Choosing Green Chili Pepper Varieties: Pick by Heat and by What You Will Make

Pick a heat level first

Peppers picked green span an enormous range of heat. A jalapeno you can eat pickled by the slice sits around 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville units, while a serrano runs 10,000 to 23,000 and tiny island chilies go far beyond that. Think about how much you will actually use each week, settle on a heat level, and only then choose the variety.

Any pepper is milder green than red. Read the numbers below as a green-harvest guide, and if you like heat, go one step hotter than you think you need.

Work backward from the kitchen

You will preserve far more green chilies than you eat fresh. Five plants produce dozens of pods a week at the height of summer. Deciding how you will use them tells you whether you want thick-walled large pods or thin, fiery ones.

1. Pickles and salsa: thick walls Jalapenos are about 1.2 in (3 cm) across with thick flesh that holds its shape when sliced and keeps some crunch in vinegar. Their moderate heat suits family cooking.
2. Soy pickles and ferments: thin and hot Long, slender Korean or Sapporo-type pods, sliced into rounds and packed in soy sauce with rice koji, give up their heat generously. You use a little at a time, so a hotter variety is the right choice.
3. Yuzu kosho and pastes: small and hot For a citrus-chili paste the pod shape does not matter. Small, hot types like serrano or island chilies deliver aroma and heat from a tiny amount.
4. Mild eaters in the house Varieties that stay mild when picked young, such as Gekikara Bancho or Nikko togarashi, can go straight into stir-fries. Pick them at about 4 in (10 cm) before heat builds.

Transplants versus seed

Garden centers in late spring usually carry jalapeno, Korean chili and island chili starts; regional varieties mostly have to be grown from seed. Seed starting is identical to chili peppers: sow indoors with bottom heat about 10 to 12 weeks before your last frost and expect roughly 80 days to a transplant-sized seedling.

In your first year, buy transplants. Ordinary seedlings on their own roots do fine, and five plants lets you grow two varieties without waste.

What a good green-harvest plant looks like

A pepper grown for drying sets one big flush and is done. A pepper for green picking has to flower and fruit continuously from early summer to the first frost. Look for short internodes, steady flowering, and heat that develops while the pod is still young.

1. Choose stocky seedlings Eight to ten true leaves, a thick stem and short gaps between leaves. Leggy seedlings flower sparsely after planting.
2. Look for the first bud A seedling already showing its first flower bud will bloom one to two weeks after planting, so you can start shaping it right away.
3. Read the packet for green heat Pick varieties described as hot when green. Sweet-frying types and some hybrids stay mild until they ripen and will disappoint if you want heat.

Cross-pollination and heat

Peppers mostly self-pollinate, but insects will cross them with neighbors. This year's fruit is unaffected; the seed you save is not. Heat is dominant, so sweet peppers grown next to hot ones can throw hot offspring the following year.

If you plan to save seed from bell peppers or shishito, keep them several yards from your green chilies or skip seed saving that season.

1. Plant next to bell peppers if you like The current crop is safe. As long as you buy fresh seed or transplants next year, crossing does not matter.
2. Isolate if you save seed Grow open-pollinated varieties apart from other peppers, let a few pods ripen fully red, and save seed from those. Hybrids will not come true.

Combinations for five plants in containers

With five pots, two varieties is the easy number to use up. Three plants of a thick-walled mild type plus two of a hot slender type covers both cooking and preserving. Reverse the ratio if your household likes heat.

The Okinawan island chili is a different species (Capsicum frutescens) that builds a shrubby plant slowly and fruits mainly from late summer on. Plant it earlier than the rest.