I’ve gotten this idea in my head that I want to grow some hot peppers for both eating and for ornimental purposes. I saw what looked like a little tree with red peppers on it at my dry cleaners and I’d like to maybe tacke something similar.
I would like to keep this an indoor thing, so honestly I’d like it best if this were a single pot job, and the lower the maintenance the better.
As to types, we do like our food spicy around my house, but not freakishly so. I’d like to be able to use the fruit that comes so I’d rather avoid anything hotter than say those little red suckers that come in Chinese food.
Do you have a sunroom or really sunny warm location in your house? Hot peppers can certainly be grown indoors and can produce flowers and fruit year-round.
I’m currently growing some Thai Hot peppers, Yellow Jellybean, Chiltepin & Chicken Heart peppers. Actually, I’m growing others too, but the ones I mentioned tend to stay somewhat small & neat & tidy, the fruits are colorful and small and generally fairly hot. They’re easy to dry and crumble into a dish.
If you mean by “little tree” “plants,” then keep that in mind. I tried it once and I had no success. Make sure you know all the gardening lore to make it work.
I am not a horticultural whiz, so take this for what it’s worth:
Stick 'em in the ground, water occasionally, and eat. It’s always been that simple for me. We planted a few pepper plants this Spring. We are now going through the worst drought in the history of the state of Alabama.
Know what?
Our pepper plants stayed jewel-green, happy, and super productive all damn summer. It was remarkable.
Cluricaun, I’m in your neck of the woods and can confirm that hot pepper plants will at least grow indoors around here if put in a sunny window. You’d probably need a whole lot of sun and/or some grow-lights to get it to flower and make peppers during the winter, though. Years ago, I had a serrano pepper plant that I had planted in a pot and left outside until early fall; I brought it inside until spring, and managed to keep it alive for a few years using this method, with it producing peppers each warm season.
I’ve currently got a pepper plant full of red hot peppers in my window in Edinburgh. I started it off in a greenhouse back home, further south, in a small tray, and kept transplanting as it outgrew the pots I had it in.
I have more peppers than I could ever possibly use (and they’re hot - as in “I think I’m going to die” hot).
They’re pretty easy plants to grow, as they can seemingly go for weeks without water.
One variety of pepper that was specifically developed for indoor growing is what is known as the Ornamental Pepper or Christmas Pepper. It was known as a Christmas Pepper popularly because it was often sold alongside pointsettias at the height of its popularity during the 70’s and 80’s as another festive red decorative. It’s peppers are however, quite hot, but entirely edible.
FWIW, we’ve had trouble with aphids on our Thai chilis. Most everything else is fine with minimal care. Of course Illinois has a much different climate than here in Florida, or Bama.
Well this being Chicago and coming up on fall, I can get a plant in a sunny window no problem, but maybe I’d be best waiting until spring to start something like this?
Or can I just grow a healthy plant during the winter and not expect any fruit until the sunlight lasts a bit longer in the spring/summer? I don’t want to mess with grow lights and all that forced flowering stuff.
It probably would be difficult to start and grwo a pepper through the winter. Most winter crops that I have grown, in outside, are best when they have been brought to a reasonable size before the winter. It is also more difficult for fruiting plants in the decreased light and heat. OTOH, with the price of a seed packet under $2, you don’t have much to lose by trying.
Homegrown lettuce is the tastiest thing ever and is better winter crop.
That’s what I did as well. I have one plant that barely made it through the summer, but it was the weak one of the herd anyway (and I think I planted it too close to the shed–too much shade, not enough good soil). I have one that I want to harvest and keep as a year-round pot pepper that’s still–still!–producing flowers.
The only hot peppers I’ve grown are jalapeños, and they can take a lot of abuse and neglect. I watered mine maybe three times this whole summer and they bloomed merrily.
It always amazes me that people live in places where peppers, or tomatoes for that matter, are difficult to grow. My peppers made it out by mid April and will likely continue producing until a frost in November. Although 106F with maximum humidity can make Georgia summers painful, the growing season is immense. Our freezer is full of sliced frozen peppers of all kinds and I have been filling the one at work as well.
I don’t know much about gardening, but I do know that capsaicin is produced as a defense mechanism in the plant, so it produces more heat when under stress. My friends who have grown peppers in the past have intentionally under watered them in order to make them hotter.
Chiles are peppers. Chili is the vegetable (fruit?), and chili is the prepared dish when made Texas style, where the peppers are dried, and usually prepared with meat and beans.
We love growing simple, basic, jalapeno peppers. We always get a great crop, they need no bug spray or fungicide, and even the squirrels and chipmunks won’t bother them more than stealing maybe one or two the whole summer. If you water them frequently (daily) you will get a lot of peppers. A good low-maintenance garden item.
I’m not a botanist or expert on peppers; I just like to grow them. But, I don’t think peppers are the sort of plant you have to force into flowering. As long as they’re getting enough warmth and sunshine, they’ll begin to flower when they’re old enough to flower, and there’s not much you can do to stop them.
I have some peppers I kinda neglected and they stayed really small. They’ve basically dwarfed themselves, but they still bloom and produce fruit.
If they spend any time outdoors, I’d spray them with a vegetable safe insecticide just a matter of course, even if they look bug-free. Indoors, they can develop really nasty infestations of aphids, white flies, scale, mites, etc. really quickly.
