The Bhut Jolokia Pepper is the world’s hottest pepper. In 2008, Guinness WBoR bestowed this variety with such a title after some Jolokias at the Chile Pepper Institute of New Mexico tested at a mind-boggling 1,500,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). The Jolokia (also known as Naga Jolokia or Ghost Pepper) is a chile pepper originating in Asam, India, and whose taxonomy is still under dispute– some botanists classify it as Capsicum Chinense & others as C. Frutescens (http://aces.nmsu.edu/chilepepperinstitute/documents/bhutjolokia.pdf). It is a bush variety plant, but its main stem bifurcates much like that of traditional bell peppers. It has a relatively long vegetative period, which ranges from 3 1/2-5 months before the plant is mature enough to set fruit.
I putzed around with Jolokias last year & got hooked on them. I started a few plants indoors & eventually moved them outdoors during the outdoor grow season. The results were acceptable for a first-time grow, but I’m already anticipating better yields on my future runs.
More information on growing Jolokias can be found at http://www.thehottestpepper.com/how-to-grow-bhut-jolokia-seeds.html and at http://garden.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Bhut_Jolokia_Seeds. Or you can just read this blog & find out how I did it.
This is how it was done…
Bhut Jolokia: Germination & Vegetative Period
01-30-09: a Jolokia seedling thrives. The seeds are really finicky: too much moisture rots them very easily. Yet, once that first radicle appears, it thrives rather nicely.
Bhut Jolokia pepper holds the 2008 Guinness record as the world's hottest pepper, @ an estimate 1,500,000 Scoville heat units. Basically, you'd need 1,500,000 drops of water to neutralize the heat of a single drop of pepper extract. Can't hardly wait for harvest! Grown with organic tea, in coco coir.
This one ended as a donation to my local hydro shop. It proved incredibly proliferous. Its fruit was regarded by all who tried it as the hottest thing they had ever had the misfortune of trying. Some smart growers asked for sample peppers, surely to harvest their seeds as well. Its high productivity & lack of a timely re-vegging program left it aesthetically inappropriate for the shop's showroom & now sits on a table in the warehouse, under some distant fluorescents, a shadow of its former self but refusing to give up.
Bhut Jolokia: Preflowering
Bhut Jolokia in the foreground.
Bhut jolokia setting fruit. After the initial fruit drop that some Capsicum Chinensis exhibit, the jolokias are beginning to adapt. A tiny pepper has already set; this can only mean one thing: from now on, there will never be enough witch hazel at home.
Bhut Jolokia: Flowering, Fruit Set & Ripening
First (and only) pepper to set. Climactic conditions in my grow room were quite chaotic back then.
Look at that thing swelling up! Notice the Chile Piquin bush in the background, laden with set fruit.
The pepper begins to take its characteristic horn shape.
First signs of ripening.
Red, gold & green. Irie.
Hmmm... not bad, 45 days from set to ripe. The trick is to get them to flower AND set fruit. Its next bloom ought to bear more peppers.
MOTHERF***ER! Uh, sorry. I just tasted Bhut Jolokia for the first time. It was hotter than anything I’ve ever tasted (except perhaps Chinese mustard). It was great! A true rush. Problem was, that I tried washing it off my hands with olive oil & then soap; it didn’t come off. It got onto my right temple, my right brow &, eventually, down into my right eye. That was NOT fun @ all. As a matter of fact, it was freakin’ infuriating! The heat felt like my face had been scraped by a cheese grater soaked in lemon juice. That bad. Those were the longest 15 minutes of my life! Oh, it also got under my right thumbnail. Two hours later, it still feels like someone pulled my nailbed with a pair of pliers. This devil only yielded 5 seeds; they will be preserved for sowing.
…so I did what any sensible person would do: I pickled it! I added some ají caballeros, some chile piquines, cut the jolokia up into 4 long slices & voila! Up it goes on to my pickled peppers collection.
Bhut Jolokia: Outdoors
The Bhut Jolokia plant has been moved outdoors to make more room indoors for more seedlings & young plants. It has been trimmed down as far as safely possible.
There. Nice & ripe. A third green Jolokia was also harvested; it ripened in 3 days.
Three pickled Jolokias & some caballeros & jalapenos. This one was sent to my good friend Clay.
Four Bhut jolokia peppers setting.
...& then there were seven ! Five more have set on another branch & new flowers bloom daily.
Six Bhut jolokias from my outdoor plant. There was a 7th pepper on this branch but a neighborhood kitten knocked it down while pouncing at it. We had cat curry for dinner, later on that evening, hee hee heeeee!!!
