Mystery Pepper

Mystery Pepper

The growing season of 2011 in our garden was not all that great — assaults by rodents of various sorts brought about destruction on a large scale both early in the season and late in the season and so the eggplant harvest was minimal and the tomato harvest small (though of good quality). Zucchine continue to be problematic for other, unidentified reasons. What went well for us falls into three categories(*): a) herbs (you name it, we likely had/have it in profusion); b) leafy vegetables (lettuces, borage); c) peppers. Indeed, the pepper crop this year was outstanding — we planted many varieties, both of smaller hot chiles and of larger, meatier varieties (for frying, baking, stuffing, etc.) and they all did either very well or extremely well. And of all these chiles, one stood out for productivity... it was insanely productive...

The mystery chile... mysterious at least to me... I assume (can't remember exactly) it started as a seedling bought from a nursery but the little plastic label is missing... a perusal of a decent guide to chiles gave no single close match... and so, I'm wondering what this chile is called...

Here they are on the bush now:

This plant, residing in an earth-box, has been extremely productive for a very extended period of time; still now in the second week of November, with some of the chiles starting to be bitten by the cold and rotting, there are still many good chiles to be picked...

Here's a view of one of the many, many batches I've harvested, being prepared to make a salsa(‡):

They are thin fleshed, with yellowish seeds, first turn orange but eventually bright red... the heat level they offer is quite high, beyond (serious) serranos and the ilk but short of habaneros...

Again, my chile book has nothing that really has this form and fits the description... Anyone recognise them? I believe we have had this variety in the garden before, or something very much like it but details escape me...

TIA for any help...

Antonius


(*) On reflection, these also did well (as always): horseradish and spring onions.
(‡) Surgical gloves were employed in the execution of this task.

Hi- Since nobody has answered this post, I thought I would chime in. You would have much better luck posting these pictures on the gardenweb site. I just checked and they have a hot pepper board. I have posted questions on gardenweb before, and there are a lot more gardeners there, and I am sure that somebody will be able to help you.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/pepper/

I have seen how peppers similar to these at the Evanston farmer's market at Nichol's stand, but I don't know what variety they are. I usually only grow jalapeno in my garden, or something similar.

Hope this helps, Nancy

I'm not great at this kinda stuff, but the peppers look like various Peruvian spicy peppers or "aji" peppers

See

https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/image ... unChyYlh0w

http://www.theperuguide.com/peruguide/G ... /ajies.gif

Nancy — Many thanks for the reference and link to gardenweb — I'll definitely check that site out.

VI — Good eye!... I think you're onto something there and these from my garden may be related to the Peruvian ajís... In the meanwhile, I've come upon a further lead which, together with your suggestion, has given me some focus in the investigation... I'll report back as soon as I get a chance to look further along the two lines and see if they in fact meet...

A

I was finally able to track down what the 'mystery pepper' is: 'Hot Paper Lantern Pepper'... It is closely related to the habanero but, at least in my experience, not quite as hot as its more famous cousin. It is nevertheless quite hot and for my taste, the combination of heat level and flavour is actually preferible to what one typically gets in habaneros and scotch bonnets. As I mentioned above, the 'Hot Paper Lantern' plant is insanely productive and remained so well past the death of all other pepper varieties I had in my garden (can't remember now but at least 5-6 others, incl. habaneros) this past year.

With all the yield from my one plant, I gave many away, turned others into vinegary salsas for storage and I also dried a lot of them.

They work very nicely in that condition in my usual southern Italian style preparations of greens, giving me a nice alternative to the dried Hmong peppers and my little Italian diavulillë that I use most of the time. Needless to say, they work really well in other dishes that call for heat but, given their strength, I can't use them in dishes I make for the whole family (at least not yet!)...

An absolutely wonderful addition to a kitchen garden...

http://gardener.wikia.com/wiki/Capsicum ... r_lantern'

Antonius