Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we got a hot one coming up for you today. We're gonna be talking with doctor Jack McCoy about hot peppers. If you love them, I bet you grow them. And if you don't love them, sometimes you still grow them.
Chris Enroth: 00:24I don't know what's up with people, but we're gonna get into that in just a second. But before we do, you know I'm not doing this by myself. I'm joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 00:36Hello, Chris. Are you a hot pepper lover or hater?
Chris Enroth: 00:42Depends on the hot pepper.
Ken Johnson: 00:43Indifferent?
Chris Enroth: 00:45Depends on if I have the antacid nearby and a glass of milk maybe. How about you, Ken?
Ken Johnson: 00:53Yeah. I I enjoy them. Probably not the we're not on the extreme end here, but, you know, we we grow and eat jalapenos and habaneros occasionally. So which I know for hardcore hot pepper people, they'd probably laugh at me for saying that. But
Chris Enroth: 01:09Yes. You're you and your baby peppers.
Ken Johnson: 01:12For a Midwesterner.
Chris Enroth: 01:14That's top of the list there. Yeah. Well, let's find out if our other cohost, Emily Swihart, holder coach educator, and Mylan likes hot peppers. Emily, welcome back.
Emily Swihart: 01:26Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. And, Ken, I will make you feel better by saying I'm a black pepper connoisseur. That's as exotic as I get. Don't do heat.
Emily Swihart: 01:37Don't do heat. I love I want to, which is why I'm so excited to have Jack with us. Like, I want to. They're so pretty. They have, like, unique, like, shapes, and it seems like something it's trendy.
Emily Swihart: 01:50I I don't know. It just seems like something I wanna do, but I just can't. I sweat. I cry. Like, I can't.
Emily Swihart: 01:56So it's an ugly cry. So so that's why I'm here because I I am on the outside looking in with the heat, but, very happy to be here. So
Chris Enroth: 02:07That's fair. Excellent. Well, let's bring in, doctor Jack McCoy to help us out. I'm I'm I'm already sweating. Jack, welcome to the show.
Chris Enroth: 02:20You're coming to us from the good old U of I campus in Champaign Urbana, and you are the lecturer of horticulture and the director of sustainability in food and environmental systems. So welcome.
Jack McCoy: 02:34Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here. I've been well, I would say a longtime listener. I don't know that you can consider three years a long time. Not sure how long it's been running, but I do I do chime in frequently to to listen to the updates from the GoodGrowing podcast, and I'm happy to finally be a guest on it.
Chris Enroth: 02:53Greater than than half the runtime of this podcast, I would say. So, yes, you're sounds like you're a dedicated listener. And we are and as we misspeak constantly on this podcast, please let us know. However wrong we are sometimes, we could always use a peer review.
Jack McCoy: 03:12Not at all. I think you'll do a great job.
Emily Swihart: 03:15No. Well, we appreciate that.
Ken Johnson: 03:18Your check's in the mail.
Chris Enroth: 03:19Yes. It is. I I am excited to chat today about Hot Peppers. So, I guess, let's get started. Ken, would you mind kicking us off this week, please?
Ken Johnson: 03:33Yeah. I guess before we get to to Hot Peppers, let's learn a little bit more about you, Jack. So, what are you, I guess, currently teaching, working on at U of I?
Jack McCoy: 03:42Yeah. So, currently, I'm not I don't know if I I don't know if I can wear my hot pepper expert, title anymore because I'm more of a generalist at this point. But as as Chris said, I'm a lecturer of horticulture, which is really just the classification for faculty on campus that are devoted mostly to education. So, I teach all things related to our horticultural food systems, concentration on our on our campus in Department of Crop Sciences. And so most of that involves small scale diversified fruit and vegetable production is really my focus.
Jack McCoy: 04:20So I teach urban food production, local food systems, vegetable crop production, that sort of thing. And I, try to involve myself a lot in the education at the sustainable student farm and try to use that as a living laboratory as much as I can. And I also directed, undergraduate degree program that's got kind of a mouthful sustainability in food and environmental systems, but that's a newer degree that we have on campus that's offering an interdisciplinary approach for students to explore what sustainability means across our college.
Emily Swihart: 04:54Great. Jack, do you mind before I I'm gonna lead us into the Hotpepper talk, but do you mind just elaborating a little bit on this student sustainable farm? I'm not sure everybody is aware of that, and I'm Yeah. Already off on that tangent we talked about earlier.
Jack McCoy: 05:07Let's get on a tangent because the sustainable student farm is my favorite place on campus. And, really, since I've been here just about three years now, and I and, really, from the start, I knew that this was the place I wanted to be involved as much as I could. It has a lot of potential and and is a really productive, influential space for a lot of our students. So it is a about a five acre space we have just south of campus, and it's been I'll I'll, I'll always mess up the exact timeline. I think it's been running since 2012 or 2010, but, generally, it's a diversified market farm, really, is what it's modeled after and operates really like that as well.
Jack McCoy: 05:57So on those five acres, we're really only producing on about three acres at a time, and it has kind of extensive crop rotation plan, and then we produce something like 30 or 40 different different types of vegetables and fruits every year. So when you go to the farmers market and see these these small scale farmers with a lot of different produce throughout the season, it's really it's it's that style of farm. And so we serve real markets. We have a campus farm stand on the quad every Thursday. We sell the campus dining.
Jack McCoy: 06:31We have, CSA or community supported agriculture. And but I like to say it's it's it's student well, it's we have a staff that manages it, but it's student run. So all of our employees and our students, We have a summer internship program that's running right now. We also have a small farm management certificate we've launched in the last couple of years. So it's a place where students come to learn about small scale diversified farming and also use it in class a lot too.
Jack McCoy: 07:06So our vegetable crop production class every fall, the manager, Matt Torino, the student farm is a co instructor with me, and our labs are at the farm where students are doing vegetable crop production. And then in lecture, we talk about the theory of vegetable crop production. It's an excellent living laboratory. You guys should definitely come check it out if you haven't already. Actually, you as horticulture educators will get to see it later this summer and get an update.