Grown in coconut coir & perlite, these Jolokias are fed a tandem regimen of General Hydroponics’ Maxi Series base nutrients (+ Floralicious Plus), Alaska Fish Emulsion, Indonesian bat guano (& other guanos & molasses in an actively-aerated microbial tea solution), & foliar feedings at dusk, using Spray-N-Grow & Bill’s Perfect Fertilizer. Absofreakinglute pest control achieved using a mixture of neem & coriander oils. Extra chi (for increased resistance to extremes in temperature & strengthening of the plant’s cell walls) achieved by the regular addition of PyroSol pyrophyllitic clay to the nutrient solution, high in silicates & micronutrients. The microbes in the guano tea & fish emulsion take care of breaking down whatever salt residues are left behind, thus making them more easily-assimilated by the root zone. In the end, all hydroponic salts are used up, leaving little-to-no root zone exudates. The result? Well, some of the finest peppers I’ve ever grown!
A fusion reactor was used to enable photosynthesis & climate control (the sun!).
Four more Jolokias.
...& just when things were looking good, disaster strikes. Some wicked gusts of wind knocked a few of these peppers off the plant. I decided to wait a few more days. The winds intensified & more peppers continued to fall. Yet in 3-days' time, all those peppers that had fallen off began to change color from green to orange to red. A few days later, I decided to pickle them.
This is what the flames of hell look like when you slice them in half.
Bhut Jolokia were pickled in 1/2 vinegar, 1/2 water. A pinch of sugar, salt & a few peppercorns were added as well. It sits untouched. So it shall remain.
Bhut Jolokia Peppers in an Ebb & Flow Hydroponic System
Botanicare's Microgarden set up & ready to rock!
Here we’ll grow some aji dulce, purple bellpeppers, dorset nagas & bhut jolokia. That is, until I run out of space; those suckers tend to get big & tall. Under the tank we have some of Botanicare’s top products: the CNS-17 line & Liquid Karma. Substrate is composed of Bitanicare’s silica rocks & Ready-Grow soilless mix (which is coir-based). A weekly neem & coriander oil spray keeps the foliage lookin’ purty!
Flood cycle.
These are the same plants seen on the first picture stamped 08-05-09. The Microgarden ebb & flow system initially housed 8 plants. But they ran out of space in a little over 4 weeks. Five plants were left in; they are quickly running out of space & have entered their preflowering stage. They will soon be transfered to the larger ebb & flow table, under a 400w HPS lamp.
Two young Bhut Jolokia plants now rest on the lid of the Microgarden, after 10 ass-kicking days of root-exploding flood & drain cycles. They nobly yielded their spot in the tray to other younglings. The Jolokias have exhibited rapid, proliferous growth despite being irrigated less often than their in-cycle counterparts.
Aphids on Chile Pepper Plants
Aphids have nested on the leaves of these pepper plants. Neem oil decimated their numbers, but did not eliminate them completely. The one thing that neem oil did do is turn my leaves leathery from all that frequent spraying. It took a few sprays of pyrethrin-based aerosol to kil them all.
Aphids carry many diseases, among them the anthracnose blight virus (characterized by the leaf spotting shown on several leaves of this picture). Once infected, the plant cannot recover from it. Ever.
All of these plants ended up in the garbage: my Bhut Jolokia, Dorset Naga, Sweet Banana pepper, Cayenne, Grandma’s Pimento, Aji Dulce, Orange Sun bellpepper & a Chile Piquin bush. Lessons learned.
More aphids.
...& yet some more. I. HATE. APHIDS. i hate them i hate them i hate them!!!
The Future
These two young Bhut Jolokia are approximately 8 weeks old. Their stem has begun to bifurcate, lateral growth has begun, & it is full of tiny inflorescences (which will most likely fall off during the next few months of growth). Fruit-setting is anticipated for the end of Feb 2010.
Days-old pepper seedlings of all kinds get their photons. Among them, many Bhut Jolokia seedlings will star in next year’s venture. Growing Bhut Jolokia is addictive; I cannot imagine my grow room ever not having one or two of these plants growing in it!
Want to read more blog posts from master grower Eliab? We’ve got ‘em!
Please note: blog posts are the opinions of independent growers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Urban Garden Magazine or its affiliates. Do you have your own ideas on how to grow Bhut Jolokia? Share below!
you don’t have to use all the nutrients & additives I used to grow Jolokias. I just like feeding my plants different types of food sources. It’s like feeding them from a buffet: a little bit of this, a little of that, etc. I got away with it during the hot summer months mainly because my plants drank up so much water that I inevitably had to irrigate with plain water in between daily feedings. This acted as a flush between nutrient applications and kept lockout at bay.
