Frankly, I don't see the point. Being in central Texas, all my plants are stressed quite enough. I grow red and yellow bhuts, red habs, thai hots, and others, so if I want more heat, I just add a bhut or fatali. Works every time...

I don't intensionally stress my plants but there are occasions when I forget to water and in the evening when I get home from work they are wilted pass the point I would like to see them, but they bounce back quickly after a watering. I agree with Tomt226 if you want hotter just go Bhut or even Carolina reaper.

I am in the same boat as tom. The heat here stresses plants badly. Even the ones in the shade. For hotter peppers I plant hotter varieties.

If you want to make somone turn red give them one of these. They will not say it was not spicy enough.

Nate

Interesting! I would not have guessed.

I push my plants and I've found that when I do, the pods taste immeasurably better. So much more fragrant and flavorful. I live in a much harsher zone than you guys, so when I find my plants wilted at 7 am, they probably were completely collapsed the afternoon before. I checked once to see how bad they looked--much worse than the "why is my plant so wilted" photos that get posted. Right now it has been so hot and dry that the leaves that take the brunt of the sun on my orange Hab have turned completely white but it is trucking along. I've never lost one doing that--instead I have to worry about phytopythora if I water too often.

Been 105-110 every day for a week here...in the shade. You must be in hell... ;-)

My Bermuda grass looks like scorched earth and I water it. The pepper advice for my zone is to throw away your plants and start again at Labor Day. The hottest I've seen it here was 128 but that wasn't this year. Less hell and more oven since you can literally safely cook food in cars.

Makes it real easy to get my peppers to make really really hot pods. The habs I picked in June were so hot I had to cut them and catch them in a bowl because I couldn't touch them. Well I did once but then I touched my face an hour later and my face and eye felt like nuclear death.

So you mean stressing them is holding back water when it gets hot till they wilt and look like they are dying and then water again (probably very well)? And this improves the heat and flavor of the peppers? But surely you do that on fully mature peppers plants with pods on them? And they wont drop the pods?