Chris Enroth: 07:31Awesome. I I love the sustainable student farm. That's the first time I've seen a high tunnel on wheels, actually, rails, technically, but, that was neat so that they can then move the high tunnel. The then the soil can have be exposed to, you know, rainfall, which is interesting because I was just at a grower last week, and their high tunnel roof got ripped off. And they're like, it's awful, but we're getting natural rainfall.
Chris Enroth: 07:59We're getting all these salts washed out of the soil. And, I mean, sustainable student farms have doing that since I the beginning, I think. Yeah.
Jack McCoy: 08:07Yeah. It is a really cool system. We literally rotate our our high tunnels. And and high tunnels, for any listeners that don't know, are are really, like you could think of them as passive greenhouses, essentially. They're they're covered, protected, spaces, but they're not managed.
Jack McCoy: 08:26They don't have an actual heating or cooling system, and we cool them by raising or low and heat them by raising and lowering the sides. And they have a lot of benefits to this style of farming, but they do have some downsides too. One being that, yeah, they're they're not, they have to be irrigated, and so there's they're really prone to salt buildup. And and, also, we grow their their kind of coveted space on on the farm. One of our biggest cash crops, if you will, is, is tomatoes, and we really take advantage of the high tunnels for season extension and producing good early tomatoes.
Jack McCoy: 09:10And so we don't get to do as much of a rotation through our three high tunnels just because we have limited space as we can on the rest of the farm. So it's really important that we move them back and forth. And so that track actually is they're basically on a on a each high tunnel's on a track that's double as long as the high tunnel itself. And so every fall, we will lift up all of the stakes that hold the high tunnel down. And then I actually usually will bring a class out because it really takes a lot of hands, and it's kind of a fun way to help the farm.
Jack McCoy: 09:46And so we get as many people as we can. Everybody takes a a side or a or a post, and then we push it along the track and basically switch places from where it was the year before. So it is it's a very cool system.
Emily Swihart: 10:01Well, that's fantastic. Thank you for that. I I think people should know about it. I think it's a fantastic opportunity for students to learn and get hands on experience. And I've not been there, so I'm looking forward to the visit here at the end of the summer.
Emily Swihart: 10:13So Thanks
Jack McCoy: 10:13for asking about it.
Emily Swihart: 10:15Yeah. Well, I'm gonna get us back on track here with Hot Peppers. How did you get into Hot Peppers?
Jack McCoy: 10:22Yeah. Hot Peppers chose me, I guess you could say. Similar I I was listening to y'all's recent story about each of your careers recently, and I enjoyed hearing that. And there's a lot of similarities, actually. But, it was more so I guess I'll say, as I when I started in as an undergraduate in horticulture at the University of Arkansas, I knew that what I wanted to do was plant breeding, and I wanted to work in public research.
Jack McCoy: 11:01And I was told that I needed, three degrees from three different institutions. So that's what I was setting out to do. And, actually, I through a a colleague of mine, actually, I I found a graduate student graduate opportunity for my master's degree at New Mexico State University with doctor Paul Bosland, who is, now retired but sort of the king of chili peppers, I guess, in the modern academic world. And he runs, he ran the Chili Pepper Institute and breeding program at New Mexico State University. And if you guys haven't ever been to New Mexico, it's chili peppers are really big deal there.
Jack McCoy: 11:40So, that's kind of how it I I actually thought I would stay more in fruit production because I in my undergraduate research, I worked in a with blackberries and then a fruit breeding program, but found my way to vegetables and chili pepper. And then it it kind of snowballed from there and ended up continuing to work with chili peppers in a different program than my PhD too. So, yeah, it wasn't wasn't I didn't set out to find chili pepper, but I'm really glad that I started working with them.
Emily Swihart: 12:10I love that. They it it is a common theme, I think, amongst
Jack McCoy: 12:14Yep.
Emily Swihart: 12:15Horticulturists. I guess okay. So we admitted whether we like or don't prefer hot flavors. We didn't ask you. Do you research and and are are doing all this?
Emily Swihart: 12:26Do you enjoy eating them?
Jack McCoy: 12:28Yeah. So, you know, I didn't grow up in a culture or environment where I ate a lot of spicy foods. So I have to admit, I'm not the best chili head there is, which is the the official title for these hobbyist chili pepper enthusiasts. I I think they call themselves chili heads. I would like to say I'm, a chili pepper admirer more than more than a connoisseur because there's only so much tolerance I can take, but I love the plant itself.
Jack McCoy: 13:04I love the culture around it. I love the diversity of it, but I can't really handle a ton of heat. But I I will push my boundaries a little bit.
Emily Swihart: 13:16I love that term. That's a new term to me, and I just love that. Thank you. There does seem to be quite a bit of interest in hot peppers in the public realm. Do you have a sense for, like, what's driving that or, like, where that came from?
Emily Swihart: 13:34Or is it
Jack McCoy: 13:36It's a good question. Here's what my, I guess, my gut feeling is that, you know, our pain risk what when we eat spicy food, we're really activating pain receptors more than anything. So it's kind of a it's a mimicking that's why we call it heat. It's really it's as if we're burning our tongues, kind of. That's what's happening physiologically, which also releases a lot of endorphins.
Jack McCoy: 14:08So they say that when you eat a lot of spicy food, you you experience something similar to a runner's high. And this isn't, maybe this is I don't know if this is the common theory or not, but I do think that there is a bit of an addiction to to hot pepper that makes people excited. They get this kind of release of endorphins and runner is high from eating hotter and hotter foods. So I think that drives some of it. I also personally, what really fascinates me about pepper is its diversity.
Jack McCoy: 14:45So there's so many different kinds of peppers. The plants to me are actually quite pretty, but the pods themselves are really gorgeous and just satisfying to grow. And that's and they're swept up a lot in in cultural foods. So a chili pepper specifically, not a bell pepper, is not necessarily a major part of of of people's diets, but it is as far as calories go, but it is a major part of many cuisine's diets as far as what defines their foods. So, Asian and Latin American foods are all really defined by these different spicy flavors.
Jack McCoy: 15:29So I think that's another part. And then the third thing I think that attracts a home gardener to be really into to growing more and more peppers is that the phenology or the biology of a pepper is actually actually kind of simple compared to other plants we grow. So it flowers very easily. It's doesn't suffer from inbreeding depression. It has a complete flower, so male and female.
