For folks who live in higher latitudes--"pot" farming, or growing the plants in 5 gallon buckets (you can get them free from housing contractors--they usually contain "mud" or the thick paste that sheet rock contractors use to make walls in homes--you can also get them from restraunts where they get pickles, hot dogs, corned beef, or sauerkraut in 5 gallon buckets). My buckets were former corned beef and sauerkraut buckets.
Simply fill the botton 3" with gravel or rocks...the next 8" with a mixture of 40% sand and dirt...then a 4" layer of animal waste (cow, horse, or duck work best, but even Fido's is just as effective)...then a final (top) layer of 70% soil, 20% sand and 10% animal waste (poop) and ash...ashes from your charcoal grill work just fine. Using a 16 penny nail or hand drill, drill 5 to 6 drainage holes in the side just up from the bottom for excess rain/water to drain out. While other people's peppers might be drownding in the ground during an overly rainy spring or summer--yours are doing just fine becaue their "feet" are up and drained.
What you are doing is recreating the home soils of Mexico, Central America & the Carribean. The ash recreates volcanic ash and ash debris.
The SWEET part is you can either start your own seedlings in peat pots (small) the week after New Years indoors and transfer them to the pots about now...and then set them outside in a sunny place the week after you are sure of the last cold snap or frost of the Spring. You can move them around the yard or deck because they are mobile (heavy-but at least portable).
When the Michigan or Cayahoga Fall starts sinking in--bring 'em inside to someplace where they can get plenty of light and remember to water them. They will drop a few leaves and go dormant for the winter. In the Spring, trim off the twig or two that died and put it back outside.
I have seen pepper "trees" get to 6 and 7 FEET tall. There's a guy here locally that always scores the blue ribbon at the county fair with his--but I'm entering my 7 year old Habenero and give him a run for his money.
You can do this with with any variety of pepper as well as tomatoes.
I have never grown the Thai (purple) pepper but it's kind of like a Tobasco gone horribly awry. The reported Scoville Units put it about a couple of hundred units more than the Habenero red Savina, but there's reall not enough good sources of reliable research to prove it. I have never seen seeds for it around these parts and if folks do have seeds--their not sharing.
If you want a pepper that will out and out rip your face off and make you wish you hadn't eaten them the next day at toilet time it's Habenero Red Savinas. I LOVE hot peppers and hot sauce but Red Savinas are just TOO hot to be enjoyed without heavily diluting the sauce with another, far less hot sauce.
ROX
