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misc Earliest hot peppers?

LordTriffid78

LordTriffid78

Based on your experience, or to your knowledge, what varieties of hot peppers are the absolute earliest, from seeding germination to fully ripe fruit? Any species, all heat levels?

In my experience, the absolute fasted to flower, set fruit and ripen were purple serranos. I barely got them out of the seed trays before they set fruit, and had pinch a bunch of fruits off to ensure that they kept baring fruit later on. Pretty impressive, and one of my favourite serranos.
 
Some of my early producers this year:  Thunder Mountain Longhorn, Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Yellow, Kraken Yellow, Yellow Nagabrains, Leviathan Gnarly Red, Padron, Shishito, Haskorea and Jimmy Nardello.  I think there's all kinds of environmental factors that impact this but some of these varieties are consistently early for us in raised beds (Kansas 6A).  
 
I spent some time two or three seasons ago, trying to down select to varieties that would fruit sooner rather than later.  I needed up with similar results as years prior where I wasn't getting fruits until mid to late July.  
 
So many variables play into speed to ripe fruits ready for the pickin'.  BUT!  My Brainstrains, Shishitos, SB7J, and homemade Chocolate Moruga x Brown Rennie x Brown Habanero set fruits pretty fast (conditions being optimal), but take some time to ripen before harvesting...
 
Not sure how helpful this is.  As @Harry_Dangler stated environmental factors play a number of roles in the speed to grow, flower, set fruit, ripen, and harvest.  Mileage will vary.
 
Environmental factors such as size of the container definitely comes into play. My experience has been that the smaller the container the faster you get fruits. It is not long after the Capsicum becomes root bound that forking is induced then flowers followed by fruit. Smaller fruit of course will be seen with a smaller container, still... if you are trying to make a quick cross then perhaps that is all you need.
 
These are the hot peppers I'm growing this year:
BTR Scorpion
Bahamian Goat
Foodarama Scotch Bonnet
Fatalli
Red and Yellow Brainstrain
Naga Smooky Rainbow
7 Pot Douglah
Ghostly Jalapeno
Black Congo
Primo x Purple Bhut
PDN
7JPN
Mako Akokosrade
Big Yellow Mama
Sepia Reaper x PDN

By FAR the earliest is the Primo x Purple Bhut. But since they are F3 they aren't stable and there is a ton of variation across my plants, but all are super productive and earlier than the rest of the chinense plants I'm growing. Two of them, the ones with more purple foliage and fruits, are especially early.

BTR Scorpion is a distant second place. Also a great plant with great tasting hot pods.
 
Most jalapenos and serrano are the first to produce and ripen for me. In hot to super, the MOA reds cranked early and CARDI Scorpions produced many also shortly after. Many other had tons or greeners in July but many of those didnt get ripe until a few weeks later. Best by far chinense that had LOTS of ripe pods by August 1st were MOA red from Midwestchileheads. JPGS had loads of ripe starting early August and a handful in July. Naglah brown were kicking in by then too.
 
 
2018 though i had way more ripe pods by this time of the year. I got loads of pods but for whatever reason i have less ripe when adjusted for the increase in plants. Not a single aji panca is ripe yet but they do take forever. Last year and 2018 i was already drying some.
 
Sorry for taking so long to respond to this thread, I was on hiatus from the internet for the past week, while on a trip. So from what I've read in your responses, as far as super-hots go, CARDI scorpions are probably one of the earliest? I think I found it described on line as 70 days, which would put it in line with many cayenne's and Thai's.

As for less then super-hot, it seems as though the earliest of the hab-level heat varieties are white bullet, Yuccatan and Peruvian White, Beni Highlands, Safi, Caribbean Red, Paper Lantern, [SIZE=11pt]Tasmanian Habanero, Caribbean red, Limo, and Limon. I've read that Beni can be ripe from 65-70 days, which is pretty impressive, but I've read varying claims as to it's heat level, anywhere from 60,000 shu to 300,00 shu. Has anyone here actually tasted a beni pod? How was it heat wise? Other than the small white habs, I haven't grown any of these, does anyone have experience growing any of them? I've had my eye on Safi Scotch Bonnet for years, I've read that it is originally from the fog-belt in Morocco (mush like the fog belt in California) and is suppose to be adapted to cool, humid conditions.

Anyway, thanks for the input and suggestions folks. I plan on putting my orders in in a few weeks, so I'm working on the short list of varieties for some interesting crosses as I type this. I may have seed to trade or give away at this point. [/SIZE]
 
 
LordTriffid78 said:
Sorry for taking so long to respond to this thread, I was on hiatus from the internet for the past week, while on a trip. So from what I've read in your responses, as far as super-hots go, CARDI scorpions are probably one of the earliest? I think I found it described on line as 70 days, which would put it in line with many cayenne's and Thai's.

