Earliest ripening peppers

fighope

fighope

Hello everyone! You guys are all super pros with peppers, and I would love to hear your thoughts on trying to naturalize pepper plants in a PA garden so they reseed themselves on their own -- The pepper plants I already know about seem to need an early start indoors since outdoors from seed they would not have time to ripen their fruit to reseed.

I have seen people report that their plants most tolerant of colder temperatures were baccatum and/or pubescens (so the longest possible time to fruit), so I was wondering if you guys knew which of the peppers in the sweet/non-spicy baccatums and spicy pubescens ripened the earliest?

Thanks
 
 
I wouldn't eliminate the annums from consideration. Many of them are relatively quick from seedling to fruit.

It sounds like you're searching for a pepper that is fairly prolific at throwing off "volunteers" (new pepper plants that sprout up from fallen peppers off a parent plant) in the PA climate (PA ?= Pennsylvania). Most people don't concentrate on that trait, so you may have to do some of your own experimentation there.

In my climate (not really comparable to yours), I've had Cayennes spring up as volunteers from the previous year. And I have a friend who has so many Chocolate Habanero volunteers (a chinense) springing up every year, they loosen the bricks on his garden walkway.
 
DontPanic said:
I wouldn't eliminate the annums from consideration. Many of them are relatively quick from seedling to fruit.

It sounds like you're searching for a pepper that is fairly prolific at throwing off "volunteers" (new pepper plants that sprout up from fallen peppers off a parent plant) in the PA climate (PA ?= Pennsylvania). Most people don't concentrate on that trait, so you may have to do some of your own experimentation there.

In my climate (not really comparable to yours), I've had Cayennes spring up as volunteers from the previous year. And I have a friend who has so many Chocolate Habanero volunteers (a chinense) springing up every year, they loosen the bricks on his garden walkway.
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Thank you for chiming in about the annuums, I just saw that when people talked about their last peppers standing by winter it was usually baccatum/pubescens, so my guess was that would translate into withstanding early cool Pennsylvania spring temperatures better. At least in warmer climates Chocolate Habanero and Cayennes would seem to volunteer themselves well enough, how early ripening are those plants for you?

 
 
Chilidude said:
Aji golden is surely the earliest c.baccatum i have seen, it always starts to ripen it's pods way before my other c. baccatums.
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Thank you for the suggestion! If you don't mind me asking, when does it ripen for you and what other baccatums were far slower?
 
 
fighope said:
 
Thank you for the suggestion! If you don't mind me asking, when does it ripen for you and what other baccatums were far slower?
 
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Aji golden ripening time in average is 60-70 days and most of the other c.baccatums  i have take around 80-90 days till they are ripe.
 
Chilidude said:
 
Aji golden ripening time in average is 60-70 days and most of the other c.baccatums  i have take around 80-90 days till they are ripe.
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Is that from fruit to ripe fruit or what.
 
SpeakPolish said:
Is that from fruit to ripe fruit or what.
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From the time the flower pollunates and it starts to grow to the final full size. Those pods are also really huge when they finally reach their full size and the large plant makes tons of them in a single season.
 
 
Ghaleon said:
Chocolate habs producing early and heavily is great news to me. They're an excellent pepper to eat fresh.
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In what universe is a chocolate habanero an early producer, because the ones i did grow took forever to ripen.
 
fighope said:
 
Thank you for chiming in about the annuums, I just saw that when people talked about their last peppers standing by winter it was usually baccatum/pubescens, so my guess was that would translate into withstanding early cool Pennsylvania spring temperatures better. At least in warmer climates Chocolate Habanero and Cayennes would seem to volunteer themselves well enough, how early ripening are those plants for you?
 
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I think a Cayenne would be a good candidate, especially if you find some grown locally at a farmer's market.  A local farmer's market may have a few varieties that match your interest.
 
I brought up the Chocolate Habanero as an anecdote, but most Habs tend to like tropical climates.  My guess is that it wouldn't have nearly as many volunteers in Pennsylvania.
 
You might have to try a few different varieties of peppers to find something that excels at producing volunteers in Pennsylvania, so you may want to also try some of the other peppers suggested in this thread.
 
I have a Sulu Adana with fruit already bigger than my hand. It's an anuum I've never grown before but depending on flavor and utility it could very well be a regular in my garden.

I'm in Zone 3, cursed short seasons. I've never seen a "volunteer" pepper in my garden. Everything else, yes, not peppers.
 
stettoman said:
I have a Sulu Adana with fruit already bigger than my hand. It's an anuum I've never grown before but depending on flavor and utility it could very well be a regular in my garden.