Jack McCoy: 15:57So there's a lot of hobbyist breeders out there because it's very easy to make your own crosses, plant that diversity, and start coming up with your own varieties, which I think is where a lot of these, if you if a chili head starts as just loving to eat hot peppers, give them a few years, they're probably breeding peppers in their backyard too. And I and I think it's an it's a it's a very good introductory model system for for plant hobby plant breeding.
Emily Swihart: 16:25Well, that's fascinating. I I appreciate that very thoughtful answer, and maybe I I I like the runner's high analogy. Like, maybe maybe we all need to try chili peppers a little bit more often.
Jack McCoy: 16:37Yeah. Maybe it's a it's a safe and effective. Nothing wrong with that. A little it's it's a little addictive, a little exciting. And I think that's also why it has some health benefits too, though, and why it's good for your circulation and inflammation for that same reason.
Chris Enroth: 16:54And maybe we just like seeing other people in pain, like that show Hot Ones.
Jack McCoy: 16:59Be a little little bit of a masochist too.
Chris Enroth: 17:01Yeah. Yeah. Oh, goodness. Well, speaking of this pain and the the this heat kind of feeling that we're get from these peppers, why are hot peppers hot? Like, what triggered this characteristic in these particular fruits?
Jack McCoy: 17:22Yeah. So this is also another fascinating part of the story and why it's even more entertaining about how much we as humans love them because I'm not sure we're supposed to love them. So evolutionarily well, I guess I'll start with pepper is within the Solanaceae family, like tomato, eggplant, potato. And all of the members of that family have some kind of toxic quality. So a tomato fruit is fine to eat, but the the plant itself is a little toxic.
Jack McCoy: 17:59Or I'm not sure. You probably don't wanna eat a potato plant either, but the but the potato underground stems are fine to eat. So the capsaicinoids evolutionarily developed in the fruit actually as a, I guess you could say, toxic trait to deter herbivory from mammals. So it's really interesting. Only mammals can have the right receptors to respond to capsaicinoid heat, and the seed of a chili pepper doesn't survive the digestive tract of a mammal.
Jack McCoy: 18:40But a bird, on the other hand, doesn't taste capsaicinoid heat and the seeds do survive the digestive tract of a bird. So they are the primary seed dispersers of the wild capsicum species. And so really that capsaicinoids developed to deter mammals from eating them. And the irony of that is that actually it's that very thing that humans are obsessed with and, is arguably pushed capsicum genus beyond its boundaries it ever could have gone with just birds alone. So I don't know.
Jack McCoy: 19:24There's a little bit of botany of desire, influence there, I think, where really maybe, yeah, you could argue that it was it was deterring mammals, but really are they I guess they've they've kinda trained us to to spread the, pepper much farther than than it ever could have with just birds alone. And so that might I don't know. You might be asking, well, how could a bird ever even consume a pepper? Well, a wild like pepper, the fruit is really the size of maybe your pinky fingernail. So we've actually selected fruit to be way, way bigger than than the wild like peppers are.
Jack McCoy: 20:01So those those wild ones were easier to eat from a with from a lot of different bird species.
Chris Enroth: 20:07Interesting. So we have maybe and and maybe this is more of of human selection then, but there's different levels of capsaicin in different varieties of peppers. Now how does that relate to, you know, when you go to buy a pepper or buy a hot sauce, they have Scoville units? Yeah. How how does that relate to the Scoville scale?
Jack McCoy: 20:36Yeah. So the original scale was developed by someone named Scoville. I think, Robert Scoville, maybe. I can't remember his first name. But but, essentially, the the way we tested heat in peppers was called the Scoville heat unit, which is really just a and it was well, it was it's called the Scoville organoleptic test measured by Scoville heat units.
Jack McCoy: 21:07But the and it it's essentially organoleptic being that it's, by taste alone. So, actually, the original test before we had high performance liquid chromatography that could be a lot more specific than a human palate, We'd have a panel of people taste peppers, and then the Scoville heat unit is actually measuring a dilution of of it. So in each round, they dilute the sample a little bit more. This is I hope I'm not butchering this. This is how I understand it, but it's essentially they dilute it more and more and more until you can't taste the spiciness anymore.
Jack McCoy: 21:44And so a Scoville heat unit really describes how what level of dilution it needed before the capsaicinoids were no longer taste detectable from the from a human palate. And so that's pretty variable depending on you have to train the panel. And, I even did a project in my master's where we were trying to, where we were doing some crosses that were measuring, how heat was inherited. And if we tasted a pepper and it was hot, we really couldn't let that person taste the pepper for the rest of the day or at least several hours because all of a sudden, ability to detect heat is obscured from that first taste. So it's pretty inefficient and and a little inaccurate to to actually do an organoleptic test.
Jack McCoy: 22:33So now we use high performance liquid chromatography mostly, but we still convert that, when we talk about it in the scobyl heat units just by applying a dilution factor to whatever that parts per million is. I think I've maybe it's multiplied by 16 or something. Yeah. Does that answer the question, I think?
Chris Enroth: 22:52I I think so. Yeah. And that makes sense. And and I can see how that would be so difficult to have, like, a panel of humans rating that because, like, we we have some friends. They're they're Indian.
Chris Enroth: 23:03And whenever they bring food over, they're like, we had to really calm this dish down Yeah. For you to be able to eat it because our palate is just way different than your Midwestern palate.
Jack McCoy: 23:18Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I think that's probably how most international people that live in the med Midwest feel.
Jack McCoy: 23:27I don't think the mid Midwesterners tolerate heat very well at all.
Chris Enroth: 23:32Meat, potatoes, and milk. That's
Jack McCoy: 23:33Yeah. It's funny.
Chris Enroth: 23:34I mean,
Jack McCoy: 23:34as you travel around, the people's people's definition of mild changes a whole lot. When you get mild in the Midwest, you can trust it's mild. If you get mild somewhere else, I wouldn't be so sure.
Ken Johnson: 23:47Alright. So for hot peppers, so so which came first? Was it hot peppers, sweet peppers? Are they all related? Is it this is same plant that's just been bred to have Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 23:56Hot and sweeter. How's that all work?
