What Is a Scoville Heat Unit?
Habaneros may reach a scorching 350,000 Scoville units.
Fruits start green, then turn red, yellow, or orange at maturity.
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Leave peppers on the plant for three extra weeks to fully ripen and turn red.
With a mild heat, they’re great for pickling and frying.
They’re also a beginner-friendly variety to grow, with only 65 days to harvest for green fruits.
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These long, slightly curved fruits have a pronounced heat and a sweet, floral flavor when fresh.
Top-dress the soil with organic compost when plants begin to flower.
Harvest the first fruits when they reach a little over three inches long to encourage further growth.
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Their earthy flavor and sturdy walls make them excellent for stuffing and frying.
Descended from the ultra-hot Trinidad Scorpion, it has lots of flavor with little to no heat.
Fruits are enjoyable raw or cooked.
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Leave fruits for about three more weeks to harvest fully red peppers.
Enjoy fruits raw, roasted, or fried.
To dry your own, allow fruits to turn fully red before harvesting.
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Once fruit sets, plants grow easily, with a long harvest period.
Plants may be more challenging to grow for the average gardener.
Allow this Caribbean pepper to turn fully red before harvesting.
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Compact plants grow round slightly flat fruits.
Harvest as soon as peppers turn fully red to encourage further fruit set.
Fry or roast ripe peppers, or use them to make salsa or hot sauce.
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Fruits grow abundantly in warm climates but may produce fewer peppers in colder climates.
Fruits also take longer to ripen fully.
They’re also sometimes called pimenta de bico or biquinho peppers.
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Let these prolific, easy-to-grow fruits ripen to red or yellow before harvesting and pickling or frying.
Thanks to the plants' compact growth habit, they can grow easily in the ground or in containers.
While they’re prized for their looks, Medusa peppers are edible, with a sweet, mild flavor.
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Cultivars with larger fruits, like ‘Altiplano’, tend to have an earlier harvest.
Piquillo Pepper
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Piquillo peppers (Capsicum annuum) are Spanish heirloom peppers.
These peppers have a beak-like shape and are often used in antipasti and tapas.
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These peppers are quite hot, more than three times hotter than jalapenos.
Cayennes are often dried and ground into a powder to create cayenne pepper seasoning.
The heat levels of these peppers vary, so proceed with caution.
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They can be as hot as habaneros, but rocoto peppers are also sweet and fruity.
These small peppers are about one inch long but they pack a punch with a lot of heat.
Piri piri peppers are often used to make flavorful hot sauces.
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Bell peppers are the mildest pepper at 0 Scoville Heat Units.
Plant pepper seedsindoors in late winteror early spring, about six weeks before your region’s last frost date.
Seedlings can be planted outside in spring once night temperatures reach around 60F.
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Plants mature in summer and can continue producing into early fall, depending on the climate and variety.
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