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~ Some special HOT PEPPER Seed (Chilli or Chile Peppers) ~ We have tried huge numbers of early hot peppers, and here offer the best. Peppers for every taste, in many different colours and shapes! Again, many are very early to help with short British summers, and some are of more unusual species such as Capsicum pubescens and Capsicum baccatum. In particular we have been trying to collect unusual shaped chillies, and this year we have got a particularly good selection for you to try. Please order your seeds in time. You really need to plant them by the middle of March at the very latest to have any chance of a decent crop. TIP: An electric propagator is ideal for starting chilli seed,but if you don't have one, you can still get excellent results by improvising with a warm airing cupboard, a radiator shelf or anywhere that is around 28-38C for at least a few hours in each day. Once germinated, the seedlings will grow on at lower temperatures. We grew some excellent plants this spring when our propagator was full by starting seed on the counter next to our Rayburn & then growing on in a sunny windowsill. 'Iranian Round' Big Cherry Chilli This chilli is nice and early with loads of heat. We bred this hot cherry pepper ourselves, from an early fruiting variety collected in Iran in 1944. The tall plants soon set lots of spherical bright red fruit about an inch across - just the size of a cherry tomato - but much, much spicier. Ideal for using fresh or drying. The original seed collected in 1944 was supposedly sweet - but when we grew it out, we had a real shock when we munched the first one as they were ALL ferociously hot. It was a very good chilli pepper, just mis-labelled on the original collecting expedition. We liked the round ones best, so selected for that shape, carried on breeding, and ended up with this variety. (We have also learnt to nibble cautiously on any new, so-called 'sweet' pepper we try out!) Very prolific - bushy 2' tall plants soon set lots and lots of 1" diameter chillies. Hot cherry type. Green -> red Order HPiR - 20 seed [OG1] £1.84 'Purple Venezuelan' This is perhaps the rarest of all our chillies, and we're proud to be able to offer it again after a gap of several years. The plant is small and completely purple, including the stems and leaves. Clusters of round pea-sized peppers start purple-green and ripen to bright red, which stands out against the purple foliage. Really quite hot with a good 'peppery' taste. It is an early producer, so possibly worth trying outdoors in the warmer parts of the country, though to ripen them fully to red will probably require a bit of protection. Very pretty in a pot; a friend grew an excellent crop on a tiny balcony next to Waterloo station! Seed is incredibly difficult to collect - it has to be painstakingly picked out from the dried fruit with tweezers, and this is reflected in the price and packet size. But we think it is worth it. 1.5ft decorative purple plant, tiny (0.25 inch) purple fruit -> red. Hot and spicy. Order HPPV - 12 seed [OG1] £2.49 'Gelbe Kirschen' (Yellow Cherries) This is a rare and beautiful variety from Kosovo, which produces huge numbers of very hot round yellow chillis, & also looks great as a decorative plant too. The fruit are about 1 inch across & we use them to make a hot bright yellow chilli relish sauce. Order HPGK - 16 seed [OG1] £2.20 'Bartlett's Bonnet' Chilli A very unusual variety for the chilli collector: This is a 'friar's hat' shaped chilli - with a bell-shaped middle and funny 'wings' sticking out - and very hot. It is moderately late, and needs to be grown under cover. This variety was originally sent to us by Anne Bartlett from Portugal, her plant was in its third year when she sent us seed. But you can just grow them as an annual - its much easier! Hot hot hot. Greenhouse or Polytunnel only. Order HPBB - 20 seed [OG2] £1.85 'Wenks Yellow Hots' This particularly pretty yellow chilli was developed by the late Erris Wenk, of Alberquerque, New Mexico, who was a truck-farmer (we would say a market gardener) specialising in hot peppers. It does nicely in Europe too. It is a quite-hot chilli that is a bright lemon yellow, as you can see, and it is one of the prettiest we've ever grown. (It eventually ripens through orange and then to red.) The unusal thing about it is how thick and crisp the walls of the chillies are (they are best described as a blunt sort of jalapeno shape), and with a beautiful shiny yellow skin. Both yellow and orange are displayed on the plant at the same time, so it is quite ornamental. It is really pretty early to fruit , and good for making pickled peppers as it keeps its 'crunchiness' well. Yellow, jalapeño shaped. Order HPYH- 20 seed £1.85 Alberto's Locoto Now here's something different. Sometimes known as the Tree Chile or Rocoto, this rare and unusual pepper is unique - it has fuzzy leaves, beautiful purple flowers, and - believe it or not - black seeds. Huge numbers of pretty, 1.5" pendant fruit with thick flesh slowly go from green to deep red. We grow it as an annual pepper in the usual fashion, and get lots of ripe fruit in October. (But note you can also grow it as as a perennial, overwintering indoors, & plant can fruit for several years. This is moderately easy - if you can overwinter fuschias or geraniums, you will have no trouble with this beautiful plant. ) We use the fruit to spice up pasta sauces and keep some in vinegar for later in the year. They are pretty hot but it is a warming rather than burning heat, and they have lots of flavour too. Very, very rare. A different species! Limited stock - order early Order HPAL - 14 seed [OG1/OG2] £2.75 Pretty in Purple First offered back in 2004, this is absolutely beautiful. We'll bet you've never seen a vegetable this colour before! Miniature little bushes, with purple stems, rise to about 2 ft high and are covered in erect little peppers. These may be small, but they are fiery hot, and excellent for use in cooking, or shredded in fresh salsa sauce. These start out fluorescent purple, and later ripen to a whole range of pinks, reds, purples and oranges, making an even more spectacular display. Probably best under cover, except in the south. Miniature pepper. Pretty in a pot on the patio. (No we haven't retouched the photo, they really are that colour!) Note: This is quite a wild-type chilli, and the germination is sometimes slower than the more domesticated varieties. The seed is perfectly good, it just germinates step-wise over a longer period. Plant the whole packet so you'll be sure to get at least 15 that come up pretty quickly. Order HPPP - 20 seed £1.93 Nigel's Outdoors Chilli From Nigel Green of Halesworth, Suffolk, this chilli really will tolerate growing outside in the UK as long as the summer isn't completely grey. We were sceptical, but when we tried it, it worked just as he said - it did indeed ripen outdoors with no protection here in Wales. The plants make wedge-shaped 2-inch hot green fruit that later ripen to red if we have a hot summer. We have found that you will get even more chillis if you grow it under cover, so if you have a tunnel or greenhouse, it's worth growing it under cover. Early, can grow outdoors. Order HPNO 16 seed [OG1] £2.60 Early Green Jalapeño Finally, a jalapeño pepper that will mature in the UK! We were really excited to discover this extra-early strain to grow in your greenhouse or polytunnel. Jalapeño peppers are fleshy with distinctive blunt-tipped, cigar shaped fruit with the traditional 'jalapeño' corky marks on the skin. Easy to grow, and quite hot, too. Mmmm! Early variety - traditional shape, just really quick. Order HPEJ 25 seed £1.69 'Biala Shipka' Very Hot Red Chilli This rather unusual chilli was given to us a few years ago by a Bulgarian law student we met. We managed to grow some plants from his battered sachet of seed and were pleased to discover that did really well in our trials. It makes very fine medium-sized bushes covered in little red conical peppers. These develop unusual corky striations on the skin as they ripen, much like a jalapeño pepper does. It is very early, very productive, and horribly hot! The name means “White Dog Rose” or “White Rose Hip” in Bulgarian Order HPBS - 18 to 20 seed [OG1] £1.95 "Kostadinov Striated" - NEW! From the Kostadinov family, of Borovtsi in Bulgaria - these are most unusual peppers about 3 inches long, which have amazing red / orange stripes on the inside when cut open. They did well in our unheated polytunnel, giving a lot of peppers from just a few plants. It is a particularly easy-drying pepper should you like making your own paprika - although we prefer to just cook with them as normal. A really good flavour, pretty too. ALL GONE NOW, sorry. 'Lemon Drop' LEMON FLAVOURED Another very rare one: robust bushes (about 2' tall) with dainty leaves, covered in little green chillies that ripen to bright yellow. Very, very hot, with a strong lemon flavour. When you cut them they really do smell - and taste - strongly of lemons! Fruits ripen in early autumn - but very productive and decorative - good in a pot on the patio. Note that the Ajís are only semi-domesticated - some of the seed is always dormant, even with good heat  - but you should get 10 plants from 20 seed. Not for novice growers. Lemon-flavoured Aji from Peru. Order HPLD - 20 seed £1.99 Saving Pepper Seed: Here Kate is collecting seed from 'Lantern' chillies. (The rubber gloves only last about an hour before the chilli oil eats through them) After that we pick out any empty or misshapen seeds. The left-over seedless fruit are chopped up & made into wickedly hot chutney! Chillies are great but the effort (and pain!) involved in seed production are why we only have limited packets available each year.