The chilli reference that should have existed years ago
Chilli information online is a mess. It's scattered across forum threads, contradictory blog posts and seed listings that quietly copy each other's mistakes. Ask three sites how hot a Scotch Bonnet is and you'll get three different answers. The Chilli Index pulls all of it into one place — a single, structured, properly organised record of chilli varieties. Think of it as the IMDb of chillies.
Everyone's growing chillies. Nobody's organised the information.
Chilli growing has quietly become one of the most popular things you can do on a windowsill. But the information hasn't kept up. The good stuff is buried in decade-old forum posts. Heat ratings are repeated without anyone checking them. Half the “guides” out there are thin AI-spun articles written by people who've never germinated a seed in their lives.
What's missing is the boring, useful bit: a single place where you can look up a variety and trust what you find — the heat, the species, the origin, the flavour, how it grows. Not an opinion piece. A reference.
That's the gap The Chilli Index exists to fill.
Built by someone who actually grows them
I'm Darren. I've been growing chillies for over fifteen years — from a couple of plants on a kitchen sill to far more than any sensible person needs, every season, without fail. Superhots, oddball landraces, the reliable workhorses. I've killed plenty along the way and learned something from every one of them.
The Chilli Index started as a personal frustration. I wanted one good source of truth and couldn't find it, so I started building my own — and it grew into something worth sharing. It's still a one-person operation, bootstrapped and built in the open. That's the point, really: this is made by a grower who cares whether the information is right, not a faceless content factory chasing search traffic.
“I built the thing I kept wishing existed.”
More than a database
The index is the heart of it, but it's growing into a proper toolkit for the chilli-obsessed.
The Index
The core: a searchable, ever-expanding record of chilli varieties. Heat, species, origin, flavour, growing notes — all in one structured place, free to browse.
Browse the index →Growing guides & Seed to Spice
Practical, tested advice for growing strong chillies from seed — including Seed to Spice, the ebook built around a simple method that works on any budget.
Get the ebook →The Grow Tracker
A tool for tracking your own growing season — label your plants, log milestones, and keep a record of every variety you've grown. Your chilli life, in one place.
See what's coming →Events calendar
Chilli festivals, markets, competitions and workshops, all in one calendar so you never miss the good ones.
View the calendar →Where the information comes from
Building a reference this size by hand would take a lifetime, so the index is assembled from a wide range of sources — seed catalogues, botanical records, grower reports and more — and pulled together into one consistent format. Tools do the heavy lifting; a real grower keeps an eye on what comes out the other end.
It won't be perfect, and we'd rather be honest about that than pretend otherwise. Some entries are richer than others, and the dataset is refined constantly as better information comes in. If you spot something that looks wrong, tell us — that's exactly how a reference like this gets better.
Our priorities, in order: get it right, keep it useful, keep it free to browse.
A few principles
By growers, for growers
Written by someone with soil under their fingernails, not a content team chasing keywords.
Free at the core
The index is free to browse and always will be. The paid bits are extras, not gates.
Accuracy over noise
No clickbait, no filler, no twelve paragraphs of preamble before the heat rating. Just the facts you came for.
Always growing
New varieties, better data and new tools land all the time. It's a living reference, not a finished one.
The home for your chilli life
The long-term aim is simple: to make The Chilli Index the place UK chilli enthusiasts come to look things up, plan their season, track what they grow and discover what to grow next. A reference that becomes a habit. We're early, and there's a lot still to build — but that's half the fun. If you grow chillies, eat chillies, or just fall down the occasional Scoville-scale rabbit hole, you're in the right place.
Have a dig around
Start with the index — 76 varieties and counting.