Pepperoncinis with no pep

[Kolesar]

I planted six pepperoncinis this year with goal of pickling them. Two were from seeds and four were from starts. They produced plenty of peppers, some of which are five inches long. I have been sampling them at intervals. At this time, the peppers have transitioned from green to yellow-green to a bronze-olive color. One or two I picked were nice and hot. Most of the peppers have no hot (capsicum) taste at all.

I am disappointed because I love eating raw hot peppers. Pepperoncinis would normally be "mild" as hot peppers go--about a fifth of the kick of a jalapeno.

I did not plant them near any sweet peppers, so it was not a cross-pollination problem. There are a block of cayennes in another raised bed thirty feet away--the peppers certainly did not inherit any of their kick.

My work around for when I pickle them would be to put a half a cayenne into each jar when I pickle them. Nonetheless, this is not what I had in mind. Has anybody here ever had such an experience or any good advice? About the only stress the plants had were some aphids that I eradicated by spraying Murphy's oil soap onto. I only sprayed two plants, and the plants rebounded nicely.

[politicat]

1. Temperature.

Specifically of the soil. I can eat spring jalapenos but not summer ones.

I remember reading about this once in a pepper book - peppers have to have soil temps of 75 F to fruit, and 85 to develop real heat. So if you like the flavor of peppers but not the heat, the way to grow them is to keep the soil temps right about 75. So if you've had a cool summer, you're likely to get less hot peppers. I know that our thai dragons were a bit less hot than usual (meaning, I could eat them.)

[Kolesar]

2. We only had one real heat wave in Ohio this summer

The soil was clammy in June, normal in July. I did cover the soil with black plastic to warm it for a week and left the black plastic on the soil for mulch. Then the plants grew in and there was a good amount of shade on the soil. This garden only gets sun from 8 am to 5 pm during the longest days of summer. So, you may have it!

I planted jalapenos in containers and put them in the sunniest locations last year. They were plenty hot.

[FloridaPat]

3. I raised jalapenos one year. I picked them and they weren't hot

either. I had a bunch in the garden when I was going to Russia and brought them along. After a couple of days they were very hot. The "hottest" part of a pepper is in the seeds. Maybe they just need time to get the seeds totally ripe.