Viewing comments posted by BookerC1

These are a good reliable "not too hot" pepper. I found them to be roughly comparable to jalapenos in heat, but with a lighter, more vegetable-like flavor. I have used them both in the immature yellow stage and in the mature reddish-orange stage. These are very good in a hot pepper relish.

These are a very popular variety of bell pepper. The ones I grew tended to be short and fairly square, most with four lobes. Great for making stuffed peppers, as they stand upright well in a baking dish. The downside is that these seemed very prone to blight in my garden.

These peppers lived up to their name! They were consistently larger than other bell pepper varieties in my garden, with very thick walls. They have a more elongated shape than some bell peppers, rather than a blocky shape. I have difficulty growing bells in my garden, due to both blight and blossom end rot, but still managed to bring a few of these to harvest. Good flavor. These were not ideal for stuffing, due to their shape, but were great as an ingredient in recipes and salads.

This is a HOT pepper! With a Scoville rating of 30,000-50,000, this isn't for the hot pepper novice. (For comparison, a jalapeno rates at 2,500-5,000 on the Scoville Heat Scale.) Despite the heat, this pepper still manages to deliver flavor as well. This pepper is commonly dried and ground, and it requires only a little shake to add a lot of heat to your chili.

This is one of the prettiest peppers I've grown! A couple of years ago, I planted them in among the perennials in my front flower bed, to take full advantage of the streaky variegated pattern on the leaves and the brilliant color of the mature fruits. I include these in the homemade hot sauce I make for my husband, as they pack quite a flavor wallop. These are significantly hotter than jalapeno peppers, though less hot than habaneros.

Though I believe this is an heirloom variety, my saved seed did not come true to the parent plants. I suspect cross-pollination with other pepper varieties. I liked this one well enough to justify re-ordering seed each year, though!

These are a variety of jalapeno, but I wasn't prepared for the kick they delivered! They are a little larger than the standard jalapenos I've grown, but are significantly hotter. Great flavor, just use a little less in your recipes! These were prolific producers in my garden. I had good luck freezing the diced peppers to add to recipes throughout the winter.

These peppers are look-alikes for some of the hot varieties! Be sure to label them, as it isn't much fun to do a taste-test to determine whether you've picked a hot or sweet variety. These peppers are long and curved, with fairly thin walls. Great flavor, and produce reliably in my garden. I like the flavor of these in my roasted tomato sauce.

These are very prolific peppers! I have to stake these, as the plants have so many fruits, they get weighed down, and the fruits are in danger of sitting on the soil. Great flavor, and a little larger peppers than Marconi Red. I always have at least one variety of Marconis in my garden! I especially love to grill these and put them on grilled pizza.

This is one of my favorite peppers! It is a sweet variety, with a horn shape rather than a bell. I have much better success growing horn-type peppers than bells, and I find Marconi to be a good producer. The green stage is crisp, with a milder flavor than a green bell pepper, but give it time to ripen to red. The flavor is exceptional, almost fruity, very juicy. Great in salads, or in recipes that would call for red bell peppers.

This is the pepper that most people in North America use as the baseline by which to measure other hot peppers. It is commonly available, with both seeds and plants available at most nurseries. This is a good "gateway pepper" for those wanting to venture into growing and eating hot peppers, as it is hot enough to provide some real bite, without the agonizing burn of the hot peppers with MUCH higher scores on the Scoville scale, which measures the "heat" of peppers. This pepper can be eaten raw, if you are tolerant of heat, or as an ingredient in many dishes.

I was hooked the first time I saw this diminutive ornamental pepper planted as a border in a flower bed. The tiny, wavy peppers are held upside-down, with the points extending into the air. The peppers develop over the course of several weeks, so it is common to have peppers ranging from very pale yellow, almost white, through all the colors of flame, with bright yellow, orange, and red peppers, all at the same time. These are easy to grow from seed.

These are absolutely my favorite cherry-type tomato! It is larger than the typical cherry tomato, with a pretty thin skin. The flavor is intense and smoky, similar to the best full-sized black tomatoes. You do have to be careful not to let them overripen on the vine, as they tend to split around the shoulders. These are unbelievably good with some fresh mozzarella and fresh basil. I do plant a few extra of these plants, as they don't produce as many fruits as most other cherry tomatoes.

I tried these hybrid indeterminate tomatoes after a couple of years of struggling with fusarium wilt in my garden, because this one is listed as having a tolerance to verticillium, fusarium wilt, and nematodes. The tomatoes were produced over a long season, though they were smaller than I expected. Not sure if that was due to the season, or the variety. The plants were healthy, but the flavor was pretty unremarkable. Not a variety I'll go out of my way to grow again.

I was surprised to see this tomato listed as indeterminate. Both years I grew them, the plants stayed small and bush-shaped and the fruits all ripened within a fairly narrow window. The tomatoes were very consistent in size, about the size of a tennis ball, and seemed more watery than most. Not likely to grow these again.

A basic, baseball-sized red tomato. This one seemed prone to fusarium wilt in my garden and didn't ever show the vigor I've seen in many other varieties. I gave it two years trial and decided not to grow it again.

This variety is widely available, probably the most common paste tomato in my area. It produces a large number of small, oblong fruits, which stay relatively firm even when fully ripe. They are pretty meaty, with little juice, and don't have a lot of flavor when eaten raw. They are, however, excellent for making sauce, as the sauce thickens up much more quickly than tomatoes with more watery juice. There are paste tomatoes I like much better (i.e., Viva Italia!), as this one doesn't taste much different from the tasteless tomatoes at the grocery store. In the garden, the first set of fruits to form generally gets blossom end rot, though it doesn't seem to affect the later fruits.

This was the tomato I grew up eating, as it was one of my mother's favorites. It produces a lot of tennis ball-sized fruits, which all tend to develop in a short window of time. She found this ideal for her canning, as she wanted to get it all done in one fell swoop. In my own garden, I've found the flavor to be good, but nothing exceptional. I'd be open to growing it again, but wouldn't go out of my way to hunt it down.

Viva Italia is a producing workhorse. Last year I planted 4 different varieties of paste tomatoes (Roma, Amish Paste, Viva Italia, and one other), and Viva Italia outperformed the others without question. It had the longest period of production, and was absolutely covered in fruits. All had decent flavor, but Viva Italia was the most flavorful of the four, making it the only paste I really enjoyed eating fresh.

The glowing descriptions of this tomato are what first prompted me to explore growing heirloom tomatoes. I'm glad I tried a wide selection of heirlooms my first year, because if this tomato had been the only heirloom I tried, I probably wouldn't have ever developed my obsession with heirlooms. I've tried growing 3 different "strains" of Brandywine and have found them all to be disappointing. They generally have very thin skin, are prone to blossom end rot and splitting, and are very low producers. Maybe the results would be different in a different region of the country, but these are consistently soft and relatively flavorless in my central Illinois garden.

I mostly grow heirloom tomatoes, but this particular hybrid often finds its way into my garden. It is a good, dependable basic tomato, and is often a large percentage of the tomatoes that make it into my roasted tomato sauce. The fruits are pretty consistent in size and are resistant to blossom end rot or wilt in my garden.