Jack McCoy: 23:59Yeah. This is also this when I mentioned earlier, I I love the diversity of pepper, and I think that's what a lot of people like. It's amazing how much of this type, this morphological diversity visual changes are are apparent within a single species. So, yes, to answer the first question simply, hot pepper came first, and then a sweet pepper is where mutations found later on. But a bell pepper and a jalapeno and a New Mexico pod type and a serrano are all the same species, capsicum and anum.
Jack McCoy: 24:40And so within a species, the next layer of of distinction is pod types. So we do try to categorize them as as a bell type or a jalapeno, etcetera. And then there are cultivars of bells, cultivars of of jalapenos, etcetera. But, yeah, it's amazing that most of the peppers that we consume are really within a couple of species. So there are are also a lot of the superhots and some veryhots, but not technically superhots, we call them, are in the capsicum chinense species, which include things like the habanero, bishop's hat, and, like, I think the Moruga scorpion and ghost peppers, those are all come out of a Chinensee.
Jack McCoy: 25:34So there is a different there are some different species, but mostly, the ones we see commercially are Chinensee or annum, and there's so much of that diversity. And so so, yeah, I wouldn't yeah. Bell and a jalapeno are are the same species. They're they're very similar in many ways.
Emily Swihart: 25:54So you'd hinted at that there's you know, once you kinda get bit by the heat bug, oftentimes, leads to growing them. Mhmm. And this is the Good Growing podcast, so many of our listeners are growing hot and sweet peppers at at some level. So can we talk about, like, how do you grow these? So whether you're growing a ghost pepper, god forbid, get get stuck into my garden, or, you know, sweet peppers.
Emily Swihart: 26:18Like, let's Yeah. Let's talk about, like, what the site conditions need to be for
Jack McCoy: 26:24Yeah.
Emily Swihart: 26:24Hot peppers and sweet peppers since they're the same species. They would have similar requirements, but, you know, we can talk about hot peppers.
Jack McCoy: 26:32You know? And just on a slightly a slight tangent, it's also crazy that a lot of these superhots are very prolific. So you grow one ghost pepper, and there's so many fruit that are produced in your garden. And then, I mean and, really, you need a sliver of one. So dealing with all these peppers is another challenge, which we'll get to in a moment, I'm sure.
Jack McCoy: 26:55But, you know, most of our listeners are probably hobby gardeners and know the basics. A chili a bell and chili pepper, sweet and hot peppers are very adaptable. They're grown in climates all across the world. They in their native environment, they are perennial in tropical environments. So, actually, like, if you visit someone's backyard in in Central America, you're probably gonna find a bush pepper, which is the same it'll be the same species, but it's just grown as a woody perennial.
Jack McCoy: 27:33But in temperate environments like ours and commercially, we grow them generally as an as an annual vegetable. And so that's and but, really, you would they really are adaptable to the same kind of conditions that other solanaceous vegetables that everyone knows and loves grows. So how you grow your tomato is really how you would grow a pepper. They can tolerate a little more heat, temperature heat, in the hotter climate, I guess you could say, but they still can suffer a little bit from too much heat, especially in, like, setting pollen and fruit set. But but, yeah, well drained, but high nutrient soil with good organic matter is is is a good and and I would say also they're fine in in a larger containers usually will do okay as well as in the garden and in raised beds.
Jack McCoy: 28:29So they're very adaptable, I think. Let's see. Yeah. I think that's and full sun, of course, is is best for the modern pepper. Actually, another interesting distinction from so I I have in my gradual work, did a lot with wild like and wild progenitors to the domesticated pepper, and these woody perennial shrubs are actually found more in the understory of forests and trees, so they actually are very tolerant of shade.
Jack McCoy: 29:00But in a in a modern cultivar, in your garden for maximum production, you know, six plus hours of sun is is what you need just like a tomato.
Emily Swihart: 29:12That's interesting. I'm glad you said that they're perennial because I think in the Midwest, you know, we get wrapped up in our shorter growing season, and I love thinking about them being just this large shrub somewhere somewhere else in the world.
Jack McCoy: 29:25Yeah. And you don't think about that a lot. Like, for some species, to say perennial or annual is definitive. But for most of what we work with, especially in a in a garden in a vegetable garden, like, perennial is a subjective term. It depends on where you are.
Jack McCoy: 29:43But definitely not gonna survive the winter here. They're very, very sensitive to cold cooler temperatures. It doesn't even need to frost to to to damage a pepper.
Emily Swihart: 29:56Yep. I've witnessed that. Many of us have.
Jack McCoy: 29:59I'm sure we all have when we got a little too eager. Yeah. Well
Chris Enroth: 30:05so I kind of with that sensitivity to the cold, I've people can take pepper seed and put it in the ground and grow a plant, but they usually don't get peppers until, like, September. Yeah. So then we usually need to talk about starting this indoors. So do you have
Jack McCoy: 30:23any
Chris Enroth: 30:24suggestions for maybe how to do the seed start sprouting process or tips for people to get peppers in the ground and get them in a timely manner?
Jack McCoy: 30:32Absolutely. In in our climate, I would not suggest starting from seed directly in your garden. I would always suggest transplanting, because one big distinction between a pepper and a tomato is that they are much slower growing. A tomato is so vigorous. I'm always blown away at how quickly a tomato will get going almost too fast, and I want it to slow down a little.
Jack McCoy: 30:59A lot especially the chili and and some bells bell peppers are are a little more vigorous, but a lot of chili peppers, especially as you get kind of into obscure varieties, are just kind of slower to get started. So any way you can jump start that is best. The trick with peppers, they will germinate. However, you if you if you grow indoors or have a grow light or something, you can plant them along with your other warm season vegetables. The but with mixed or slow germination.
Jack McCoy: 31:35The key with chili pepper is bottom heat on your at when you sow your seeds. So they sell little heat mats. I don't if if you don't already use them for your starting seeds, those are a great thing. Peppers respond really well to those. So warmer soil temperatures at germination are gonna really improve the uniformity and rate at which your seeds germinate.
