Shishitos were new to me this year, I bought plants that were suppose to be poblano, but they were shishitos, we did grill them like you recommended and now they are one of our favorites, definitely on the grow list for this year, they were also amazing pickled, my family keeps begging for more.!
Ajivarski, a semi long wedge shaped sweet pepper from Macedonian origin. From Baker creek, this pepper is thick and sweet with a little juice. Outstanding cooked or raw. Really love this one.
Giant Red Marconi peppers have outstanding flavor. We are foodies and this pepper does not disappoint! Thick walls, very sweet with a slight smoky flavor.
I grew way to many Pepperoncini last year and have started to really like them because of how many I've had to eat. The yield on each plant was a big surprise, easy to grow
Agreed! Pepperoncini is great and surprisingly quite productive. I grew 3 different varieties of Pepperoncini last year, the standard kind as well as the Orange and Yellow/Gold kinds. All were had great yields and flavor but just the right amount of low heat for that spicy kick without triggering reflux. The orange and yellow ones are beautiful grown together for a nice pop of color.
I've grown Habanada the past two seasons. Tip : make absolutely sure that the pod is fully ripe before you eat it. If you try it when it's still green, it tastes really bad. But once it has turned orange, it gets this amazingly sweet citrus-like flavor. I'll probably grow them every season now.
I tried Habanada last season and it is true that fully ripened they are amazing. For me this variety has 2 drawbacks. First, the plant is extremely attractive to aphids and second it has really tiny habitat so it needs some space not to be overshadowed by normal sized pepper plants.
I love their color when fully ripe. I make hot sauce using Sugar Rush Peach but the color is pale. I throw some Habanada peppers in and it gives it more of a peach color.
I would laugh at people who ate Nadapeno's. I didn't understand why you would grow a non-spicy jalapeño. Most of the ones in the stores are mild. But last year my 4 year old granddaughter ate her first pepper EVER. And it was out of my garden. She sat and ate two Nadapenos I grew just for her and after she ate the two, she wanted more.
I like to roast nadapenos and jalapeños together for a cook out. It’s like Russian roulette for the family. You get to watch who gets the hotter ones. 😂
Glad to see my top 2 peppers from last year on the list. Shishitos produced INSANELY well last year despite being smaller plants (~2 ft), and the Jimmy Nardellos grew very aggressively and gave me a really nice early harvest, then ballooned up to 4-5ft and put out hundreds of peppers. Deers got into most of my hot peppers last year, so I am hoping this year I can work out some of my favorite hots.
Carmen Bull Horns are the best red pepper to home grow and cook. Won't disappoint, I add to my canning recipes and they add sweet and color to recipes.
I'm still new to peppers but I love the Cubanelle pepper a lot for sandwiches. Nice big and crunchy. Im assuming I'd also enjoy a lot of the other similar varieties.
Cubanelle peppers are my favorite! Averaged growing around an acre of numerous kinds of peppers for market, for about a decade. Few people appreciate the mild cubanelle & hot serrano to the extent deserved!
@@davidkottman3440 Out of the three first pepper plants I had the Cubanelle was by far my best. I tried growing Serrano peppers but sadly it stopped growing very early into the season and died around fall. I'm not really sure what happened to be honest. As for my Shishito that one also started dying around that time and I often had very dwarf sized pods the whole season. That being said, it was actually kind of a surprise to see how strong my Cubanelle was. It just seemed to keep growing and never stop even through some very cold days. In the end I was actually able to overwinter it too. Chopped up and everything with no leaves, it's still as green as ever and I'm excited to finally have some again hopefully soon. This time with new friends and my new found joy for growing plants. Currently I have an Aji Fantasy and Sugar Rush Peach that I grew by seed indoors, and they're all looking great! Definitely looking forward to seeing how those turn out. But yes I think you're right about Cubanelle peppers being underappreciated to the extent deserved! They don't seem to be talked about enough but yet I think they will be some of my favorites for a long time. 😊
@@davidkottman3440 I like Cubanelles for cooking but have never tried to grow them. Are they prolific? I would put some in the garden if so. Serrano is my most prolific hot pepper. I have gotten around 100 peppers from on potted plant.
