Plant · P-222

Tabasco Pepper

Capsicum frutescens

Tabasco Pepper is grown less for fresh fruit than for the fermented pepper mash and hot sauce it makes - a shelf-stable product well suited to a plant that gives modest fresh weight. It handles heat a few degrees better than a sweet bell pepper, so it starts fruiting sooner in spring and restarts sooner in fall, though like every pepper it still stops setting fruit once days run into the high 90s with nights above 75 F. It is a short-lived perennial rather than a true annual, cropping heaviest in its first year and lasting about two years, so overwintering a potted plant indoors and setting it back out as an established second-year plant beats starting fresh from seed each spring. Its capsaicin also makes it the strongest medicinal yield of any pepper in this group, used as a topical warming liniment and circulatory stimulant.