I'm in Zone 3, cursed short seasons. I've never seen a "volunteer" pepper in my garden. Everything else, yes, not peppers.
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how did you like  the sulu adana? im growing them this year.  my first one is just about ripe.  any suggestions on recipes to use with it?
 
BDASPNY said:
 
 
how did you like  the sulu adana? im growing them this year.  my first one is just about ripe.  any suggestions on recipes to use with it?
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SOOPER juicy. Good salad pepper, don't expect much for heat. Still better than bell...
 
stettoman said:
SOOPER juicy. Good salad pepper, don't expect much for heat. Still better than bell...
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maybe ill try it in salsa. I didn't see many recipes online.  I don't know why but ill try just about any chili pepper but always turn away bell peppers. lol
 
BDASPNY said:
 
 
maybe ill try it in salsa. I didn't see many recipes online.  I don't know why but ill try just about any chili pepper but always turn away bell peppers. lol
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I eat bells year-round, mostly bc they're so readily available. But I would not even consider the possibility of growing my own. Like, every time ppl ask me if I do grow bells--which happens regularly-- I airways feel surprised and a lil taken aback...

Like, "no.... But why would I??"
 
so you're trying to plant a pepper plant that will drop seeds and grow new plants every season on its own?  That's going to be incredibly difficult, if not borderline impossible.  Even if it somehow did work, you would hardly get any pods and the space you would be giving it would be essentially wasted.  I'm not sure how the seeds would handle your cold climate and if they did survive, they need really warm soil temperatures to even germinate.  You probably wouldn't have any germinate in PA until mid June.  Give it three months to grow, you're looking at September before the plant could even produce just a handful of pods.  Give it another month for even the fast ripening type and you're literally MAYBE getting a handful of ripe pods right as your first frost hits.
 
It's a tropical plant, there's a reason there isn't native peppers in 99% of the US.
 
fighope said:
...I would love to hear your thoughts on trying to naturalize pepper plants in a PA garden so they reseed themselves on their own...
 
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My thought is "Not". I've been growing south of you, Zone 6B, for many years and don't remember any volunteers that make it through winter. Sure, I've had seeds sprout in the compost pile during the season, but not seeds that have overwintered outside and sprouted in the Spring. Tomatoes and beans- Yes, peppers - No.
 
Now there is a fellow from PA (and still lives in PA) who may be able to answer your question. He's a food historian, written a lot of books and has a huge seed collection, which was started by his grandfather. Anyway, check out Dr. William Woys Weaver and his seed collection at this link: http://williamwoysweaver.com/roughwood-seed-collection/
 
Nice guy. Send him (or his seed curator) an e-mail.
 
If you happen to find a variety, please let me know!
 
DownRiver said:
 
My thought is "Not". I've been growing south of you, Zone 6B, for many years and don't remember any volunteers that make it through winter. Sure, I've had seeds sprout in the compost pile during the season, but not seeds that have overwintered outside and sprouted in the Spring. Tomatoes and beans- Yes, peppers - No.
 
Now there is a fellow from PA (and still lives in PA) who may be able to answer your question. He's a food historian, written a lot of books and has a huge seed collection, which was started by his grandfather. Anyway, check out Dr. William Woys Weaver and his seed collection at this link: http://williamwoysweaver.com/roughwood-seed-collection/
 
Nice guy. Send him (or his seed curator) an e-mail.
 
If you happen to find a variety, please let me know!
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I've never had a volunteer down here in Alabama either and I literally dump pepper seeds off my back deck all season not to mention all the pods that fall off the plants in the garden that I just leave there.  I have a feeling the freezing temperatures over the winter does them in, probably the freezing/thawing cycle.
 
The OP on this one is over a year old, FYI.

But I'm in NJ, zone 7b. I had literally thousands of volunteers in my beds. No ripe fruit yet, but I have green pods hanging on volunteer Serranos, Jalapeños, Orange Thais, and Tien Tsins. I also have a plant that's probably a Poblano or a Guajillo. No fruit yet, but there's flowers and it's still July, so... There's hope.

I got some chinense volunteers too but they came up far later and there's probably no hope they'll set fruit and have time to ripen before first Friday. But I left them alone, just to see.

The OP seemed convinced that cold tolerance is the key to this strategy, but I feel 100% certain that early fruit is the most integral factor. And I believe that annuums are the betting man's best pony. However, as early as my Sugar Rush Peach (a baccatum) have been, I think they might work.

But there's no way that I'd count on volunteers to supply my entire grow, or even just the annuum component of my grow. Too many potential disasters, including late frost, bad layout, and late harvests. Still, I'm kinda fascinated by the volunteers...
 
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