Looking for an exotic pepper

One of the things I specialize in is Sichuan cooking. Most dishes call for exotic ingredients that you have to mail order, which is fine, but one of them is something I would like to try growing. It's a hot pepper called er jing tiao, in Chinese: (二荆条). It has medium heat, grows rather long (around a foot), is deep red, and is an essential ingredient for authentic food from Sichuan. I currently buy them dried from a local Chinese market, but there are also recipes that call for fresh peppers. 

I haven't been able to find it in any of the mountain of catalogs that I get every January, but I also know there are seed companies that deal with more exotic species. 

It's a long shot, but if anyone has a suggestion I would appreciate it. 

Brian

Baker Creek @ rareseeds.com has a good selection of Asian seeds.  Good luck.

Thanks for the recommendation, dixie, but they don't have it either. It was one of the first catalogs I looked in since they have oddities like "yard-long green beans" and the like. 

I've got seeds from the dried peppers and will attempt to germinate them. 

Here's what they look like:

Love it....so, let’s see?  

How hot is it?  First off I guess!

As long as it is not a hybrid, I save pepper and tomato seeds every year & have great success.  Be sure and post your results later

I just googled the Mala Market, it says they now carry fresh?  I’m sure you know way more about this than I do!

Scorpio Rising wrote:I just googled the Mala Market, it says they now carry fresh?  I’m sure you know way more about this than I do!

I shop at the Mala Market a lot, and they have great stuff if you have the coin for it. I'll check that out. 

Brian

I checked Mala Market, and they have dried erjingtiao peppers, of which I already have several packages from my local Chinese market (at a much lower price). I don't think they sell fresh chilis there. 

Let's see how the germination experiments go. I found a guy in Austria who grows them very successfully, and I think that Ohio's climate might be more conducive than where he lives. 

If I'm successful with them here, I can become a seed provider as well. Million-dollar club, here I come!

Brian

Yeah, I really couldn’t find the actual non dried version either...sorry (but sort of vindicated!) will be tuning in for your germination results!

Germination results are in! Several of them sprouted after 4-5 days. I'll load up a Propomatic APS-24 (old-school seed starting stuff) with a bunch of them and try to get them to grow seedlings. Dang, this is exciting!

This brings me to a side question: I had poor seedling results due to lower temperatures in my basement (the only room that I have in my house for starting seeds), especially peppers. Does anyone have clues about how to keep an area that spends the winter at around 67 degrees warmer, short of hooking up an electric heater? I don't relish the thought of keeping one of those running for months while I wait for the weather outside to warm up. 

I'll keep you posted on the journey. 

Brian

this may be helpful. Carol and loy are pretty resourceful. heating table guide  or 

bgardner wrote:This brings me to a side question: I had poor seedling results due to lower temperatures in my basement (the only room that I have in my house for starting seeds), especially peppers. Does anyone have clues about how to keep an area that spends the winter at around 67 degrees warmer, short of hooking up an electric heater? I don't relish the thought of keeping one of those running for months while I wait for the weather outside to warm up.

Brian, the room I grow my seedlings in is also kept very cool -- around 65ºF -- and, the plants love it that way.  The only time the seedlings need additional heat is for germinating. I use temp controlled heat pads under the seeding trays, and humidity covers over the trays, until the seeds germinate and then remove the heat pads & covers. Once the seeds have germinated, they prefer to not have the heat on their roots.

Have you ever tried winter sowing?  Last year was my first time and I was very skeptical.  Basically, you plant your seeds in containers with holes in the top and good drainage and put them outdoors.  A lot of folks use milk jugs, I used clear strawberry containers that had holes in the top & bottom.  Snow cover is ideal, but in SE Tennessee we rarely have snow, but I had fantastic success with my peppers and tomatoes.  I placed them in a mostly shady area so the containers didn't get too warm from the sun.  The seeds won't sprout until the soil temp is ideal and I was shocked to see that mine had sprouted in early March, yet after sprouting they didn't suffer any damage from the cold weather.

I moved them to full sun after they sprouted.  They were very nice sized plants when time to transplant in mid-April. 

I have always had trouble starting peppers, but these were just like "store bought" plants (if you are old enough and country enough to know that phrase).  I had good germination and the stems were very sturdy.  

You might want to try this technique with a few seeds.

Winter sowing is a lot less practical in our area where we typically get early spring warming periods, followed by late spring hard freezes. With the early spring warming period, the soil will warm within the plastic or glass covered container, and the seeds will sprout and start to grow. Then, a late spring freeze will either kill them, or severely damage them. Last year I started pepper seeds in the cold frame the first of April, which is usually easy to do. They not only germinate quickly with the heat coming trough the glass, but the plants are hardier due to the cool nights.  However, on April 16th it got down to 18ºF and every pepper plant froze. I had to start over.

Last year here was a good example of the unpredictable weather we have.  We can "always" transplant tomatoes, peppers, etc., into the garden by Mother's Day.  Except last year we had a very late hard freeze mid-May that killed everything in the garden except the Brassica plants.

We have the same type of early warming spells & that's why I kept mine in the shade of the house.   

A late May frost?   Yikes

Hopefully you end up with a lot of delicious peppers.  Have you considered germinating you seeds on top of the fridge?  It's nice & warm up there & then you could move them to lights.

https://whitwamorganics.com/collections/fruits-veggies/products/thai-bird-pepper-seeds-1?variant=8269740572717

https://asiangarden2table.com/

You can try this link.  They specialize in Asian garden seeds.