Pondering Peppers

In the spring I purchased a pepper plant for Will -- he likes the hot ones, and I brought home a plant labeled Burpee Home Gardens Hot Pepper Jalapeno Gigante. They are supposed to be the largest jalapeno, but instead of a large green fruit we got medium-sized pale yellow/green peppers that are now, as you can see from the picture, turning orange.

After googling "Yellow jalapeno" and looking at the Burpee website, I believe we actually have a Hot Mariachi Hybrid. They are fairly mild, as hot peppers go, so I'm quite pleased. Will has given them a thumbs up, too (probably because he knows I'll never cook with the really hot ones, so it's better to have a little heat than no heat at all!).

The interesting thing, though, is that over the past seven summers we have NOT ONCE grown a hot pepper that was what the label purported it to be. There must be some kind of poor quality control going on with the growers or the distributors. Be more careful, out there! It's pretty hard for us consumers to tell one hot pepper plant from another in their early stages.


AR