year gardening and I wanted to give a try to the hottest I could get my hands on lol.
Going in at the deep end with those beauties - enjoy!
Thanks for the video! I’m growing hot peppers for the first time this year. I’ve got a Sugar Peach Rush that I’m anxious to add to everything!