Most of our planting is complete! We focused more on peppers this year than ever before as our hot peppers continue to be our most popular items. We have added some new hotties this year. A description is below for each of our new varieties. We will still have all of our usuals that you have grown to love like Jalapenos, Cayennes, Habaneros, Ghost, Trinidad Scorpion and Carolina Reaper to name a few. We were able to grow about 20% of our nearly 700 sweet and hot pepper plants this year from our own seeds harvested near the end of the last season. We hope to increase that percentage in the future and be able to offer some of our seeds for purchase one day as well. So far, our seeds have sprouted better than seeds we ordered from seed retailers. Some of our varieties exceeded 90% germination rate!
Our first new variety for the year is the addition of the
Moruga strain of Trinidad Scorpion. We have grown mostly the Butch-T variety and some mix strains. We are excited to be branching out to pure Morugas, which pack much more heat than Butch-T at 2 million Scoville units.
Moruga Scorpion
We will also add two brand new super hot varieties in
7 Pot Douglah and
Naga Viper. The 7 Pot Douglah is ranked hotter than a Ghost and tips the Scoville scale at 1.85 million units, ranking it third in the world behind Carolina Reaper and Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. The name tells you all you need to know: one pepper is enough to spice up seven pots of chili! Naga Viper also ranks above a Ghost at around 1.3 million Scoville units.
7 Pot Douglah
Naga Viper
We are attempting some Ghost varieties again this year after losing our entire crop of the variations last year after a flood. We hope to have
White Ghost and
Peach Ghost plants produce for us this year.
White Ghost
Peach Ghost
Our Habanero selection will be expanding a bit with a new
Caribbean Red variety added to our staples of Hot Paper Lantern and Helios. Numex Suave Orange have also been returned to our fields this year after a year off. Caribbean Red is on the hotter end of the Habanero heat scale, being hotter than our other three varieties.
Caribbean Red Habanero
Devil's Tongue peppers are in the Habanero family. They are on the lower end of the heat spectrum for Habaneros, but pack a stronger, sweeter citrus taste. Last year we tried both yellow and red varieties with only one single yellow plant surviving the June flooding. Yellow is back for this year and we also have
Red Devil's Tongue in the ground and doing well!
Red Devil's Tongue
Another pepper on a second attempt is
Scotch Bonnet. Another pepper in the Habanero family, we had a lot of difficulty germinating these last year and ended up not getting a single plant into the ground. This year we had plenty of sprouts and they are slowly growing into strong plants. They will be in the ground soon!
Scotch Bonnet
We enjoy stir-fry and grilling around here, so it was a no-brainer to add a fairly new variety to the U.S. that is a thick fryer pepper with mild heat.
Dragon's Toe comes over from Asia and will go great in a pan of veggies. We are pumped to try this one! Word in the pepper community is that it makes a great jam...
Dragon's Toe pepper
Last, but not least, we were given some seeds to trial out. The
Aji Crystal pepper from Chile is becoming more popular in the culinary world thanks to its strong smoky-citrus flavor and moderate heat that ranks a little below a Cayenne. It is unique in that it is one of very few peppers that are actually sweeter before they ripen. We will only have a few plants this year as we test them out, similar to what we did with the Thairano hybrid last year.
Aji Crystal peppers
These peppers will be here before you know it! Check back here for updates as they grow. Thank you all who support us in our pepper endeavors. We will let you know when they are ready for purchase, fresh and dried, later this summer!
