January 2018: First Two Weeks.

I've been told that when you're growing peppers, the hotter they are, the earlier you need to start them.

I was given some pepper seeds. They’re for fairly hot varieties:

• Cayenne Pepper (30,000 – 50,000 Scoville Heat Units)
• Carolina Reaper (2,000,000 – 2,200,000 SHUs)
• Yellow Reaper  (1,569,383 – 2,200,000 SHUs)
• Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper) (970,000 SHUs)
• Trinidad Scorpion, (1,200,000+ SHUs)
• Orange Habanero (325,000 SCUs

They’re very hot peppers. So I started them very early: they’re in dirt before January 15^th.

Then – because I’m very eager I can’t help myself, and as an experiment – I also  planted a few other things.

•     Lemon Drop Peppers x2 (30,000 SCUs)

•     Fresno Peppers (10,000 SCUs)

•     Felicity Peppers (1,000 SCUs: these are a mild jalapeno pepper)

•     Paprika Peppers (8,000 SCUs)

And as long as I was planting seeds, I planted a batch of sweet peppers as well, of various small fruit sizes.

I have more of all of these seeds if it doesn't work out.

And just to round out the night, I started some tomatoes, too.

• Legend (determinate, slicing)
• Chocolate Cherry x2 (indeterminate, large cherry)
• Unknown purple tomato seeds (from 2013)
• Brandywine (slicing, from 2013) and again, 
• Brandywine (slicing, from 2016)

None of these are real critical seeds for this year.


These are mostly "65 - 80 days" from seed to fruit. I don't actually believe that in the case of the hot peppers, but if it was true, then I'd have fruit ripening the last week of March.

That might be really interesting, harvesting peppers or tomatoes in March. I don't expect it.