Plant · P-223

Habanero Pepper

Capsicum chinense

Habanero Pepper is a slow-maturing condiment crop, taking 120 to 150 days from seed to harvest, so it has to be started indoors in January or February and set out as an established transplant, not sown directly, to get any harvest before summer heat shuts fruiting down. Extremely hot, pungent fruit from a quarter inch to four inches is used as flavoring in savory dishes; yield is small enough to measure in jars, not pounds. Its medicinal use actually outranks its food use - the fruit is a diaphoretic, antiseptic and circulatory stimulant, used internally for fevers and digestion and externally for sprains, and it induces sweating, a genuine asset in a hot climate. It also prefers acidic soil, unlike most of its pepper relatives, so it wants a raised bed or an acidified container mix rather than being planted straight into alkaline clay.