@@morrismonet3554 Serrano and sweet banana peppers are more prolific, but cubanelle are much larger & very productive. They are also a large plant, but Serrano can be also.
My brother has colitis, a bowel disease that is exacerbated by hot chillis but he is addicted to Mexican food. Most of these varieties are impossible to get in Australia, but I did manage to secure an heirloom banana variety for him so it's good to know that at least a kind of banana chilli is considered excellent.
I grew Cubanelles for the first time last year. They're very similar in flavor to a bell pepper, but shaped like a wider banana pepper and have a much higher yield than the bells I've tried before. I'm not even bothering to try bells this year, just going with cubannells.
I grew Etiuda bell peppers last year and holy cow, I think it may be the sweetest pepper I've ever eaten. They're a bright tangerine orange, huge and blocky, perfect for stuffing, though I hardly had any for that, because I just wanted to eat them all sliced up raw. I tried Lesya last year and found it to be a bit bland. I was expecting more flavor, but could have just been a fluke. Giant Marconi was also a big hit, and great for stuffing. I just wish I'd gotten more of them! What I did get were super tasty though.
Etiuda peppers are amazing! I’m in Alaska so it’s too cold even in the summer to grow them outside. I grow them indoors hydroponically all winter long in an AeroGarden Bounty. So delicious!
Did you guys have any issues in the last year with the whole "peppergate" seed mixup? Over half the varieties I grew last year turned out not to be the varieties I had meant to grow, and that includes ones I grew from seeds as well as seedlings I got at nurseries. What I was hoping would be my favorite sweet Italian variety turned out spicy, like Padron peppers or something.
Last season I tried growing Ajvarski peppers and loved them! The flavor is amazing and the plants were strong & productive. I saw some Italian peppers at a farm stand that looked similar, so I bought them to try. They were bland. I've never had good luck with bell peppers (they were always small and flavorless, even when mature) and I like more flavor than the green bells provide, anyway. This is why I have added Ajvarski to my permanent rotation.
@@Francina214 That's great! What zone are you in? That would never work where I live in Michigan (zone 5b for me.) I did bring one inside to overwinter though.
I really like your suggestions for non-spicey peppers. As a small home gardener I have a hard time buying all the seeds for recommended veggies since I only need 1 or 2 plants of most varieties. Usually I plant more than I can use and it just causes me more work for nothing. Have you ever thought about selling multiple seed varieties in a single package with just a few seeds of each variety? The seeds you talked about in this video would make a perfect package. You could even charge a premium for the repackaging labor. Where I would pay $2-$4 for a paket of seeds I'd happily pay double that for a small variety.
I grew some Tangerine Dream peppers last year, and they were my favorite of the varieties I planted. They grow upside down, and ripen into a bright orange color. I only had one plant, but ended up with more peppers than I could use.
This year I've managed to locate shishito peppers over here in the UK. So I have digressed slightly from my spicy chilies. Have 20 seeds of them arriving.
03:33 My absolute favorite for non spicy peppers. I eat them like apples... Every time I try to cook with those, I can't help but to take a bite, and end up eating the whole thing, leaving none to put into my dish 😂🌶
A few others have suggested this! We grew it about 4 years ago but don't remember much about it's flavor. It was a tough year so we only got a handful. May have to try that one again.
I second this! Ajvarski is a must grow for me. I grow more plants of this variety than any of my 20ish other varieties. We're also in 7a so perhaps it prefers more heat to really thrive.
I'm assuming you're not putting the NW into the west coast category. As you lumped west coast with warmer Florida & Georgia areas, still assuming you're speaking of southern west coast only. I'm going to go with our cooler temps with NE down to mid Atlantic. Am I thinking correctly?