As for less then super-hot, it seems as though the earliest of the hab-level heat varieties are white bullet, Yuccatan and Peruvian White, Beni Highlands, Safi, Caribbean Red, Paper Lantern, [SIZE=11pt]Tasmanian Habanero, Caribbean red, Limo, and Limon. I've read that Beni can be ripe from 65-70 days, which is pretty impressive, but I've read varying claims as to it's heat level, anywhere from 60,000 shu to 300,00 shu. Has anyone here actually tasted a beni pod? How was it heat wise? Other than the small white habs, I haven't grown any of these, does anyone have experience growing any of them? I've had my eye on Safi Scotch Bonnet for years, I've read that it is originally from the fog-belt in Morocco (mush like the fog belt in California) and is suppose to be adapted to cool, humid conditions.

Anyway, thanks for the input and suggestions folks. I plan on putting my orders in in a few weeks, so I'm working on the short list of varieties for some interesting crosses as I type this. I may have seed to trade or give away at this point. [/SIZE]
 
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Grew Safi last year.  It was very productive (similar to Burkina Yellow), early and very hot.  More Habanero like than Scotch Bonnet for us in our Kansas 6A raised bed garden.  
 
Harry_Dangler said:
Grew Safi last year.  It was very productive (similar to Burkina Yellow), early and very hot.  More Habanero like than Scotch Bonnet for us in our Kansas 6A raised bed garden.  
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Great, I'll add it the list.
 
Middle box.  Safis on the top and Burkinas on the bottom.
 
 

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As for annuums, I'm wondering if there's any early (60-65 day) that get up to 100,000 shu? Something with large fruit would be great, too. Was looking at Diablo Grande and Charleston Cayenne, but those are mid-seasn, I believe, and Diablo is an F1.
 
LordTriffid78 said:
As for annuums, I'm wondering if there's any early (60-65 day) that get up to 100,000 shu? Something with large fruit would be great, too. Was looking at Diablo Grande and Charleston Cayenne, but those are mid-seasn, I believe, and Diablo is an F1.
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That's a little tougher.  Might have to go Frutescens .... maybe something like Siling Labuyo or Malagueta.  I have not grown those in at least 5 years and can't remember if they're particularly early or not.  I used to deal with an individual on another forum that was on a similar quest to yours and got the seeds from her.  Maybe Hot Portugal or Calabrians ..... I think they're both Annuums.  Might be too mild.  I think they were fairly early.  
 
So I did a google search for hot capsicums and "60 days", and pretty much the only thing that came up was a pepper called Sadabahar. The description on the Reimer Seed website says that it's a short plant, early producing (60 days, which is surprising, beecause Reeimer seems to be very conservative with it's days to maturity), and quite hot. Fatalii Seeds describes it as hot as most of the hotter cayennes, and Thais. I then did a search in our own forums, and it does pop up a number of times. Masher from the PNW sounds like they've had good results with this variety, and a few members described the heat level as comparable to goats weed. Interestingly enough, the peppers point upwards in clusters, kind of like Chi Chien. I think this may be what I'm looking for. Does anyone have experience with this one?
 
Harry_Dangler said:
Middle box.  Safis on the top and Burkinas on the bottom.
 
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btw, nice looking harvest there, HD! I can only hope my harvest will look that good next year, if we luck out and don't get stuck in perma-March weather in the PNW again.

So I'm definitely getting pretty close to doing some orders, and I decided look up the seed vendors reputations on our own forums, here. I did a search for Reimer's Seeds, and, yikes! Am I ever glad I looked that up! I was getting really excited by so many rare varieties being offered by one vendor. Their website does seem too be to good to be true. The review section definitely helped me to stop from getting duped out of my money.
 
Was having the same question + being productive is what I also value.
Hot Kambichki, Hot Portugal, Hungarian Wax, Sarit Gat, Thai Dragon are earliest to produce, along with Cayenne, all being productive / very productive, too.
Very hots: Habanero Maya Red,
From the Superhots I read Wraith, but that seems a rare pepper variety and can find almost none growers' feedback to vouch for its quality.
 
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Growing locations is a huge factor as to what works for you. Thais work wonders for me in shorter seasons.
And to think about it which is strange since Thailand is ripe for growth since warm climate, yet the Thai chiles excel at short colder climates, go figure.
 
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Hab-Scotch said:
Growing locations is a huge factor as to what works for you. Thais work wonders for me in shorter seasons.
And to think about it which is strange since Thailand is ripe for growth since warm climate, yet the Thai chiles excel at short colder climates, go figure.
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I once read that when breeding plants for cold climates, you could sometimes use plants that have adopted to a very hot climate. That the genes are not specific to either hot or cold, but are good genes for coping with "extreme" temperatures in general.

In my experience small/dwarf annuum plants are some of the fastest here in Norway. Serranos are some of my latest plants to flower up here. They just grow tall... no flowers until autumn.

The Scotch Bonnet White Cream would be an example of a very early flowering c.chinense

But as others have stated, there are quite a few factors that come into play here.
 
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