This chilli variety was new to us this year (2017). The plants grew really well and produced hundreds of small, perfectly spherical chillies. They turned from green to a dark brown.
They weren’t super spicy, but still pretty hot. Another chilli variety to grow again for sure.
We also grew Long Cayenne chillies this year. We rather liked the sound of longer than 30cm chillies.
Our plants produced many Long Cayenne chillies. Rather multicoloured as the chillies went through the different ripening stages. They for sure ended up longer than 30cm. Rather exciting! Unfortunately for us, they did not turn out very spicy.
Still, it was a great experience growing them for decorative purposes.
This year (2017), we grew some new chilli varieties. We chose basket of fire, since it is supposed to be easy to grow and produce a large abundance of very spicy chillies.
This was indeed one of the most successful chilli varieties we have grown so far! They started ripening during August and September, but then we also moved the plants inside when it started getting cold. The chilli plants continued well inside and more and more chillies ripened.
And oh, they are SO spicy!!! Only need to touch the chilli to your tongue and you will feel the heat already! 🙂
Bishops Crown chillies are named after their three sided shape which resembles a bishop’s crown. They are sweet and mild chillies.
We got some Bishop Crown chillies, but they were rather uninspiring, in terms of taste. Their shape makes them rather decorative though.
This chilli variety is also one of the hottest in the world. On top of this it has chillies shaped like lanterns which start off green and ripen to chocolate brown (Don’t think it has any sweetness like chocolate though!).
Poblanos (when dry they are called ‘ancho’) are very large, mild chillies, which are ideal for stuffing with all sorts of things. They are also very tasty in a traditional mexican dish, called mole.
Our Poblano plants grew well and flowered, but the chillies did not really grow very large and didn’t ripen enough by the end of the season. Generally we feel we should start growing chillies earlier on in the year, to make sure they have enough time to grow and ripen in August and September.
Pimentos are the chillies one often sees, stuffed with soft cheese, preserved in oil. This is what we would like to do with our Pimento crop, if it works out.
Our plants in the end produced quite a few pimento chillies and we indeed stuffed them with soft cheese. They very tasty, but we decided we wouldn’t grow them again, as they did not have so much flavour.
Pasilla Bajio chillies are large (upto 22 cm long), mild, sweet and rich flavoured. They are therefore excellent in many dishes requiring only slight spiciness but plenty of flavour.
They grew well for us, but we didn’t find them that flavoursome, so decided against trying them again.
We decided to grow these mainly for their decorative nature. The plants have interesting white to purple flowers, resulting in purple to red chillies. These are both decorative and edible, but beware: they are supposedly rather hot.
Indeed, these chillies are spicy!!! The plant grew very well for us and produced so so many chillies. Highly recommend this one. The purple chillies also look very decorative.
Carolina Reaper chillies are extremely hot (2013 Guiness World Records – hottest chilli). They also look rather evil with their wrinkly, red appearance! We are growing these for fun, rather than necessarily for eating! But if anyone fancies trying them, feel free to pop around later in the year 🙂
We did manage to harvest quite some chillies from this plant and yes, they were spicy too! I feel that depending on how you water the plants, the chillies end up more or less spicy. The key to spicyness seems to be to leave the plant soil to dry out between watering. Chillies really grow well in full sun and high temperatures. Therefore the location on the hottest side of our balcony was perfect to get spice into our chillies 🙂