Happy Yummy Pepper Seed Giveaway

I’ve got seeds of a new and unusual pepper variety I would like to share with some willing and able gardeners. I’ve been saving seeds from a rogue pepper plant I grew in 2009. The seeds for that plant came from a packet of Yummy pepper seed I purchased from Totally Tomatoes in 2009. Here’s the story as I know it so far.

Yummy is an open pollinated mini bell pepper that is orange and sweet when mature. But in 2009, I grew two Yummy plants and one of them was quite different. The peppers from that rogue plant grew long and narrow, like an Anaheim type pepper. At first I thought I had mislabeled the seedlings. But then the peppers started turning orange, unlike any chili pepper I had ever grown. And one taste confirmed their difference – they were very flavorful, but also quite hot! I’m not Wilbur Scoville, but I am calling those peppers at least as hot as a Serrano, maybe hotter when grown in the heat of summer.

So I saved some seed from those 2009 peppers, quite a few really. And I planted two seedlings from them in 2010. Both of them were the same as their parent – long, orange and hot. Sadly, I did not save seed from the 2010 peppers.

This year, I started some of the same seed from the 2009 rogue plant, and planted two of them again. One produced the same peppers I am calling ‘Hot Happy Yummy’. But the other plant didn’t ripen any peppers until this fall, and those peppers have no heat whatsoever.

It is possible that the lack of heat is due to the cooler temperatures of fall. But I’m thinking not. Even our fall ripening jalapenos and serranos are still quite hot this year. So it could be that this variety is still highly variable, making some hot and some sweet plants. At any rate, I saved seed from this ‘Sweet Happy Yummy’ plant. Are you still following along?

So now I have seeds from the original Hot Happy Yummy, which were saved in 2009. They should be still viable next year, but I will include more of them to compensate for possibly lower germination. And I have seeds from the Sweet Happy Yummy which I saved in 2011. These have never been planted before, and who can say what they will produce.

I have packaged the two types separately, and I’m willing to share them with ten (or so) gardeners who are willing to grow and report on them. All I’m asking is that you be willing to save seed and share with others (including me), and that you give recognition for where you got the seed originally. My hope is that we could possibly stabilize the variety so that it reliably produces hot peppers, or sweet peppers. I just don’t have the room to grow a large number of these peppers myself in any one year, but I am hoping that with outside help it will be possible.

Both the Hot and Sweet Happy Yummys produce very flavorful peppers that are fairly thick walled, about 4 to 5 inches long, and orange when mature. We have really been enjoying the sweet ones this fall. But of course there is no guarantee as to what kind of peppers these seeds will produce, or if they will produce at all. Consider that my official disclaimer!

So, if you are interested in growing these peppers, leave a comment here and I will get back to you via email. You can grow one or both of these peppers yourself, or give plants or seeds to others to grow.

Local gardeners (you know who you are) can also participate by getting plants from me next year if you’d rather not start the peppers yourself from seed. Just let me know so I can start plenty of seeds. We can work out the details on getting the plants to you later.

Hopefully we can have some fun growing these different and yummy peppers!