Why grow your own?
There's something honest about growing your own chillies. You control everything — the variety, the soil, the feed, the harvest timing. And once you've tasted a sun-ripened pod from your own bay window, the supermarket version tastes like a polite suggestion.
The S.P.I.C.E. Method
My approach to growing breaks down into five steps that map to the letters S, P, I, C, E. Each one is a chapter on its own, but here is the headline version.
Picking your first three varieties
A classic starter line-up looks like this:
C. annuum
Jalapeño
8,000 SHU
C. annuum
Cayenne
50,000 SHU
C. chinense
Scotch Bonnet
350,000 SHU
If any of those slugs do not match what is in your variety database, the cards will quietly hide rather than crash the page.