I have a group/informal grex of super hot peppers that struggled in our cooler than normal summer this year (only one day over 100*F? wild!) and are just now setting fruit. At this point, it’s solidly fall. We’re getting down to the 60s and even 50s during the day, cooler at night, with frost probably 3+ weeks out. All of the peppers are currently immature colors, most not even into transitional stages. With the lack of heat, I don’t expect any of them to fully ripen in time, but I don’t want to lose this year’s progress if I don’t have to!
Included in the mix are some gorgeous plants from Experimental Farm Network seeds – Purple Tornado Breeder’s Mix & Sandman. I can probably pull the “best” of the three Purple Tornado plants in as a potted plant over winter, which I would love to do as the entire plant is dark purple. But how do I best ensure viable seeds from the Sandman and the rest of the plot?
I heard pepper seeds don’t ripen after pulling off. I would keep more seeds than i normally would. Some will pop up next year and hope for a normal hot summer.
I would leave them in the garden as long as possible. Row cover would boost temp around plants. When you must harvest due to frost, clip off entire plants and move indoors. The fruits / seeds will continue to develop a little while longer.
Just to quickly add, you can wait as long as possible and pull the plants and bring inside (garage out building other) and hang upside down. But the suggestion of saving more seed than usual is also a valid choice. You can pull a few peppers and check their seed development. While not ideal saving green seeds it gets you closer to your goal of adapting them to your area.
You can transplant some into pots or grow bags and keep growing them indoors. I grow them as houseplants in the winter. Hot pepper plants apparently are perennial without a frost. I use grow lights to make them fruit and flower, there are nice table top led ones now that are white for humans, not an intense purple like grow lights used to be. They still have the color spectrum needed for fruiting and flowering but mixed in with white. I grew hot peppers indoors all winter last year. Most hot peppers survive a transplant ok.
Unfortunately, two of my three indoor feline overlords are menaces when it comes to plants. I have to keep indoor plants at my eye level or higher to keep them safe, and don’t have enough space to bring in all of these plants. The darkest Purple Tornado is DEFINITELY coming in, though, as it’s still the best of the bunch with regards to the plant color and the fruit color/shape.
The brighter green in the background of the first picture is actually the other two Purple Tornado plants, both of which have longer, pointier fruit that doesn’t start out wholly dark purple like these. I’m hoping bringing this plant indoors will let the fruit ripen to their proper red-orange with viable seeds!
I’m happy to report that I pulled the peppers and left them in my garage just before the first freeze, and a good portion of the fruits are in fact ripening properly. In fact, I’m going to have WAY more seed than I expected. I’m probably going to do some germination testing on the less desirable varieties to see how they fared, and just start more than I necessarily need of the Purple Tornado seeds come planting time.
Interesting outcome… the green/unripe fruit on one of the Purple Tornado plants had unexpected notes of MELON to the flavor!
It was strong enough that my youngest son and I both noticed it separately. It was not stronger than the usual “raw pepper” taste, but the main undertone was distinctly honeydew/green melon-ish. I’ll be keeping an eye on that line, because the heat was also low enough in the green peppers that without the seeds/membrane I could eat it with no trouble. The same can’t be said for the other hot peppers.
That’s really interesting. Melon flavor certainly is possible in nightshades — Joseph Lofthouse had a wild tomato with melon flavor, and of course there’s the whole pepino species. It would be very interesting to have a pepper population that consistently has melon flavor in it!
