#35 Hot Peppers
It’s a sad time for the madman. He has come to the realization that hot pepper season has come to an end. Days are getting shorter – too short to give his hot peppers the light and warmth they deserve. The madman always says, “the hotter the weather, the hotter the pepper.
With the hot summer we had the Row of Death, as he refers to his hot pepper row, has been phenomenal. We know the weather played a large part in his hot pepper success because other gardeners have told us their hot peppers did very well. In fact, when the madman brought Debbie at the library a bag of hot peppers for her famous hot pepper jelly, she told him she had a banner year with her Scotch Bonnets.
Fruit of the Americas
Remember, chile peppers originally came from Central America with its warm climate and almost never-ending growing season. We can thank Christopher Columbus and the old world explorers who followed him for the spread of chile peppers throughout the world. Some of the very hot varieties need a growing season greater than 120 days – not something we have very often in Connecticut.
This year the madman took extra special care of his hot peppers. As the Persephone period hit, the madman spent many nights pouring over catalogs trying to find the perfect combination of peppers from medium hot to extremely hot. By January, he was running out to the mailbox every day at noon. Guess what he was looking for. Yep, those hot pepper seeds.
Starting the Seeds
By the end of the month, he was ready to start his seeds. The madman’s seed starting system was modified from the system fellow master gardener John Carlson uses. Soak seeds in water until they sprout. Then, tweezer them into carefully labeled starter flats filled with a sterile seed starting mix. A sterile medium keeps damping off at bay. In starting hot pepper seeds, patience is a virtue – something the madman has very little of. Sometimes these seeds take more than a month to germinate. If after a month, the madman sees no activity, he unceremoniously dumps the seeds into potting soil where they still may germinate.
Caring for Seedlings
Flats of tiny seedlings are placed 2” below florescent tubes in his seed starting area. As the plants grow, the tubes are raised to maintain the 2” distance between top of plant and light source. Once they reach a height of 3”, small peppers are sent to the greenhouse. The madman has heard that for the best fruit production, pepper seedlings need a nighttime temperature of 50˚ for the first 4-6 weeks of their lives, and the greenhouse allows this to happen. By late March the plants were looking great. The madman had what he felt was a perfect mix of hot peppers from mild Jalapenos to super-hot Trinidad Scorpions and even the new Orange Carbonero, yet to be taste-tested. The season was looking good.
Near Disaster
Then came the California Road Trip. We were gone for eight days. Greg was instructed to keep the plants in the greenhouse watered. The madman had checked and double-checked the weather reports; no temperatures below freezing were predicted for the entire length of our trip. Unfortunately, that prediction was wrong – temperatures dropped into the low 20’s for a couple of nights.
Upon our return, the madman found that the plants had been watered well. But, since Greg wasn’t told to watch the temperature, the greenhouse heaters weren’t turned on. Fifty per cent of the madman’s seedlings perished. This forced him to take extra special care of the survivors.
By the first week in May he had his strongest seedlings ever. At the same time, I decided it was time to turn and sift the compost pile. At first I was surprised by his eagerness to help. But, when he brought out his 3 gallon nursery pots, I understood. He had every intention of using that compost for his peppers. Fortunately, there was so much compost I didn’t care.
Planting the Peppers
He filled each pot to within 3” of the top with rich compost, making sure to leave enough room for a mulching layer of hay. As he set each pepper in its pot, he added a handful of organic fertilizer and urged each plant to “grow, grow, grow.” I don’t know if they listen to him, but he sure thinks they do. Each pot received a plastic label and a wooden label with the hopes that the animals wouldn’t take both. About a week after the pots were set into the ground, we went out to draw a map of the row in case the labels again were lost. We discovered that most of the pots were down to one label and a few of them had none. Still can’t figure out what the animals do with the labels. We figure that someday we’ll go out back and find a tree with a hole lined in labels.
We used to put the peppers out and turn their care over to Mother Nature. For the most part, she did pretty well. But, this year, the madman had a ball fussing over his precious plants. Fussing, you understand, consists of examining each plant, picking off insects, pulling out weeds and checking the moisture level of the soil.
Strange Fascination with Heat
I’m not sure when this fascination with hot peppers started, but I think it had something to do with animal control. He read that hot peppers around a garden would deter animals and he was tired of looking at his chicken wire fence. So, he got himself a pile of Anaheim Chile Pepper seeds and went to town.
