Ooh. Looks yummy. Do you make your own seasoning and paprika? Would LOVE to hear anyone's thoughts on home made.

I wanted to grow Alma, but Baker Creek didn't have them. In addition to a plethora of bells, I ended up with:

Paradicsom Alaku Sarga Szentes Pepper

Jimmy Nardello Italian Pepper

Hungarian Sweet Banana

Red Marconi (not sure if this is hot or sweet)

I have Medusa, but I've no real reason to grow it.

I've never grown any variety of edible pepper that our family didn't like and didn't eat, Robert, so I think you're safe, even if you only chose some based on the pretty photos (and the catalog description, of course). We generally don't eat the ornamental peppers, even though they are edible, because they're just too hot, but then I'm not growing them to eat.

These are the peppers I've started, and since I've started them all, I'll list them all here in your sweet pepper thread, even though some of them are hots, and others are ornamentals.

SWEET PEPPERS:

Vidi (red bell)

Admiral (yellow bell)

Valencia (orange bell)

Feher Ozon (aka Feherozon)

Marconi (red)

HOT PEPPERS:

Cayenne

Chichen Itza (habanero)

Mosquetero (poblano)

Jalapenos:

Big Boy

Biker Billy

Chichimeca

Early

Grande'

Mucho Nacho

Tabasco

ORNAMENTAL:

Chilly Chili

Explosive Ember

Medusa

NuMex Easter

NuMex Sunrise

Purple Flash

Royal Black

Bon, I make all kinds of pepper products, including dried pepper flakes from hot peppers and powdered pepper products like paprika (this year I'm grown Feher Ozon for that purpose) and cayenne (I'm growing just the standard OP cayenne pepper for that one). I also grow Tabasco to make tabasco sauce, and sometimes I make pepper sauce (pepper-flavored vinegar) from the ornamental hot peppers simply because I have the peppers and like to use them occasionally for something other than ornamental purposes.

To make any sort of flaked or powdered pepper product, you dry the peppers (either in a dehydrator or by stringing them on ristras and hanging them to dry in a shady, hot spot with low humidity) first to get the moisture level very low. Then you can flake them or powder them, your choice. I usually flake some sort of hot pepper and I always label it by type because I don't want for someone to accidentally use Habanero Pepper Flakes when they thought they were using ordinary hot pepper flakes. I often use poblano peppers for hot (but not too hot) red pepper flakes because they have great flavor. I often make both Habanero and Jalapeno flakes as well, and sometimes I grind some of the flaked peppers down to make powder. (You should wear a respiratory mask while grinding down hot peppers so you do not inadvertently inhale some of it.)

To make flakes, you chop up your dehydrated peppers (with or without seeds, your choice) using the method of your choice. I normally use my food processor or blender for this purpose. (An alternate way of making pepper flakes would be to run the peppers through your food processor or blender first and to then dehydrate them on the fruit setting of a dehydrator.) To get the peppers ground down further to the powdery state, you can use a mortar and pestle, herb grinder, coffee grinder, etc. Sometimes you can get them to a pretty fine grind even in a blender or food processor.

Alma is a great pepper but you can make paprika from any Hungarian type pepper, or even from some of the non-Hungarians with similar flavor. I like Feher Ozon as it produces heavier and its peppers are larger than Alma's so it is a more productive and efficient use of space.

When I choose peppers that will be used for processing, I choose the largest ones I can find that have the flavor I like. There is a very specific reason for this and I'll use sweet baby bell peppers as an example. If I am making Habanero Gold jelly in the summer and need to dice up hot peppers for it, it is more efficient for me to handle large red or orange bell peppers as they are easy to process and one pepper can give me all the pepper I need for a single batch of jelly. If I am trying to do the same thing with a big bowl of red, orange or yellow baby bell peppers, it takes me ten times as long to process the tiny baby bells, meticulously removing the stem and blossom ends, deseeding them and chopping them up. (Last year, in the interest of efficiency, I made 18 batches of Hab Gold in 2 days, so being efficient matters because it allows multiple batch processing in a short period of time.) So, consider that when you are dealing with peppers that must be cut, chopped, dehydrated and then powdered. It is so much easier to process fewer big peppers than tons of smaller ones, something I've also learned with dehydrating tomatoes, though I still like to dehydrate some of the bite-sized ones anyway.

Marconi is a sweet Italian frying pepper.

Medusa is a beautiful ornamental pepper and I grow many, many kinds of ornamental peppers. They give the garden beautiful color, and even when the other annual flowers are burning up in the mid-July through late-August heat, they just keep looking more and more beautiful. Some people might consider them a waste of time, but I don't. Anything that adds beauty to the garden in the dog days of summer helps lure me out of the air-conditioned house and into the garden, at least early, early on hot days, so that the weeding and routine garden maintenance doesn't get away from me when it is more pleasant to be indoors than out. Almost all ornamental peppers produce hot peppers that you can use to make hot-flavored vinegars, fermented pepper sauces, powdered peppers or flaked peppers. While they generally are too hot to just pop into your mouth (one or two very small ornamental peppers are hot enough to flavor a fresh batch of salsa if you're making some to go with dinner), they have other uses.

I tried to stop growing so many ornamental peppers during some hot, dry years and what I found was that I really and truly missed them. Know when I missed them the most? When the stores had ornamental pepper plants with peppers on them for sale in pots in June and July. I was looking at them and kicking myself and asking "why didn't I grow some of those this year?" Because I often don't harvest the ornamental peppers, they stay on the plants until they dry and fall off, and then in future years, little pepper seedlings pop up everywhere. When that happens, I pot them up and grow them on for a little while and then use them to fill in gaps in ornamental beds.

Sounds like I'll love the Marconi Red.

That weird named one at the top of my list is the Hungarian replacement for Alma. I didn't want to order from 2 places, so I read that it's used for Paprika. Seems Hungarians use most their peppers as paprika or some type of ground spice. Learning that really opened up my mind. I look forward to the trial and errors and the fabulous revelations just as the Russian Black Moor/Mauri did last year.

My plate is pretty full right now. I'd love to add more, but .. lol

wow I thought I am the pepper lady but you are so interesting on pepper growing Iam going to really enjoy expanding my knowledge from your write up Absolutely wonderful !! 160gosdgo

I notice that several of you grow Red Marconi. I have seeds and plant it most years, but it never does as well for me as the Yellow Marconi. Is it just my climate or do others notice that. I also like Yellow Monster but have run out of seeds and I didn't see it in the companies I chose to order from this year. I found it in the Totally Tomatoes catalog but I didn't order from them this year. We love peppers.