Great photo! I am trying to grow some of the chiltepin local to this area (I live in Phoenix). If I have just a fraction of your success I will be very happy. sam

The chiltepin is actually more sensitive to harsh Texas sun (and worse in Phoenix i'm sure) than the pequin. The largest and most productive tepins I find in the wild are growing under nurse trees such as mesquite. I have some native seed from several tepins and pequin. The large pequin are easier for me to harvest in my organic fields. Good luck on your chilies this year!

Thanks for the info. It sounds like you think I might have the best result if I grow them under partial shade. sam

I grow several varieties but not in that quantity. Great harvest!

John

I am looking for seeds for the wild pepper you refer to. It is also native to Florida I understand. I would love to get some seeds from you to plant in my native hammock area. Great photo!

Crickey thats alot of picking pepper pods!! Congrates on the harvast.

Pepper Le Pew

Wow they look great!! Down here in TX there are always wild pequin and they taste great! I used to have this great plant with a BUNCH of yummy red and green chiles (it came out by itself in our back yeard) until my father went crazy with weed killer by accident (yes i was mad). Anyway, our Aunt gave us 2 different kidn of pequin plants and YES they are ripen up really good!! Just wondering, what are the green ones with purple called?

these things are wierd, you touch them and they just fall off. you can really scare someone bu saying to handle it but not pick it, that it is imporent and it falls off the second they touch it. lol

Texas Chilihead,

I have been trying to find seeds for Firecracker Pequin peppers. Do you have them? Would you be willing to sell some? If so, do you have a price for a few dozen shipped to Pittsburgh, PA?

Thanks very much.

Nov. 28th, 06 was the last harvest day for chli pequins ("pe-teens"), due to a hard freeze coming in. There grow wild, and there must have been 300 to 500 plants growing along a bluff. Since the plant will freeze anyway, I harvest by cutting the plant at the base and carefully stacking the plants in a vehicle, where later, I can sit at my kitchen table to pick them. With some in a bottle w/vinegaris is perfect with greens. With a paste, a little on breakfast taco's is perfect. They grow/hide from plant eaters, so they grow around brush, but it's not a must. Partial shade by a leaky water hose, and they really thrive. I've got soo many, I'm going to make hot sauce. Plant on the South side if possible. Dehydrated & ground is wonderful to use like black pepper.

Does anyone know of a good online source for chili pequin seeds?

Thanks.

Pedro

I grow pequins in pots here in central Indiana. My dad also grows them a little further north. He says the best time to harvest is when they are dark red and slightly dried. I've read that the best time is when they are bright orange-red. Does anyone know if any one of these time's is better than the other?

can anyone help me find pequin seeds? Willing to pay for them.

Love the Texas Chli Pequin. Sure brings back childhood memories of my dear Mom. She always had several chili pequin plants in full bloom, as well as the other very similar type of pepper called Chile Tepin at our home garden in the Rio Grande Valley. The Chile Tepin is just as small and Just as Hot but it is ROUND shaped and tastes slightly bit different. Now I live in San Antonio and am trying to grow a Chili Pequin pepper plant. More than a year ago, I planted in a pot several seeds I collected from my mom's garden but only one seed sprouted and it took a year before it was strong enough to be transplanted to the garden. It has been almost 90 days since it got transplanted and it has grown tall but still no sign of the source of my craving. I sure can't wait to see the first little flower. I know that once it bears fruit, all the mocking birds in the area will flock to it. The way I see it; I'll have 2 GREAT gifts-The wonderful song of the mocking bird and the chance to taste (once more) the hottest little pepper there ever was.

Update:

It has been almost 15 months since my last posting and I'm pleased to inform you my Pequin Pepper plant has grown 5'10' tall and it is covered from top to bottom with "precious pepper jewels".

If my dear mom would still be alive, she'd be so proud of how tall and beautiful this plant has grown in San Antonio from one of the seeds of her garden in the Rio Grande Valley.

Every time I harvest this little guys it brings me such wonderful memories of my childhood. Adding these little guys to soups and sauces makes me feel I'm home again.

Even the birdies in my yard sing louder. The bees and the humming birds love its white tiny flowers.

I love my Texas petins. Any I can't eat fresh are dried and placed in a pepper grinder for use on just about everything.

I grow them in pots, but it's not easy in Northern Virginia. My biggest plant is not much more than a foot tall, and that's after bringing it inside for two winters. It's dormant until spring, but it comes back ok. Anyone know if pruning it back over winter would have positive results?

To: VA_Deck_Garden

I have a 6 foot tall Chile Pequin Plant outdoors in my San Antonio, TX garden. However, it wasn't easy. It took 3 years for the seedling to be strong enough to be planted outdoors. Finally, last year, it was strong enough to be planted outdoors in the spring and then it grew rapidly and began producing an abundance of peppers. I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I saw the very first little pepper.
It is dormant now for the winter and hope it comes back in the Spring-we've had brutal freezing weather recently and I do not know if my plant will recover.

Regarding your question whether to prune or not. I'm not an expert but based on your information (the plant is indoors and only measures one foot) I would leave it alone for now, especially when you are so lucky to have a plant that bares fruit.