By his standards of today, the Anaheim Chile Peppers are on the low side of hot with a Scoville rating of 2500 SHU. All I know was they left a welt across my cheek, but that’s a story for another time. Thirty-five years ago, when he started doing this, even he didn’t know what Scoville units were. But, if you ask him today about Scoville rating, he’ll talk your ear off.
Rating the Peppers
The Scoville scale was developed by American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville in 1912. Mr. Scoville was actually looking for a heat producing ointment. To aid in his research, he developed the Scoville heat unit based on human taste buds. Our modern system, based on chromatography, takes away the subjectivity of rating hot peppers which the madman says takes all the fun out of it. Basically what you need to know is the lower the number, the milder the pepper. The bell pepper you buy in the supermarket has a Scoville rating of 0-700 Scoville Heat Units (SHU) while a Jalapeno may be from 1500-3000 SHU. Nothing below 50,000 SHU is allowed into the madman’s Row of Death and some of the big boys top out at 1,000,000+ SHU – not for the faint of heart (or stomach).
Madman has an Easier Rating
Actually the madman doesn’t use Scoville units to rate his peppers. His is a much simpler system with a rating from 1 to 5. Ones are a very mild chile, such as Santa Fe Grande. The twos are like an Anaheim; threes include peppers like a Bulgarian Carrot; four is a Habanero. The rating of 5 is reserved for Ghosts, Scorpions, Reapers and their hybridized cousins. The madman notes that the heat of an individual pepper depends on a lot of different factors, most importantly the growing conditions. A pepper that is coddled will not be as hot as a stressed-out relative.
The madman loves to give his peppers away, but starts every new recipient with a one because he knows he cannot trust people to use good judgement. Al, the mailman, is a good example – “the hotter, the better,” he said. Still, the madman put him on probation and brought in a bag of ones – Al stopped at three.
Capsaicin is the Culprit
The heat of all these peppers is caused by capsaicin, a chemical that stimulates certain pain receptors in our brain. Hot peppers come in all sizes and shapes. The madman says that as a rule the more wrinkled a pepper looks, the hotter it will be. The wrinkles and folds add a lot more surface area which allows for more capsaicin to be present in the fruits. So, a smooth-skinned Jalapeno doesn’t pack the punch of a wrinkled-up Carolina Reaper. In fact, the madman says that just looking at a Carolina Reaper, you know there’s trouble ahead. In a sense, capsaicin is the pepper’s defense mechanism – making it undesirable to the taste buds of mammals. Only man is crazy enough to persist. Interestingly birds are immune to this chemical which is why we put hot pepper flakes in the bird food to keep four legged mammals out.
Capsaicin’s use isn’t restricted to the culinary world. It is used to treat arthritic and neuralgic pain, and it has shown promise in treating certain types of cancer. So, as the madman says, “there is value in all of this.”
Extending the Season
Until recently, the first frost ended hot pepper season. But, a few years ago, fellow hot pepper lover Barry Miller asked if he could keep some of his hot peppers in the madman’s new greenhouse. The madman skeptically said ok but noticed that the plants stayed alive until the heat was turned off around Jan. 1 for the winter. The madman now keeps the greenhouse heated year round and last year decided to experiment with over-wintering a selection of hot pepper plants.
So, he went to the Row of Death and selected the pots of a Red Ghost, a Yellow Ghost, a Blackhawk, a Bulgarian Carrot and two Thai peppers to move into the greenhouse. In mid-January, the plants looked pretty sad, but when the Persephone period ended he noticed new growth on all the plants. Hurray! He can overwinter hot pepper plants, and by starting with more mature plants he can increase his yield.
The pepper plants that aren’t selected for the greenhouse will provide his source of hot peppers for the winter. He pulls the plants out of the pots by their roots, shakes off the soil and hangs them upside down in the étalier. The madman has noticed that the real hot peppers do not dry well so he puts the best looking fruits in the freezer for winter use – no special care, just pick, bag, freeze.
Decorating with Peppers
During football season, I find him in front of the TV with hot peppers and Christmas ornament hangers. He carefully punctures the stem of each pepper with the hanger, and I find these peppers hanging everywhere. So far they haven’t made it to the Christmas tree, but they do give us a ready supply of hot peppers and they look so nice, I let him go.
The madman has just announced that frost is just around the corner so it is time to get the Row of Death ready for winter. Looks like the lemonade will have to wait and, by the time we’re done, we may have to switch back to hot cocoa.