My favorite from last year was the "Escamillo" from Johnny's. Large, very sweet, and very few seeds. The most disease resistant pepper I have ever grown is the Giant Sweet Devil's Horn from Heritage Seed Market. It was not affected from any of the pests or weather issues we had here in Eastern CT (I'm about 15 miles east of you).
I will say the Carmen is a great pepper! I am in North TX and the drought left me with no peppers all summer. when the drought broke in Oct. all my carmen plants put on fruit and ripened them before the end of our season.
The Pizza Pepper from Territorial Seeds is a must grow! Really thick walled, petite size and prolific. Complex, sweet, and soooo crunchy. So delicious that I barely got to try a ripe one as my 3 yr old stole them all before I could get to them 😂 But a great sweet snacker.
I love Carmen peppers but as the only pepper eater in my family they end up being wasted. Johnnys also sells Cornito Rosso pepper which I believe essentially is a smaller fruiting “Carmen” pepper. In my opinion it has Same great yields but better for a 1or 2 person pepper household. I’ve grown them both in the Canadian prairies in large pots and always have great luck, huge yields and awesome taste. Thanks for this video!
Puma is one of my favorites! The ultimate edible ornamental. They have a citrusy hint that makes them distinctly different than your basic orange Habs. I just with They made a better sauce color when pureed lol. You might also like CGN21500. Pepper Geeks wrote about it in their blog a few years ago and I have been growing them since. They are more productive than the Cheiro Roxa types, and make a great sauce filler (though less distinctive flavor than Puma). ❤
@@cowsagainstcapitalism347 Thanks for the warning. Every year, I like to get a few packs of stuff I've never tried to grow, just to see how it does, etc. Last year, I had several hot pepper types, but I think that having the haze from the Canadian wildfires almost all summer long, stunted their growth because they barely produced any peppers, last year. Ghosts, scorpions, cayenne, jalapeno, poblano, and anaheims...no difference.
You should check out Piment D'esplette.- also known as Gorria peppers. As mild or milder than jalapeños. But much sweeter with lots of flavor. In France, it's dried and ground up - used in place of black pepper.
May I suggest the Aji Panca. They have a chocolate color with intense sweetness that oddly vanishes after you swallow. I grew in 3 gal pots and they grew over 4 ft tall with good production.
I love using poblanos in cooking, and that was my best performer I had for my first summer growing! I only get up to 8 hours of direct sun on my apartment porch so it was slow going. But I also learned, repot in BIG pots! I got the plant from a store and put it in a trough with four others, they all struggled except for the poblano I put into a 5-7gal pot. It’s overwintered and still living, so I’m looking forward to it this year!
I love Etiuda bells from Baker Creek. I grow them indoors hydroponically all year long in an AeroGarden. I’m in Alaska and it’s not warm enough in my area to grow them outside even in the summer. Very fruity and sweetly delicious. Heirloom so save the seeds and grow more!
hey my favorite bell is the zulu, or black bell. they are juicy and crisp and really sweet BUT i have a devil of time germinating them. do you have any hacks to get these particular peppers to germinate? BTW my nickname is "Hot Pepper Chick" :)
🌶️ I only grow sweet peppers & in lg. pots. I can’t find a prolific one that grows to a good medium size in large pots. All my peppers are so small. A few yrs. ago, I grew a “whitish” color pepper that came in a “mixed bell” pack. It was a med. size, mild, long bell, & was great stuffed. My snl grew 1 too. I haven’t been able to find another one, (the seeds from it didn’t produce it). It’s not Bull Nose, I grew those last yr. & they were not horrible. Do you know a white/palest yellow pepper that grows well in the south? 💗
Great list! Happy to see you included Shishito, those are my favorite snacking peppers out of the garden. I have also grilled and stuffed them with goat cheese and made a fermented dipping sauce with them. I want to try some of the others you mentioned.
Thank you for your plant saving video. My 3yo lunchbox pepper is hanging out waiting for spring again. I love growing Aji Chachuca & Aji Dulce because of their upright/bushy growth habit. I combine them with Lemon Drops to make Aji sauce at a heat that my family can stand.