Jack McCoy: 32:02And then once you have a good transplant, once your danger of frost has passed and your soils have warmed up, transplanting them in the garden, as usual, will be fine. The reality is because they're slower growing, even transplanting them, you know, pep a lot of peppers really don't get going until until the fall. But some of the faster, more modern varieties I I think I'm a little skewed because I've worked with a lot of kind of weird, not so commercial or cultivated varieties just in my research, and I think they're much slower to flower as well as their days of maturity are just a lot slower. So but but in general, yeah, I would say, you know, your early fall and even into September and October is when you're gonna have a lot of prolific peppers. And if you can if you have the space in in right conditions to get them started early with warm soil temperatures inside with good lighting and you have a really nice, big, vigorous transplant to move into your garden when it's safe, maybe you can get that happening a little earlier.
Ken Johnson: 33:15Alright. So once we get them outside, is there any kind of special fertilization routine we need or irrigation, anything like that?
Jack McCoy: 33:24No. I wouldn't say there's any particular you know, soil fertility, would manage the same as I would for any other vegetable crop. I'm you know, early ensuring that there is a good balance and especially nitrogen early in the season to help them get started is is a good approach. But, you know, if you have a good garden soil that you amend with a lot of organic matter, compost, and things, you probably can get away without really treating them at all with any liquid fertilizers. But if you are gonna use a liquid fertilizer that's balanced and definitely has a good, maybe an all purpose liquid fertilizer early on in the transplant's life, I think to get jump started is is the key.
Emily Swihart: 34:18So this is probably the question most of us have been waiting to ask, so I'm excited to ask. Is there anything that happens over the growing season that affects the heat of a pepper? We've heard you know, everyone's got a theory. Like, let's just let's lay it out
Jack McCoy: 34:34talk about it. And, actually, that's why I withheld from addressing the irrigation part of Ken's question. Well, I'll say I withheld it. I also kinda forgot a little bit. But so yes.
Jack McCoy: 34:48Absolutely. So there is a, I mean, there's a genetic component to heat or in capsaicinoid level. A jalapeno will always be hotter than a bell pepper, and a habanero will always be hotter than a jalapeno. But exactly how hot that is is extremely variable and dependent on environmental conditions. So there's if you look, I think even I have a poster of of of peppers in my office that, will put a range of of Scoville heat units per pod type, and that's really because that range will vary a lot depending on the environment conditions.
Jack McCoy: 35:30The biggest thing that affects heat is stress. So high temperatures, drought stress, these things, in general, plants under stress will accumulate secondary metabolites of all kinds, capsaicinoids fitting into those as well. And so stressed a out plant is actually gonna be a lot hotter than a really, I guess, perfectly taken care of plant. And that may be as simple as being in a really hot, full actually, sun, I mean, it maybe is is a stress in on its own, but but heat or inconsistent irrigation is gonna cause stress. And I also to address the irrigation component, I would water them the same as your other garden plants.
Jack McCoy: 36:25They they aren't I I wouldn't say that a pepper is inherently more drought tolerant than any other than a tomato or other solanaceous crop, and it should but it is you will know when it's, it's very, reactive to to stress. You've probably seen how quickly a pepper can wilt in your garden, and I would say make don't give up on it. If it's completely collapsed, water it, and you might be surprised at how much it bounces back. I I spent a whole PhD killing peppers from drought stress, and I was always amazed at how much a plant that just looked like totally deflated would come back. And even even in New Mexico, commercially, would see giant fields of peppers that would be completely wilted in the middle of the day, under the heat of the of the of the midsummer New Mexico sun, and and those would be irrigated and and pop back to life the next day.
Jack McCoy: 37:25You might see some that that kind of thing might cause flowers to drop or and leaves to abort or, drop as well. But, yeah, keep keep them watered, and don't don't worry if they do wilt. They'll definitely let you know if they're stressed.
Emily Swihart: 37:43I just experienced this. I had some pepper plants that I had not gotten planted, and I'd forgotten about. They were kinda, like, off to the side. And we just had last week was really hot, and they wilted. And I thought they were goners, and I put them in some water, and they're back.
Emily Swihart: 37:58They're gonna be planted pretty soon. Good. If if it stops raining or muddy over here.
Jack McCoy: 38:02Yeah. So in general, you know, at just the good horticulturalist in us, I wouldn't recommend you wait till they get to wilted point every time. But that is the kind of repeated stress that might result in a hotter pepper, but it could also result in, lower quality, lower fruit, lower yield, and some other abiotic, stresses on down the line or even biotic stresses if the plant's less resilient.
Emily Swihart: 38:30Yes. Yes. Thank you for that. It wasn't on purpose. I don't recommend doing that.
Emily Swihart: 38:34It was a fun observation.
Chris Enroth: 38:39I've I've definitely brought a lot of peppers back from the brink. Yes. And and I've never increased their heat, just lack of quality. I
Jack McCoy: 38:47love that one.
Chris Enroth: 38:48Yeah. Yeah. I I do have a a kind of a question in regards to, like, heat stress. You know, with tomatoes, once we get to, like, 95, 100 degree, every once in a while, I have a stretch of a week or two in the summer. And then we expect maybe a little bit of a gap in harvest.
Chris Enroth: 39:04Is that also the same with our hot peppers? Like, is do they abort flowers at a certain temperature, and will we expect a gap similar to that?
Jack McCoy: 39:13Absolutely. I I can't say the numbers specifically. I think the threshold might be a little higher, but those high temperatures do affect pollen production on in pepper and which which I think is the same as and and then potentially flower boarding, I guess, after that, which I think is the same thing happening in tomato as well. So that will cause a gap. So, yeah, I would I would expect to see some of that in your peppers as well.
Chris Enroth: 39:43Alright. Very good. Well, you mentioned biotic stressors. I just wanna say, what the heck's gonna eat these things? Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 39:52So what what pests would we wanna look out for?
Jack McCoy: 39:58So I think in Illinois, you're gonna see some similar pests to tomato. I think the tomato hornworm will even decimate a pepper plant, but maybe not quite as bad. You also will see white flies and oh gosh. I'm not very good at my insects. Ken can probably help me.
Jack McCoy: 40:26But I will say and then and then disease is gonna be an issue later in the season. Foliar, fungal, and bacterial pathogens can be a problem, with our high humidity. Virus is also a problem, and the best way I guess I'll say, unless because our listeners are most are not probably many commercial growers. I I I don't I rarely encounter a pest problem with peppers that warrants much action in the moment. I think it's tolerable, and, you know, management can affect a lot of things.
