My interest in hot peppers began about 25 years ago. A friend from Hondo, TX, well known for his hot sauces and salsas, asked if I would grow him some habanero peppers.
He handed me some seeds, and as the plants grew up and flourished and produced an amazingly bountiful crop, I started to understand just how much fun growing these plants could be. Before long I found myself on the road to growing the hottest peppers I could find.
The heat measurement of peppers is referred to in Scoville units. Measured now with high-performance liquid chromatography, these units of heat intensity were originally formulated by the American pharmacist Wilber Scoville to measure the level of pure capsaicin within hot peppers.
Sweet peppers scored zero on the Scoville scale, while a jalapeño might score 3,000 Scovilles – meaning it would have to be diluted 3,000 times till no heat was detected. Some of our favorite peppers score as follows:
In the 1,000 to 3,000 range we have Anaheims (New Mexico chilis) and poblanos. From 3,000 to 10,000 we have jalapeños. Above 10,000 we have serranos, tabascos, cayennes, Thai, and chili pequins.
There is then a large gap, and we find the orange habaneros scoring around the 200,000 Scoville units. It was here that I learned of the chocolate and red Caribbean variety that were easy to grow and twice as hot as the standard orange.
Then along comes the red and yellow scotch bonnets scoring a whopping 400,000 Scovilles.
Within the last 4 years a ghost pepper from Bangladesh and India has found its way to my door. Also called bhut jolokia or naga pepper, these devils score 1,000,000 on the Scoville scale. Dangerous I’d say. Handle with care!
This year an even hotter pepper has come along. Known as the Trinidad scorpion, it has the sting of 1,400,000 Scovilles.
I thought that was about as hot as you could get until I heard of Australian hybridizer Butch Taylor. He has produced a Trinidad Scorpion called the Butch T. This pepper is hitting the 2,000,000 mark on the Scoville scale… and should hold the record for at least a little while as the hottest pepper on the planet.
I don’t know what’s next but I’m pretty sure a hotter pepper is on the horizon. I can imagine what they will call it. P.S. My Trinidad Scorpion Butch T peppers are up and smiling at the sunshine.
Happy hot pepper gardening everyone!
P.S. This is the time to suppress weeds in your lawn with corn gluten.
If you have a gardening question, send it to me via email: [email protected]. (Please put ‘Ask Chris Winslow’ in the subject line.) Or mail your letter or postcard to: Ask Chris Winslow. It’s About Thyme
