I am finally returning to the task of reviewing our garden results this year. The next area is the hot pepper section of the garden. In general, I find that hot peppers do well here. However, because we had such a range of varieties, there are some differences in performance.

Easy Winners

Aji Amarillo

This Peruvian pepper was a little slow to get started, but once it did, the plant was vigorous, healthy, and prolific. The peppers were good quality with minimal signs of sunscald and the flavor was nice, citrusy, and spicy. A great choice if you are looking for a hot pepper with a different flavor profile.

Tabasco

The tabasco pepper plant enjoyed the hot summer and just kept on flowering, setting fruit, and ripening. I have to admit that we let way too many of these go to waste. However, if you want to make your own hot sauce, one of these plants should leave you well set. The plant got a little unruly and floppy late in the season, but that’s pretty normal.

Thai Chili

I’ve never grown a Thai Chili that was not ridiculously productive, and this year was no exception. If you want hot peppers for cooking spicy Asian foods, you cannot go wrong with a single Thai Chili plant. The plant was quite compact compared to most of the other hot peppers, but still very productive.

Good Performers

‘Leutschauer’ Paprika

I was pleasantly surprised with how well this heirloom paprika pepper performed. This was a hot/spicy paprika. While the yield was not overwhelming, it did produce steadily. The fruit was nice sized and good quality. While the plant was taller and a bit leggy, it didn’t have any trouble with breakage or splitting that other plants had.

I did try one of these fresh the other day, and they have quite a kick. I have also dried some in the dehydrator and made a red pepper creams sauce with them. All those things are for another post, however. I’m definitely planning to find more opportunities to try paprika peppers.

‘Flaming Flare’ Fresno

This pepper is an All America Selection and performed as expected. It had a good, consistent yield, nice fruit, relatively early fruiting, and a healthy, vigorous plant. It also didn’t experience any breakage, despite being relatively tall.

Hungarian Hot Wax

The Hungarian Hot Wax wasn’t quite as prolific as the sweet banana peppers on the other end of the garden, but for the relatively compact plant, the yield was quite good. It was also an early and consistent producer.

Sweet Heat

Another All America Selection, this plant seemed quite out of place on the hot pepper end of the garden because the plant was so compact. It was also an early, consistent producer, but I think the yield was depressed somewhat because it was so shaded by all of its neighbors.

Worth Another Try, Sometime

Feher Ozon Paprika

This pepper was rather interesting. It lost part of the plant early in the season and never really seemed to recover. It also set the first fruit extremely early, before the plant had gotten very big. Even though we picked off the first few fruit that set, it never got very big. So in comparison to the size of the plant and amount of foliage, the fruit set was quite impressive! Whether a variety problem or a weather problem, the small plant and heavy fruit set meant that it struggled to ripen the peppers. While we had a few turn red, many more stayed white. The white peppers were pretty much bland. This would be a good variety to try again another time.

Aleppo Pepper

This pepper was a bit disappointing. It had a couple times that a branch broke due to wind or weather. The fruit, while of good number and size, seemed much more prone to sunscald or other rotten spots. I would like to try this one again sometime, using a cage to support the plant and hopefully having a season that is a bit less rainy.

Not Worth It

Espelette Pepper

The biggest challenge of this pepper was that it was so tall, leggy, and brittle that the branches kept breaking off. Granted, we had some spectacular storms. If you were to try it, I would definitely recommend caging or staking or tying of some sort for support. Because the plant was constantly trying to rejuvenate itself, the yield wasn’t all that much.

Those are my thoughts on the hot peppers this year!