What varieties of chili peppers do you grow?
Our greenhouse operation grows over 40 different varieties from the mildest and most familiar like the jalapeno and habanero that are around 10,000
SHU to the hottest Jamaican Yellow Mushroom and Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Peppers) that range from 250,000 SHU over 1 million SHU.
How do you decide what to grow?
Once we have our bases covered for our
established products, we try to avoid growing what you can find in the standard grocery store for our fresh peppers. Then we have a few fun experiments to bring to market, like the
Chocolate Scorpion!
What are the most popular chili peppers?
It depends on the person, as most customers buy our end products versus the fresh peppers. Approximately 70% of the peppers we produce serve our established products like hummus, pesto, and of course, chili sauces. Our Wizard Choice Chili Sauce is quite popular!
What is your favourite part about growing peppers in BC?
The people in Cowichan Valley have been very receptive. There’s so much support from the local markets that we have to highlight our gratitude for this region.
There’s a great growers network here as well. Since we are a small farm operation, we team up with larger scale farms to meet the demand if someone wants to buy, something like, 60lbs of fresh peppers at once.
What type of recipes would best suit your hottest peppers?
Since Shani is a chef, we use our chilies in adapted Indonesian sambals and curries. And we make all our end products out of them of course!