Hot Peppers Started

As part of our farming business plan we are going to sell dried, crushed super hot peppers.  The last several years I've grown, dried, and crushed habanero peppers for personal use (although I have enough to last several lifetimes).  I was buying supplies to give out some of the pepper for Christmas gifts (sidenote, we give out baskets filled with stuffed we've canned, dried, frozen from our garden for Christmas) and the woman asked if I was interested in selling it in her store.  That got me thinking about how I wanted to grow super hot peppers, grow food for other people, and eventually make a profit from the farm.  We aren't planning on making a lot of money from the peppers, but if they can at least show a profit on year 1 and we can sell all of our product, then we will expand in future years.  Our whole plan is take it slow and see how it goes.

Anyway, I bought pepper seeds from Pepper Joe's and set out to establish our farm as one of the few suppliers of crushed, dried super hot peppers.  We bought and used leftover seeds from last year of the following:

Carolina Reaper - 1.4 million SHU

Butch T Trinidad Scorpion - 1million SHU

Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Chili) - 900,000 SHU

Habanero - 200,000 SHU

We also have hot, but not super hot:
Giant Jalapeno, Black jalapeno, Pablano, Sporo, Cayenne, Golden Nugget, Firecracker

Most of them have sprouted in the last week and have overgrown their dome.  As you can see by the color of the cells, the dome ends up getting more moisture to the end cells and less to the middle, which had the effect of the end cells sprouting at a much faster and higher rate.

Peppers Sprouting

Now I just need to find a better way to crush the peppers when they finally arrive.  Mortar and pestle just won't cut it for the quantity of peppers that will need to be crushed this year vs previous years.