I love the Ajis! Most are too hot for me, unfortunately, but I love your idea of mixing with Aji Dulces in a sauce. I've haven't been successful at growing the Dulces, yet (2 tries and counting).
My 2 favorite non spicy are sweet sunset banana pepper, and a hybrid bell pepper called early prolific(3 lobbed 55 day to harvest). For me up in Canada with short season these do best with massive harvests.
Have you tried king of the north bell? Supposed to be good for cooler, shorter season. I am trying them this year. Love my Carmens, mini bells, and the cherry variety I tried last year. Going to try a few more this year.
Huh that's interesting that King of the North didn't work for you. I grew it in the suburbs just outside of Philadelphia. It did very well and I was impressed with its yield compared to the bell pepper varieties I'd tried growing from Lowe's which only produced 1-3 peppers per plant.
I was looking for a good bell pepper with nice thick walls and good flavor. I found Big Red at MIGARDENER two years ago, and it has given me everything I was looking for - large peppers, healthy plants. Grown in raised bed in Shenandoah Valley VA.
Here in Zone 7b the 2 peppers ive had the most success with are: > Jalafuego - bountiful & early producing > Cornito Arancia (any color) - bountiful, but slow to ripen. The jalafuego is my mainstay - I use it in salads, stirfry, jam, and (when red ripe) my own fermented sriracha sauce (i make 3-4 qts every year). I agree on the Lesya ... the heart shaped fruits are indeed beautiful, but the plants were disappointingly small, not very prolific, and painfully slow to ripen.
I've tried growing shishito last year, they grew great... But there was SO MANY SEEDS. Like, they were almost inedible because of it. I was so disappointed.
Red Marconi and Pimento are my favorite non hot peppers. I don’t see the point of non spicy jalapeños at all. It leads to frequently finding bland peppers in the market.
I had a huge harvest from my three sweet banana peppers this year. Flavorless doesn't even begin to describe them. Ripe or unripe did not matter. I ripped out all three at the end of July along with a loaded pepperoncini. Why anyone would grow either of them twice is beyond me. Anyone have any comments on Cubanelle?
Thank you for this video, and for the info about your kits on bootstrap farmer! I snagged two kits just now. This will only be my second year gardening and I want to plant in ground this year and see how that goes. I am excited to start seedlings soon!
QUESTION PG , i grow plants - peppers for resale, i m disabled so small budget, this year i want to expand but only have 3 lights , about 8 feet of area, i have already started seedlings, CAN i rotate the seedlings under the light to allow for a bigger invetory, i have unlit racks im planing to rotate between light and no light for a few days, IDEAS ? ( last year worked well, i have the skill, just a small budget )
Chilis not peppers......Let's remember that the first English people to arrive to our Continent were ignorant.........Pepper belongs to Piper sp. a Piperaceae while chilis Capsicum sp. belong to Solanaceae.
I am becoming a pepper geek and am starting 6 varieties this year 2024. I plan to use grow bags, what would be the best size? Do you recommend a certain kind? Thanks, Jeff
Hi guys just getting started on growing peppers, and i was wondering if you ship to Australia. I would like to get a good growing kit like the one you have available but unsure how I should go about it as they all look very basic and there is not many options where I live.
Tried the Habanada twice now and yea, the flavor just isnt there. It just tastes vegetal and not much of the fruity pepper from Habaneros. Sweet Bonnett on the other hand were decently flavorful and produce a million little peppers. Def wanna try that Cherry bomb pepper, that sounds fantastic. Also finally growing the Jimmy Nardellos after everyone around here having such good success with them.
I've been growing Jimmy Nardellos for a few years, and last year I also had luck with Lesya peppers. But the one I'm raving about now is the Mad Hatter pepper. I had three plants that became absolutely massive last year - one was so large and laden with fruit that I had to tie the tall tomato cage I was using to support it to my fence posts with rope to keep it upright.
