Carranza Pepper Seeds

Days to Maturity: 65

This pepper has a fresh yield with large fruits. A beautiful green color and is heat tolerant with excellent behavior. The poblano has a heart shaped body and is great for drying. It turns from green to a dark red-brown when at its mature peak.

Start seeds indoors or, in climate with short growing seasons, outdoors at least one week after last frost. If starting indoors, allow 7 to 10 weeks for the seeds to mature into seedlings large enough to transplant safely. Set the transplants (or thin the direct sown seedlings) 2 feet apart in full sun. If planting many seedlings, space rows about 3 feet apart. Fertilize when the blooms appear, and water well.

A relatively mild pepper with 1000 to 2000 scoville units (habanero peppers, for instance, clock in at 215,000 scovilles), it is versatile in its uses. When you've eaten all the fresh peppers you want, dry the remainder to create ancho peppers, crush them into spice, freeze them, or can them.

When deciding what type of peppers you want to grow, you will need to consider size, flavor, and color. In the category of sweet or salad peppers, your choices include bell and pimento as well as some banana and cherry varieties. If heat is what you want, you can grow habanero, jalapeño, Anaheim, or Hungarian peppers. Sweet and hot peppers come in a rainbow of beautiful colors—green, yellow, red, orange, and even purple. So not only are they delicious, they make great eye-candy.