Fish Pepper (medium hot)

Organic.
 
Full Sun.
Sold as a single plant in a 4x4 inch pot.
Garden Planting - Space 1 foot apart in rows that are 2 feet apart.
Container Planting - One plant per 6x12 inch pot or two plants per 5 gallon bucket
Medium hot pepper with variable heat. Scoville scale: 5,000–30,000 SHU
 
This amazing pepper has a cool history and a weird name. “Fish Pepper” is aptly named because it was a secret ingredient to give fish dishes a Caribbean kick!
 
This is a medium hot pepper that is fantastic in many dishes! It’s also one of the most beautiful peppers I’ve seen with its striking stripes! Even the plant has gorgeous variegated leaves!
 
History:
An African-American heirloom popular in the Philadelphia/Baltimore region. A chili pepper notable for its unique history. The fish pepper more than likely originated in the Caribbean and was introduced to the mid-Atlantic region in the 1870s, where it gained a strong a foothold in the oyster and crab houses of the area. The young cream-colored peppers were used for adding a kick to the creamy sauces that topped seafood. The pepper was kept as a secret ingredient in these dishes and its part in recipes handed down orally. The peppers were grown exclusively by black farmers and fell out of favor in the early 1900s as the people of that era began to embrace a more urban lifestyle.
 
This one-of-a-kind pepper would be lost to us if not for an unusual exchange. Horace Pippin was a black folk painter who served during World War I in the 369th Infantry called the “Harlem Hellfighters.” He lost the use of his right arm after being shot by a sniper, and this left him with arthritic pain. Searching for some relief, he resorted to an old folk remedy that called for bee stings. Horace began giving seeds to a bee keeper named H. Ralph Weaver. Horace’s seeds sometimes came from his far flung old-time gardening friends, who sent wonderful and rare varieties. H. Ralph Weaver saved the seed in his private seed collection, where it remained until 1995 when his grandson William Woys Weaver released it to the public.