We have grown pepper plants here for a long time, most of them were sweet, a few hots (chili, cayenne and hungarian). Today half of the peppers we sell are hot and we grow dozens of varieties including some of the hottest peppers in the world.
Super Hots
How hot do you want them?
Everybody has tried jalapenos, nice and hot, right? We are growing and selling peppers that are more then 2000 times hotter then a standard jalapeno!
We first started growing ghost peppers (bhut jolokia) a few years ago and they proved quite popular. The ghost pepper is native to India but it proved quite adaptable, we had great luck and grew some nice plants. Not only were they super hot they have interesting other flavours, you have to careful how you use them, adding one ghost pepper to your chili sauce makes it super hot.
Then we acquired some seeds of a trinidad scorpion pepper, this seemed about twice as hot as the ghost peppers.
This season we are adding in limited quantities 7 pot pepper, yellow brainstrain and several others super hots that are about the same heat as the scorpion pepper.
We are also going to grow the Guiness World record holder, the Carolina Reaper!
It is becoming like an arms race to see who has the hottest pepper!
Making Them Hot
To get the most heat in the peppers you need to make sure you do it right. You can fertilize your young transplants but don’t continue to do so once the peppers start to set fruit. Any hot pepper will be hotter if you hold off water and fertilizer, avoid to much lush growth and you will get more heat and flavour. You don’t want your plants to be wilting but too much water will dilute the taste.
It is a good idea to grow these special plants in a large pot using a light potting mix for an earlier start and you can bring them in the house latter to extend your growing season, they have a longer crop time then many other peppers.
Changing Tastes
Canadians are eating differently, our palates are becoming spicier. You sometime now see new varieties in the grocery store but to assure you get your supply of heat it is so fun and easy to grow them yourself.
