What are Chiltepin Peppers and How to Grow Them

What are you harvesting? 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Chiltepin Peppers; a Potential Perennial for the Vegetable Garden

UPDATED 2024

November is still summer fruit harvesting time in Texas when it comes to peppers! Chiltepin chile, a small but mighty variety of pequin pepper (Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum) often ripen in the fall, even when light frosts start to hit. It’s one of my favorite edible ornamentals in my garden. The tiny peppers usually begin ripening later in the summer and continue producing until the first frost. This is what I call a "set it and forget it" plant, as there is little care or maintenance needed for plants to produce prolifically.

In my area (Dallas, TX) this is a tender perennial, meaning top growth will die down in the first hard frost (but often make through the first few light frosts, as this plant has), then reemerge from the roots in spring.

In fact, chiltepins are one of my most reliable perennial edible ornamentals and it's root systems have survived some intense periods of deep freeze on the north side of my home. And this clump is going on about 10+ years in my garden.

Chiltepin peppers are part shade tolerant

Did you know? This is one of the few fruiting edibles for your vegetable or ornamental garden that thrives in partial sun with a fair amount of shade. My plants get pretty shaded out from neighboring plants, but they still put on a bounty of pepper harvests.

Plants will also seed freely in the garden and I have some nice volunteers. But don't worry, the spread is not aggressive or invasive. Just a few extra plants here and there.

Tiny, berry-sized peppers mature from green to red, and then are typically sun dried, but you can use them fresh or pickle them green! (I’ll be pulling a bunch of green ones to pickle) They pack some serious heat (Scoville 50,000-100,00 unites) but they aren’t really great for eating alone - you usually just get a lot of heat without a lot of pepper flavor. Blend them with other types of peppers, salsas, or other recipients that call for chiles.