Pepper Garden Tour Video – July 2020
Pepper garden tour time again! I am trying to get on a schedule for videos on my pepper garden. In the video, I take a look at the various plants, talk about them and — best yet — harvest some!
Harvesting Peppers
Harvesting peppers is always a fun thing, and in this video I harvest plenty! I’m trying to figure out some of the best uses for the peppers I picked.
Some are sweet peppers, some are hot chiles. No bell peppers ready for harvest yet, but there are some to show in the video garden tour. And those were from seeds I harvested from grocery store peppers!
Speaking of chile peppers, in the purple pepper harvest post I mentioned that the Purple Jalapeno and Buena Mulata peppers weren’t all that spicy. What a difference a few weeks makes!
I cut myself a nice slice of Buena Mulata and ate it…and almost immediately regretted it because it was HOT! Note to self – cut smaller pieces next time. 😀
If you want to see the difference that a few weeks makes, check out the first pepper garden tour video from a few weeks back. When I look at a plant like NuMex Suave Orange in that video and compare it to this one…oh my!
Peppers in the Video Tour
Some of the peppers in this video include:
- Buena Mulata
- Purple Jalapeno
- Bolivian Rainbow
- Cascabella
- NuMex Suave Orange
- Datil
- Caterpillar
And more! I have several peppers which I plan to compare — some hybrid seeds I bought, versus my grocery store peppers. Which ones will end up producing the best?
And as a reminder — I grew all my pepper plants from seed, and I grow them all in containers.
Pepper Garden Tour July 2020 Video
I recorded the video on July 5th, 2020. I hope you enjoy it, and that you’ll come back and see my next pepper garden walk-through video, sometime later this month. Catch you later!
Harvesting Peppers – Picking Purple Peppers
Purple Jalapeno Pepper
Harvesting peppers has started with a bang this Summer 2020 season. I’ve harvested a few in the past couple of weeks, but now the peppers have started growing in earnest. And picking my purple peppers looks to be next on the agenda!
Purple Jalapeno Pepper
Jalapenos are among the easiest peppers to grow (at least for me). Although I am growing two types of jalapenos this year (Purple Jalapeno and Tricked You), it’s the Purple Jalapeno chili pepper that is clearly leading the way.
It’s June 26th and I’ve picked about five jalapenos from the plant, and I think I have at least 10 more peppers waiting to be harvested. The plant is only about 20 inches tall, and it just keeps flowering and setting fruit with abandon. I am seriously glad that I only planted one of these, because it will provide a ton before the fall frosts show up.
I’m growing Purple Jalapeno in a 3-gallon fabric pot. I’m trying to remember to give my peppers a light fertilizer feeding every other week (since they are in containers) but I probably missed a week or two. In other words — no special treatment.
Purple Jalapeno is an open pollinated pepper variety. I can save seeds from one of the peppers, and I’ll get more of the same next year.
Buena Mulata Peppers
Buena Mulata Peppers
Buena Mulata is a cayenne-type chile pepper that, if possible, is even more prolific than Purple Jalapeno! The plant is only about 18 inches tall and I’ve picked about seven chili peppers so far. I easily have 15 more waiting on the plant!
I’ll pick a few more soon (just to keep the peppers coming), but I want to leave some on the plant for a bit to ripen to red. I decided to grow Buena Mulata for the chili peppers, but this variety can very easily double as an ornamental pepper plant.
Just like Purple Jalapeno, Buena Mulata is open-pollinated and is growing in a 3-gallon fabric pot. For that matter, they are actually growing side-by-side. 😀
Picking Purple Peppers
I started picking purple peppers early this month (June). To be honest, the peppers have not been very spicy yet. Why not?
Part of the reason is that it hasn’t been that warm yet here in East Tennessee. While we’ve had one or two days around 90 so far, most of the days have been in the mid 80s. We had a cool April and May, so the peppers haven’t had the opportunity to “chile up” and get spicy. But, as we get more into the hotter days of summer, the peppers will start turning their own heat up.
In addition, as they ripen to their final color (in both cases the color is red), the hotter they become.
I’ll be doing a harvest video soon, with not only these two chile pepper varieties but also some others. I’ll post the link here as soon as I have it posted.
Meanwhile, feel free to wander around the site and enjoy the info (and the peppers). See you soon!
Showdown – Ghost, Scorpion and Reaper Peppers
Time for a pepper showdown! It’s a comparison of Bhut Jolokia (Ghost), Trinidad Scorpion, Carolina Reaper and Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion — the hottest peppers in the world. Come and join me?
Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Pepper
I already have a post from some time ago, where I grew a Bhut Jolokia pepper plant. It was several years ago, and I’ve not re-grown it since. It was rather nice — it grew about 2 feet tall, and was quite bushy. The peppers were a pretty red, and resembled a cross between a habanero and a Fatali pepper. The heat was just over 1,000,000 Scoville. (For reference, the hottest habanero is less than half that, and a jalapeno comes in at about 5,000 Scoville.)
Trinidad Scorpion Pepper
Bhut Jolokia held the title of hottest pepper for a few years, but then the Trinidad Scorpion took the crown in 2012 with approximately 1,200,000 Scoville. This will be the first time I’ve grown the Scorpion pepper, so I am interested to see what I get, for both plant and fruit.
Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion Pepper
This is supposed to be a stable cross between the ghost and the scorpion peppers. The pepper is supposed to be larger than either of its parents, The color is different — a more pastel, rather than the brightness of the Jolokia and Scorpion peppers. From the photos I’ve seen, it’s really pretty. The heat is supposed to be somewhere between the two – or so I understand.
Carolina Reaper Pepper
Poor Scorpion — it only held the title of “World’s Hottest Pepper” for one year, because in 2013 he Carolina Reaper pepper took that honor. I tried growing it once, but ran into a bit of a problem and the plant (sadly) didn’t survive. Time I tried again, I think, because the fruit looks quite interesting. It racks up something like 1,400,000 Scoville.
How This Will Work
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, this experiment will take awhile. When it comes to these peppers, the seeds take a long time to sprout — somewhere between 3 and 5 weeks, if I recall correctly when I grew (or tried to grow) Bhut Jolokia and Carolina Reaper. I have no reason to doubt that Jay’s and the Scorpion won’t take just as long to germinate.
The showdown will really start once the seedlings are large enough to go out into the garden. I will be comparing:
- Plant height — is it a tall plant or short?
- Plant width — dues it grow up or out?
- Plant vigor — how well does it take to outdoor life? Also, is it a prima donna or is it easy to grow?
- Time to fruit — how long does it take the first fruits to set?
- The peppers themselves — what they look like, how big are they — things like that.
The one thing I will not be comparing is the heat! I am not brave or stupid enough to actually try to eat one of these peppers — habaneros are as hot as I feel comfortable going.
What to Do With the Fruit?
I might try drying some and grinding them to a powder — I’d only need a minuscule amount to heat up a pot of chili or a large bowl of salsa. I probably will go ahead and save some seeds from each of them, though. Before I do, I’ll put some insect netting around the flowers I want to use for the seeds, so I don’t get cross-pollination.
Hmmm, now that I think of it, I may try doing a deliberate cross-pollination fo one flower bunch, just to see what I get. It would be interesting!
 Stay Tuned!
I will be posting throughout the year, with photos — I may try some videos as well, once the plants are large enough. In my little corner of the world (S. Florida), the plants will have a very long growing season — they should be fine up through the first frost. And of the winter of 2016-2017 was anything like 2015-2016, I may be growing these peppers for quite some time!