Jack McCoy: 41:13So your plant spacing and canopy management can can improve foliar pathogens later in the season when the humidity does get high to keep keep some airflow going through there, and they can tolerate a little bit of pest pressure. Thrips are a major issue in greenhouse grown peppers, and I imagine they are too in a in a garden space as well. But if you have a diverse garden, there might be some natural predators that that keep thrips at bay because I don't seem to see it quite as much as an issue. But in the greenhouse, I definitely see thrips as a major problem and whiteflies, and thrips actually, live in the flowers and eat the pollen and really damage fruit set and new growth. So that's what I'd look out for.
Jack McCoy: 42:02But, ultimately, your best bet for controlling pests in in addition to literal plant spacing and management is is is rotation. You know, viruses can't really be controlled besides moving them around. So making sure that you're not planting your peppers in the same place as you've planted other solanaceous crops in the previous year or even two years might be a good approach. So just remember that tomatoes and peppers, eggplants and potatoes are all in the same family, and they should not be planted in the same place as each other. You should move those out in different places.
Jack McCoy: 42:40So that's the best way to keep from things like, virus or soil borne pathogens from building up. But I I I don't know that many in a home garden, I don't know that people encounter a lot of soil borne problems. I know it's a problem commercially and can spread through irrigation too in Phytophthora or Phytophthora and viruses. So but I don't think you have to worry about that as a home gardener as much.
Ken Johnson: 43:06Yes. I I rarely see insects on my peppers at home.
Jack McCoy: 43:10I I was actually amazed last year in our demonstration garden. I was doing an it was some more like heirloom and land raise varieties, but still and they may have some more tolerance than a modern cultivar doesn't. But I but I was amazed at how healthy the peppers looked compared to their other solanaceous counterparts in the gardens. Like, they really did just seem to be a lot more resistant to pest and pathogen pressure than than the tomatoes nearby.
Ken Johnson: 43:45Yeah. I I use my mostly see is, like, sunscald and blossom enroth, which is probably more on the grower than the
Jack McCoy: 43:52Yeah. And those things are hard to control too. I mean, blossom enroth is kind of a tough one that I don't have a great recommendation for except for good soil management and consistent watering. I know that's more of a calcium availability issue rather than, whether it's present or absent in the soil, I think. And I think that's a trickier one, but that's where the consistent management, I think, can can help.
Jack McCoy: 44:23But the sun scald can definitely be a problem, especially on larger fruited peppers like bell peppers.
Ken Johnson: 44:31So assuming we we successfully grow some hot peppers, because these are potentially really spicy, are there do we need to take any precautions when we're harvesting?
Jack McCoy: 44:41That would be good advice. I don't, but you probably should. Granted, I don't often grow, like, super hot peppers. You know, I remember a story from New Mexico. We had a demonstration garden in that breeding program, and we had to tell visitors that they weren't allowed to eat things out of the garden anymore because high school kids would bet each other they could eat a a ghost pepper, and then we had kids throwing up in the field.
Jack McCoy: 45:13And it's like, at least that's the story I heard. So, maybe don't depending on the pepper you're growing, maybe don't go right go go for it right then and there. But, these things are all transferable to your skin and eyes and body parts, and they and so it should you should be mindful about that. You know, capsaicinoids are produced in vesicles in the placenta of the fruit, which is like the white tissue, where's where you might find seeds on it. So the common misconception is that the seeds are spicy.
Jack McCoy: 45:50They actually aren't spicy at all, but they rub up against the placenta where where the actual tissue, where the actual capsaicinoids are produced. And in superhots, the mutation is actually that those capsaicinoids are produced in all of the walls of the fruit, but still on the inside, not on the outside. So I think this the danger comes more in the kitchen than in the harvesting. So as long as you're harvesting whole fruits, probably not a big deal. Especially with superhots, I gloves might be a good idea, for if you're cutting and processing them and eye protection as well.
Jack McCoy: 46:31I'm always amazed at how long, you know, it can get in your fingernails and linger for a long time, you and might not realize it. And then you rub your eyes an hour later, and you can't get it out. So, capsaicinoids are fat soluble, so that's often why when you see if you watch a Hot Ones podcast, they give you ice cream and milk, not water, because water doesn't really do much for you because they're not really soluble in water. But if you do a a high fat containing thing, it it does kinda break up the capsaicinide. So keep that in mind.
Jack McCoy: 47:08I guess make sure you're using a lot of soap that can break up fats if you're trying to wash your hands and, yeah, just be really, really careful, especially in the processing.
Ken Johnson: 47:20We should wash our hands with milk and soap.
Jack McCoy: 47:22Yeah. Right. I guess, Dawn, dish soap's meant for I mean, what they've got, that's got surfactant system. That stuff's probably meant to break up fats, I guess, oils. So it's the same concept, I suppose.
Jack McCoy: 47:36But, yeah, if you really wanna be safe, wash your hands in milk.
Emily Swihart: 47:40There's a first time for everything.
Jack McCoy: 47:46Just seems like a waste of milk.
Emily Swihart: 47:49Okay. So I'm curious. Like, do you have any recommendations for the chili heads out there that want to grow something unique or, like, one of your favorites? Like, you know, or if you're beginners, like, where do you where do you begin? So what what are some that you would recommend?
Jack McCoy: 48:08You know, I don't have a really specific recommendation. I think that's part of the fun of Peppers is how variable or their their diversity is part of the fun of it. So try new things and obscure things. For the beginner, I think, you know, if you go to the hardware store and pick up, you know, burpee seeds that are that have a a common cultivar of bell pepper or jalapeno that you know. Like, those are those are gonna be I think will give you a win or more reliable maybe than than finding some obscure varieties from a a grower online.
Jack McCoy: 48:54But if you know what you're doing in your gardening, I think try the weird stuff, and and think about what is exciting to you as a pepper enthusiast. Is it a certain cuisine that you really love? Is it the diversity of is it the color or shapes or just do you want a very do you wanna see a lot of cool things, or do you wanna try a certain type of food? I mean and then do some research about where these peppers because there is so much culture tied up into every pepper variety, and you can look into that and find, like, what what are they gonna be what what's popular in Cajun cooking and why and and adopt that into your garden. I I love Cajun food, and I and I I love the Tabasco pepper.
