Get sowing in heat during January
My stepson Ali must have no taste buds left due to his love of chillies, so growing super hot chillies was a must. He is obsessed, and his fiery culinary creations have been known to make his friends cry and ruin their digestive tracts.
(I must point out he is a grown-up; they are also consenting adults and are not feeding six-year-old classmates Naga chillies for fun.) Do try this Creole Okra with Chicken and Prawn recipe too.
Growing super hot chillies – The heat is on
He claims his flat’s weekly ingestion of chillies:
- Occasionally exceeds 100 (for three of them);
- An average chilli/fajita/stir fry contains 30-40 ‘small ones’;
- This does not include loads of chilli flakes and powder.
- And when they want ‘a real bastard’, they add Psycho Drops, a one million SHU (500 times stronger than Tabasco) capsaicin extract.
I’ve grown the very tame but nice Loco, but for Christmas I thought I’d push him to his limit by attempting to grow Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (Plant World Seeds) from seed.
It has an enormous Scoville rating of between 1,200,000 and 2,000,000 SHU. The fruit produced is quite small and lumpy, maturing from lime green to bright red. Once you get past the burn, they have a pleasant fruity flavour.
Potted guide: Germinating super hot chillies
- Super hot chillies need a long season to mature, so surface sow in January (save half your seeds so you have time for another go in February if the first lot fails).
- They also need a great deal of heat to germinate, so thank goodness for the BioGreen propagator – you need a bottom heat of between 27ºC-32ºC, 24 hours a day.
- Once the seedlings are established, they can be moved to a sunny windowsill.
- Annoyingly, I couldn’t find the lid, so I rigged up a half-arsed replacement with two small lids and a bag of bubble wrap. It’ll do the job.
- Also, wash your hands well after touching the seeds and avoid your eyes! Read more about growing chillies from seed.
We’ll see how they get on…