I love the Carmen's probably my favorite sweet peppers. I'm growing some Italian Red peppers this year along with the Carmen's to see if there is much difference.
Thanks for all of your great content here and on Geeky greenhouse. I'm growing the Majestic red bell pepper for the first time and noticed you had a cage around yours. I just have a pretty sturdy stake in mine. Should I get a cage instead?
Tried the Habanada but was completely underwhelmed by the taste. For me the tiny yellow Biquinho hits that flavor mark with no heat, there's the rush of heat anticipation at tasting but it stays mellow. Great pickled and used on pizzas all winter long.
I have a question unrelated to this video, but when crossing peppers can I combine colors and shapes, for instance making a cayenne pepper yellow, and also can you combine tastes?
I don't 'understand' shishito or how people are just eating the whole thing with all those seeds in it. it's like thin skin over TONS of seeds. I want to like them but by the time I remove the bag of seeds, I find they don't have any flavor/taste. WTH am I doing wrong?
two i grown last year only just use them up a few days ago, Romano red and Romano yellow, long and big peppers and large harvest but i did start them a bit late so lost a lot, they got too tall for green house it was like a tunnel getting in to water them, and have whole lot seeds, the Romano yellow is the one to go for a lot more taste and only a little more hot, growing both again but one of each in bigger pots along with 12 other types a whole mix as last year about 15 - 20 of each plus 2 chili plants small but hot what im still using them now as i never knew having hot next to not can make non hot hotter hopefully the red Romano gets hotter the yellow great but a tad more hotter i don't mind. in the next week im already potting up to first size up so not long till i get them in much larger pots this year compared to last year and more space between plants, depends how the Romano red do this year, harvest a lot but not so hot but if they better i do them next year if not just the Romano yellow as they were very good tasted great only hint spice good for most people
I had good luck growing the leysa. I’m growing less bell peppers and more leysa this year. I also love the Jimmy Nardello’s. We cut into 3/4 chunks and eat them on homemade pizzas.
As someone who used to love spicy food but can no longer handle it after having babies, THANK YOU for this! 5,000 SHUs is about as much as I can handle without it upsetting my stomach and causing awful reflux but 1,500 SHUs and under are my ideal range. Shishitos are DEFINITELY the BEST one mentioned here! Incredibly productive, good flavor and versatility. I've grown them for years and they've always been sweet, never had one even a tiny bit spicy. Lesya is good too, I love their sweetness, juiciness, and that extra crunch from their super thick walls. I've never experienced and issues with Lesya but they are slower to bear fruit and ripen than many other Pepper varieties. Another variety that is very similar to Lesya with extra thick, crunchy, juicy walls and amazing sweet flavor is the 'Pizza Pepper'!! They're about the size and shape of small jalapeños and can be just a little bit spicy but sometimes at 1-5k SHUs but I've often found mine to have no spiciness at all, only a nice delicious smokiness that pairs PERFECTLY with that super crunch, and sweet juiciness! You can't go wrong at all with the Pizza Pepper, it's perfect and so delicious!
I'm going to grow orange, red, and yellow Corno Di Toro(I harvested seeds from peppers I bought at wholefoods - they might be hybrids - so maybe mixed results), Jimmy Nardello, and Giant Marconi. I'm also going to grow chimayo(slight heat with these).
You should definitely try a pepper called the Manganji Pepper. They are absolutely great fried green or red. They get super sweet when red but are typically eaten green in japan.
I am growing several non/very low spicy peppers this year. King of the North (a bell type), Matan, Paprik, Pepperonchini (these last 2 are about 500 on the Scoville scale), Bulls Horn, Witchstick (a very cool 8 to 10 inch pepper that curls) and finally a Aji De Sazonar that is very mild. My problem with growing peppers, though, is that my hottest months on the year (June, July and August) have average nighttime lows of 55F. Been working on ways to protect my babies (pots by the house, a small greenhouse and low tunnels). Hopefully this will be my year. The only saving grace is a 200+ long growing season.
