Tips for Growing Hot Peppers

Start hot peppers from seed indoors in late winter or buy transplants and plant them directly in the ground after the last frost in the spring. You’ll get to pick from a larger variety of peppers if you grow from seed, because there are online sellers offering a slew of pepper varieties in seed packets. But it’s simpler and requires less planning to buy transplants locally and plant them in the spring after the last frost date in your area. Hot peppers need at least eight hours of direct sunlight a day to thrive. Have a shady or small yard? No worries. Peppers grow well in containers and raised beds, so you can grow them in any sunny spot you have. You can grow everything from habanero peppers to cayenne peppers in a couple of pots on a sunny patio. While a pepper’s heat is mostly determined by genetics, the environment in which it’s grown can play a role. Peppers like hot weather, plus high temperatures and droughty conditions will produce a higher concentration of capsaicin, the chemical in the pepper that produces the hot taste. That’s why the Southwestern U.S. is such a hot bed of pepper growing. Rainier, cloudier climates produce peppers with less punch. Don’t live in the pepper paradises of California, Arizona, or New Mexico but still want maximum heat in your hot peppers? Compensate by planting hotter varieties. You can also turn up the heat on your pepper crop by being stingy with water.

Measuring a Pepper’s Heat

The heat of peppers is measured in Scoville units. The Scoville scale ranges from 0, the rating for a mild bell pepper, to a mouth-scorching 3,000,000, the rating for a Pepper X, the hottest pepper on the planet. Pro tip: You don’t want to eat a pepper that contains millions of Scovilles. That’s a stunt pepper, not an edible one. You want to eat and grow hot peppers like a poblano that comes in at 2,500 Scoville Heat Units (SHU) or a cayenne pepper that packs 30,000 SHUs. A word of caution: Use disposable gloves when handling fresh hot peppers and never, ever touch your eyes. The hottest varieties can literally burn unprotected skin. Removing the seeds doesn’t reduce the heat from a pepper, contrary to popular belief. The heat is concentrated in the inner white pith, or rib, of the pepper, not the seeds. To take some of the bite out of a fresh hot pepper, cut out the pith.

Top pepper picks, arranged in order of increasing heat

Scoville Rating: 250 to 1,000 Scoville Rating: 1,000 to 2,000 Scoville Rating: 1,000 to 10,000 Scoville Rating: 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville Rating: 10,000 to 25,000 Scoville Rating: 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville Rating: 50,000 to 100,000 Scoville Rating: 100,000 to 350,000
Scoville Rating: 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville Rating: 1,000,000 to 3,000,000
Scoville Rating: 2,200,000