Growing peppers is not difficult. You can start them indoors or buy mature plants.

Peppers like to be warm, so do not plant them in the ground until late May.

They come in a variety of sizes, colors, flavors, and heat. The pepper’s flavor comes from capsaicin. A pepper’s heat is rated based on the Scoville Heat Units (SHU), which measures the level of capsaicin. If a plant tag does not indicate the SHU, ask an employee.

Bell peppers are available in different colors. I plant green peppers and then let them ripen to a red color, which makes them sweeter. The SHU for a bell pepper is 0.

Every year I grow banana peppers; they are my favorite. Their SHU can be 0-500. Banana peppers are yellow in color and are great to eat raw, on a sandwich, or pickled.

I also like to include cherry peppers in my garden. Cherry peppers are great for people who cannot tolerate spicy peppers but want that flavor. The SHU for a cherry pepper is 100-500. We can these along with the banana peppers so we can enjoy them during the winter months.

Ghost peppers are on the opposite side of the Scoville scale. If you plan to plant these, I recommend wearing latex gloves when harvesting and clean them outdoors. This pepper is 100 times hotter than a jalapeno and rated 1,000,000 on the SHU scale, which is just under pepper spray.

When planting peppers that have different SHU, I would recommend that you place them in other areas of the garden. I have personally had bell peppers cross-pollinate with some Jalapeno peppers. I always make sure I keep peppers separated and sometimes not even plant the hotter ones in the garden. They usually find a home in a garden pot next to the house.