VEGETABLE SEEDS Aubergines Beans - French Beans - Runner Beetroot Broad Beans Broccoli & Rapini Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Cauliflower Carrots Celery Chilli Peppers Courgettes & Summer Squash Cucumbers, Gherkins & suchlike things Fennel Flowers Grains Herbs Kale Kohl Rabi Leaf Greens for Cooking Leeks Lettuces Melons & Watermelons Mustard Greens ( for cooking) Onions - spring sowing Onions - overwintering Onions - special types Oriental Greens for cooking & salads Parsnips Peas Pumpkins & Winter Squash Radishes (salad, & cooking types) Root Parsley NEW Salad Vegetables Sweet Corn Swedes Sweet Peppers Tomatoes : Bush Types Tomatoes : Vines - Cherries Tomatoes : Vines - Larger Tomatoes : Bulgarian Tomatoes : New Centiflor types Tomatilloes & Groundcherries Turnips Unusual Tubers: Oca & Yacon

~ 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.

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.

'Lemon Drop' LEMON FLAVOURED
This favourite of ours is another very rare pepper: robust bushes (about 2' tall) covered in thin green chillies that ripen to bright yellow.

The fruit are very, very hot, with a strong lemon flavour. When you cut them they really do smell - and taste - strongly of lemons! It makes a fantastic change to your chilli sauce or salsa.

Its not super early, as the fruits ripen in early autumn - but it is very productive and decorative - and can sometimes do well in a big pot on a sunny patio, or of course it will be very happy in your greenhouse or polytunnel.

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 18 seed, which is loads as the plants are really quite big and vigorous.

Lemon-flavoured Aji from Peru. Although normally really rare, we've just got in a great harvest of fresh seed, there's lots of it , so we have reduced the price!

Order HPLD - 18 seed TEMPORARY SPECIAL OFFER: WAS £2.44 - NOW £1.99

Bartlett's Bonnet' Chilli
A 'friar's hat' chilli - the very unusual fruits have a flattened bell shape with 3 or 4 lobes making 'wings' sticking out the side! It is moderately late, and needs to be grown under cover.

This variety was originally sent to us by Anne Bartlett from Portugal. A very unusual variety for the chilli collector, her plant was in its third year when she first sent us seed. But you can just grow them as an annual - its much easier!

Hot hot hot. Greenhouse or Polytunnel only. This seed grown for us by Anne herself.

Order HPBB - 18 seed [OG2] £2.31

'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 [CO2] £2.19

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] £3.45

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 £2.45

'Palivec' Medium-hot chilli

A medium 'goats horn' style chilli, about 6 inches long, on fairly tall bushes, Palivec r§ipens to a dark red.

Though as with all chillies heat depends on growing conditions, Palivec is a 'moderately-hot' variety, so its shouldn't be too dangerous to cook with.

Order HPPC - 20 seed £1.98

Nigel's Outdoors Chilli

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 inside.

Early, can grow outdoors. Just a few packets available this season.

Order HPNO 10 seed [OG2] £3.45

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 [CO2] £2.04

'Koral'

A new hot cherry chilli, with rounded, very pungent fruit the size of a ping-pong ball (or a tiny bit smaller). The bushes are fairly short.

Koral starts out green (as you would expect), and then ripens through to an attractive deep coral-red colour.
Best used red for greatest heat, though also tasty when green. Very spicy – beware!

Order HPKO - 20 seed £1.98

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.