Jack McCoy: 49:42It has an interesting story and is a unique species too. That's that's a little different. But, I like that hot sauce, and I love pickled peppers. And so I actually like, you know, milder jalapeno that's pickled. It's great.
Jack McCoy: 49:56But mostly, I grow things that are weird and obscure. So I I found some interesting capsicum picatum species at a plant sale that I was at recently, and I don't have room for a big garden in in my at my house, and so I do most of my I get my energy out of the student farm as much as I can, but I I bought these two weird peppers that I've never heard of that are a Caribbean variety that I think are harder to find, and I just wanted to see what they look like. And so that's kind of what drives my my interests.
Emily Swihart: 50:33Well, that is a very acceptable answer on this podcast because we like to grow the weird things.
Jack McCoy: 50:37Yes. I know y'all do. That's why I appreciate you guys. Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 50:42I I have found myself growing some of the, you know, superhots in the past, but I personally don't get I'm not gonna eat them. So I wind up just giving them away. So, Jack, what do you do with do do you use these in a certain way?
Jack McCoy: 50:59Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 50:59Or do you have someone who really enjoys them that you give them to? What do you do with the harvest?
Jack McCoy: 51:04Yeah. I try to give them away. I try to do, like, quick pickles with them. You know, my local food systems class, actually, we harvest peppers one day, and then we go to the pilot processing plant on campus, and they show us how to ferment hot sauce there. And it's surprisingly simple.
Jack McCoy: 51:25So I think hot sauce, if you guys like hot sauce, it's something that will store for a long time if you do it right and you don't use very much of it. That's an excellent way to process a lot of peppers because it takes a lot. You're boiling them down to to a small amount, and you get to experience the flavor of each pepper. So this is something I haven't done, but in a in a perfect world, if I had more time and didn't have so many hobbies, like baking sourdough and whatever else I'm into this summer. I would love to have very large variety of peppers and and create a hot sauce per pepper so that I could experience each cultivar by a hot sauce, I think.
Jack McCoy: 52:11That that's a little dream of mine that I haven't actually achieved. But I was surprised at how simple our fermented hot sauce and the fermented hot sauce is actually a pretty is a good way to add flavor and reduce heat too. And so it makes it a little more palatable. So you can look up some fermented hot sauce recipes online. They're really not so intimidating.
Jack McCoy: 52:37They don't require special equipment. And so that's what I would recommend.
Chris Enroth: 52:44Yeah. The person I give these to, they they took our Carolina Reapers, and they made a hot sauce out of them. And the the very interesting thing, about the Carolina Reaper, though, is it's a it was a bright orange fruit.
Jack McCoy: 52:57Oh, was it an ugly color afterwards? Well,
Chris Enroth: 53:00though, the hot sauce looks like a deer hunter orange.
Jack McCoy: 53:02Oh, really? I thought it was gonna turn brown or something. That's that's much cooler. Okay.
Chris Enroth: 53:07I'll need to bring a a picture in, and we can post it on here. And but it it's a wild, like, crazy orange color.
Emily Swihart: 53:15So Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 53:15Yeah. I'll throw a picture up.
Jack McCoy: 53:17I love that. Yeah. And so if you do go the hot sauce or pickling route, that's when you definitely need to have a well ventilated kitchen, gloves, and goggles because you are you're basically creating, pepper spray in your in your kitchen. So which most pepper sprays, I don't know if today they I mean, they I think all pepper sprays still have capsaicin in them. So this is the this is why they call pepper spray.
Jack McCoy: 53:49But, yeah, be careful. And there might actually, on that note, you might even try drying them and creating processing your own powders, spices instead too. That's a good way to use a lot.
Ken Johnson: 54:04Even if you cook them outside, you're not necessarily safe. I gassed out my
Jack McCoy: 54:08Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 54:09Wiping kids when the wind shifted.
Jack McCoy: 54:12Yeah. So maybe little batches at a time. But, really, the processing is the best way to go because of how prolific these plants are. And and usually, if you put them in a soup, you really only want one or even less than that. So turning them into a sauce or pickling them is the best.
Jack McCoy: 54:28Right.
Ken Johnson: 54:29So it it seems like maybe it's because I paid more attention to it the last several years, but, like, there's a an arms race with hot peppers. Like, people constantly trying to get the hottest pepper in the world. Is that gonna keep happening? And, like, I what's the upper limit? Do you know?
Ken Johnson: 54:45Like, how fat how hot something could conceivably get?
Jack McCoy: 54:49I don't want my colleagues to shame me for this because I can't remember exactly, but I I don't think, genetically, we've achieved, like, a floor a ceiling reached on what but I can't say for certain. And now I'm not sure if that's true or not. From my perspective, there's, if, let's say, a ghost pepper is 1,000,000 Scoville heat units and our Moruga scorpion is 1,500,000, I'm confident I won't be able to taste the difference between the two of those. They're both gonna be excruciatingly hot. So I feel like the limit's there.
Jack McCoy: 55:33We've reached it. But I don't know that everyone else will feel like that, so they'll keep going for it. And and maybe it is kind of like an arms race and I guess, more power to them. I I don't I mean, I think it's a fun thing to achieve, but I I don't know I don't know where we stop. And that that's that's up to the Chiliheads.
Jack McCoy: 55:56I can't make that call.
Emily Swihart: 56:01Well, I have one more question, and we've all kind of hinted at our tolerances here. So this question might not be so exciting. Maybe it will be. So I just wanna ask everybody, what is the hottest pepper you've eaten? Anybody anybody dared to do a Hot Ones trial?
Emily Swihart: 56:22Or
Jack McCoy: 56:24I actually don't remember what the hottest pepper I've eaten is. I I like, I don't remember a moment where I was like, this is the hottest. I know I'm this makes me a bad chili head, but I don't think I've ever had a raw super hot pepper. I do think I've tried ghost pepper and things in sauces, and I don't think I'm gonna seek it out necessarily. I I did go on during my PhD, we did do a collection trip throughout Mexico and and look for some Landrace and wild peppers, and those were quite hot, and it was fun to try those in the field and, chase them down with potato chips.
Jack McCoy: 57:14And but I I that was that was kind of the that that's a fond memory I have of eating things that were a little too spicy for me that I really enjoyed, but I couldn't even tell you what varieties those were.