Good luck with your plant~

My peppers were doing great indoors all winter until an unfortunate accident (moved it too close to a heater floor vent). I thought the plants were dead--all the leaves fell off and it looked rather withered. I nearly gave up on it, and eventually did prune it back quite a bit. When the weather warmed up, I moved the plants (stubs mostly) to my deck and hoped for the best. And it worked! It took awhile, but they came back very nicely, although I'm just now harvesting peppers.

I have always referred to these little peppers as Chile Tepins or ChilTepins, Chiltepin was named "the official native pepper of Texas" in 1997. I have seen Pequins or peppers listed as Pequins at nurseries during Spring and the stems did not seem the same, more like an annual plant, where the stem of the Tepins are much more woody-like in nature and my Tepins have been coming back every year like a perrenial. Anyway, I love them, I found mine on a remote section of riverbank in Central Texas, it was a huge stand around the base of an old tree directly below a broken part of a dense canopy. It looked like these plants had been there for a long time, and they were loaded down with the little round peppers (bird's eye) with no telling how many years they had grown here, the bases of the plants were huge and gnarly but you could see where every year they died back and re-grew from the base every year. Anyway I like the land and bought 12 acres and built a cabin about 100 feet from the pepper patch. I planted a little garden and grew tomatoes, jalapenos, squash, etc...and many times when I picked the garden I would also walk down and pick the chiltepin pepper patch. and here begins an interesting little story, I beleive when I picked the jalapenos and then went and picked the chile tepins, I accidentally crossed the two. It was by accident I discovered it. After that summer's harvest and winter came and the remaining chiltepins fell to the ground, the next spring there were a bunch of little sprouting plants around the bases of the wild pepper plants, so I thought cool, I will transplant these into some pots and give them to friends or spread them around, so I did and they grew big and when they fruited I had a little surprise. The fruit was about an inch long and shaped like a minituare jalapeno even though the parent plant's fruit were like little bb's. But they are alot hotter then a jalapeno and I love them. I sold that land and had to move but took six plants with me, and every year they come back and those little jalapeno shaped chile tepin's are my favorite. I do not let any go to waste so I keep them picked, eat most of them, and save the rest for seed. I would like to get them registered one day, I think I will call them Frank's FireCrackers....they make some awesome salsa, there is a pic at http://www.moonlightnet.com/images/tepin-japs.jpg

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1138227}}

My Chili Pequin Plant never came back from the 2010 Winter Hard Freeze. Now, I'm trying to start from scratch. Just planted some seeds 2 weeks ago and the seeds sprouted about 2 days ago. I'm elated!! Wasn't sure if the seeds would sprout at all. Now, I'm going to have to be patient and wait 90 days to transplant it to the garden and then wait some more for the "precious" fruit.

I would love to get some seeds for ANY of these peppers.

I grew up in a little town in Texas called Taft and there was a creek nearby called Chiltepin Creek. My grandfather had a row of pepper bushes (they looked like small hedge bushes, with small leaves and the berries the were round-ish (actually, they were shaped more like tiny olives, or the shape of the C7 Christmas lights -- again SHAPE, NOT SIZE they were about the SIZE of small capers). It was in a semi-shaded spot - in the light shade of a mesquite tree, and with a little morning sun. We would go out and pick some to put in a little jar with vinegar - if we could beat the birds.

I would be happy to pay for some seeds - I am living in Virgina now and would love to have this taste of home.

Mary, I live in Texas and just bought a Chili Pequin plant from the nursery. Keep your fingers crossed, as long as I don't give it too much attention I should have plenty of peppers by this summer, I'll mail you some seeds.

Why are my chili tepins purple? Please let me know what is causing this and how I can correct the problem!

Love the P'teen stories. I lived in Poteet twenty years (transplanted from California) and loved this little chilie. My manager used to bring me tacos when I drove the school bus in Jourdanton, and he went outside and got me some Pequin peppers to go with the taos. Well years later I moved to San Antonio and now have a little courtyard. I have been longing for a Pequin plant for all these year, and one day I went into the courtyard and notice a little "weed" growing there, and there it was, my very own little pequin plant. It is bigger now and the jays have carried them all over the complex here, so I go and pull up pepper plants and give them to friends. A little gift from above, I think. Love this post. Thanks.
K

I'm happy to have found this forum. I've luckily grown a few bushes of Tepins this summer in Michigan. This was my first real attempt at gardening after years of wanting to try. Funny as it may seem, I thought they were Cheyenne peppers till they fruited and then was waiting for them to start growing long and red (didnt say I was a good gardener lol) Then the Gal at work gave me a few more peppers she got from her father in TX. to try again next spring. They still had the stem on them and thats when the "pop" sound happened (you know when someone pulls their head from...) And WOW! I have a wood carpenters tool crib with about 10 nor 11 plants and about 10 or so "berries" on them :) Thats when I started researching them on the internet. I brought them in for the early frost and they are looking well.
A couple of questions though, do they get hotter when red? and are the leaves supposed to be a bit on the dry-ish side?

{{gwi:1138227}}

My Tepin-Japs that I crossed from a post a couple of years ago above.

Can anyone tell me how i can get some of the Chili Pequin seeds?...i reside in Central Florida?

For anyone intrested Bonnie Plants has the Chili Pequin plants in 5 gal containers. I bought mine at Lowes.