A look at my Bhut Jolokia & Dorset Naga seedlings and the plans begin to emerge: one in some high-grade soil I recently ran into, another in coir, one in rockwool blocks & yet another in a drip-aeration / DWC bucket filled with Sunleaves rocks. The feeding schedules will focus on simplicity rather than smorgassbording & will use hydroponic and organic formulations. There will be no alternating hydro & organics; it will either be hydro, organic, or hydro-organic from the moment the seedlings are mature enough to undergo transplant into their respective medium. In the meantime, I’ll be saving up to get the rockwool blocks, the coir brick & the bag of Roots Organics soil. No rush, they’re just babies.
I hope this blog dispels the b.s. rumor that Jolokias are “really difficult to grow”. Hopefully I’ll put the final nails on that coffin during the next grow wave.
1,500,000 Scoville Units???!!!! Holy gees. I want some of those seeds!
(Why do we always want to grow the hottest peppers? It’s not like we can eat them!)
I love my pickled jolokias in chili, with hot dogs, in fish soups (asopao), with chips, etc. It is truly an exhilirating experience & one must plan the evening accordingly.
…sort of like doing shots of tequila, minus the mess.
but they sure are hot!
Absolutely amazing Eliab! And thanks for sending me over my bhut jolokia seeds!!! I look forward to starting them in the new year and, of course, I will report on my progress!
I have been growing these peppers for 3 seasons now and I have tried numerous sauces and preserves but I highly recommend finding a cheap smoker and smoking these babies and either pickling them after that or dehydrating them.
“To Die For”.
In soups, on chicken, or in gravy. You’ll never eat them plain again.
Got any tips for me for growing these things? I’ve had real bad luck with germinating any “hard to find pepper seed”. Hard to find means almost practically everything. I live in the Philippines and there’s not much choice of hot peppers here other than what most people call “Thai Bird’s Eye” chili and what my people call “Siling Pang Sigang” (probably an Aji strain). Thanks.
Heating pads and whatnot aren’t exactly accessible here other than buying it off of ebay which can get quite expensive due to cost of shipping and then there’s customs taxes etc. etc. etc.
Thanks.
Great reading thanks for the heads up with touching any part of your body.
Wow this is a great resource.. I’m enjoying it.. good article
I am fortunate to be in an area that had the first public sale of the Bhut Jolokia seedlings. This happens to be in California at the Fullerton Arboretum in the city of Fullerton.This was in 2009. My neighbour and I thought we would give it a try. We purchased two each. As it turned out, their plants produced six peppers and my one plant had two. Well,at the seasons end, I trimmed my larger plant to about half of its height.I originally tried the mini brush pollination with no success. This year I added flowers in the area to attract the mini bees. I am not sure if that was the correct thing to do, but at last count I tallied 65 peppers. Eliab is correct in noting that it is not necessary to use any exotic additives. I found that Miracle grow all purpose fertilizer is sufficient. I did add some tomato type also. This was done at least twice a week. It seems that you cannot overdo it. I never let it dry out for more than two days. By the way, I have two peppers on the barren plant of last year.
I was wondering if someone could point me in the correct direction as to what might be causing a couple of Bhut Joloka plants to lack any fruit. These plants have been growing for about 3 1/2 months and are about 4 feet tall. They look very healthy, have lots of flowers however still no fruit. They are growing under a 600 watt HPS bulb. I have several other variety of peppers with lots of fruit which have been growing about 4 months.
Also, I have a Bhut plant outdoors and at 3 months it has a few small fruit. My conern is at 4 months my plants are tall, healthy looking, however just flowers. I am quite new to this and consider this still part of my first grow so I apologize if I am missing info. Any guidance is appreciated.
The PH is 6.0, EC 2.2,
Jolokia plants take up to 5 months to set fruit. They may look ready & bloom profusely at 3 months, but I have seldom had any luck setting fruit so early in the game. It is usually during the middle of the fifth month that we’ll typically see a significant increase in fruit set.
Waatch closely, as now that you had your first blom wave, the plants will tend to elongate too much, so if you have them indoors, keep that photoperiod @ 18-6 throughout the plant’s life. They will set fruit @ 18-6 with no difficulty, as peppers (esp. Jolokias) are continuously-fruiting, day-neutral plants. Prune any lanky growth, up to the 5th month of life, to keep things manageable indoors. In two weeks’ time, new growth with stronger preflowers will begin to form. After the petals fall and you begin to see the tiny pepper still holding on to the vine, count 40 days. Your peppers should be ready then.
Most growers would suggest a bloom booster. That is fine, but I have never had too much success at setting the blooms off that first wave with boosters. A more conservative approach would be to use bloom boosters once new inflorescences signal the advent of the second bloom wave.