Emily Swihart: 57:26Ken, have you eaten anything super spicy?
Ken Johnson: 57:31I mean, I made we grew Carolina Reapers. I made hot sauce with it, and I, like, dipped my finger in it, and that was I think I actually, like, consume pepper, habanero, or day till. Think about the hottest I've done. And the habanero was on actually, there's a the Habanata, the not hot habanero. We grew both of them, and I forgot which plant was which, and I grabbed one and and ate it.
Ken Johnson: 57:58And it was it was the hot type.
Chris Enroth: 58:01There's That's a classic. There was
Ken Johnson: 58:03a lot of regret for a while there.
Emily Swihart: 58:08Chris, how how hot of a pepper have you ever eaten?
Chris Enroth: 58:14Well, I would say it would be the the Carolina Reaper is gonna be the hottest one. We just took these tiny little slivers into a cream cheese dip, which I thought just a little bit of heat will be nice, thinking that if I just did the flesh and not the seeds, that would be the way to go. Of course, I now know I'm wrong about that. And I took one bite and were like, we can't take this dip to the party. It is so hot.
Chris Enroth: 58:39You're crying right now. Like and so it didn't work out. I mean, I I will say, though, maybe my favorite hot pepper, though, I really like the canned chipotle peppers. I love mixing those in with, I don't know, like a chicken dish or something like that. Those are some of my favorite, like like, smoky heat.
Jack McCoy: 58:57Yeah. That's nice. And you know what's funny is that if it had been anything that wasn't one of those super hot classes that has that mutation of of, you might have been able to, like, cut a sliver that didn't include that placental tissue that actually wouldn't have been hot. But because it was a Carolina Reaper, I think it you were you were doomed no matter where you started.
Chris Enroth: 59:19Oh, yes. Yep.
Ken Johnson: 59:23Molly?
Emily Swihart: 59:24Well, I will tell you, I, like I said at the beginning, very Midwestern. Don't love the heat. And but I do I'm trying. So Ken, you brought the natapinos last year, and I got to try those. I don't actually like the flavor of a jalapeno.
Emily Swihart: 59:42I think either with or without the heat because they have different flavors as well. Right? So that, I'm gonna claim is the hottest even though it was without the heat. Jalapeno. But but I have dreams.
Emily Swihart: 59:55I'm I'm trying to plant a few more. So Yeah. Check back in a couple of years, and maybe I will have worked up the courage.
Jack McCoy: 01:00:00I think you can build a tolerance to it so you can work towards it a little. And it's true. They do they do all have their own unique flavors beyond the heat. And, like, the Chinensee species, like the habaneros and stuff that are generally hotter are also a little fruitier versus the jalapeno are kind of more of a taste. I will say one note about just a nice pepper story.
Jack McCoy: 01:00:28So I was I really fell in love with the world of peppers when I lived in New Mexico because I had no idea it was such a cultural phenomenon. You could get green chile, everything. And so green chile, I don't know if y'all have never been to New Mexico or or they even have red chile, is really referring to the New Mexico pod types, which are these large ones like, you might have heard, like, Big Jim or Anaheim. But they're all over the place, and they come in a lot of different forms. And in the falls, people would, roast them.
Jack McCoy: 01:01:02And and outside of every grocery store, there were these big giant roasters, the whole town would smell like roasted green chile. And it was a really nice thing. Yeah. Because those are they might be, actually, I think they're a little milder in most cases than a jalapeno, but they're still most of them are are are pretty hot and but but a lot of flavor and not overwhelming and and a good complement to a lot of foods. So
Emily Swihart: 01:01:31I love that. And now I have to go
Jack McCoy: 01:01:33to New Mexico. In the fall when they're
Emily Swihart: 01:01:36In the fall.
Jack McCoy: 01:01:36Smells like it. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 01:01:40Well, that was a lot of great information about hot peppers and growing them. Well, the GoodGrowing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by Ken Johnson. And doctor Jack McCoy, thank you so much for being with us today to chat about hot peppers, and I learned a couple interesting new tidbits about hot peppers. And you also have an event. I mean, it's kinda coming up in September, but tickets are going on sale before that.
Chris Enroth: 01:02:08So why don't you tell us what you have going on?
Jack McCoy: 01:02:10Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you again, guys, for having me. This is a lot of fun. I forgot how much I to talk about peppers.
Jack McCoy: 01:02:17But I also, since since we've also mentioned the student farm today, wanted to make a push for the annual Allerton supper club has a series of dinners and one of those is features sustainable student farm produce and is also going be held at the arboretum on campus rather than at Allerton. And so that's coming up in September. I believe those tickets are on sale and if you want to check it out, come enjoy some peppers and maybe some other things, definitely some other things from the student farm. I hope to see you all there.
Chris Enroth: 01:02:50Awesome. And Emily, thank you very much for being here today, and we're going to have to expand that pepper palette.
Emily Swihart: 01:02:58Thanks for having me, Chris and Ken. And Jack, thank you for joining us. This was fantastic. I did learn quite a bit about chili peppers and I agree Chris. I think maybe I need to to start expanding my palate.
Jack McCoy: 01:03:12Think so. And
Chris Enroth: 01:03:14Ken, of course, thank you very much. The steward here of the show, thank you for getting us to grow weird things. And and peppers are one of them.
Ken Johnson: 01:03:25Yes. Thank you, Jack. That was great. Learned a lot. And we will start microdosing you on hot peppers and stuff.
Jack McCoy: 01:03:32I'll be sure to bring you guys some peppers later this summer.
Emily Swihart: 01:03:36What we can record it and we can share it to for proof. I'm willing to do that even
Jack McCoy: 01:03:42though Yeah. Mhmm.
Ken Johnson: 01:03:46And Chris, thank you too, and let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth: 01:03:50Oh, we shall do this again next week. We're gonna be talking about edible native plants and perennials, so I look forward to that. Well, that'd be a fun We gotta do some reading, so we'll we'll we'll see you then next week with that. Listeners, thank
Ken Johnson: 01:04:03you for doing what you
Chris Enroth: 01:04:04do best, and that is listening, or if you watched us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.
Disembodied voice: 01:04:19University of Illinois Extension.