Jalapeño Orange Spice Chilli

Why I chose it

I already love growing jalapeños, so obviously when I discovered there was a bright orange version I needed to grow that too. Orange Spice gives you everything useful about a jalapeño — compact plants, thick-walled fruit and plenty of kitchen possibilities — but with gorgeous orange chillies and a bit more heat. Because apparently ordinary green jalapeños weren't quite enough.

At a glance

Type: Jalapeño chilli
Heat: Hot
Fruit: Thick-walled, ripening to bright orange
Position: Full sun, warm and sheltered
Growth: Bushy
Best for: Fresh eating, cooking, pickling and preserving

In the kitchen

Use Orange Spice anywhere you'd normally reach for a jalapeño, but expect a little more heat. They're brilliant sliced into Mexican-style dishes, salsas and pizzas, pickled, roasted or stuffed, and the orange fruit looks spectacular in preserves alongside chillies of other colours.

Our slightly less conventional use: we blanch jalapeños in sugar syrup, fill them with vodka, dip them in chocolate and freeze them. It sounds faintly unhinged. It is excellent.

In the garden

Orange Spice forms a compact chilli plant suited to garden beds or a generous container. Give it the warmest, sunniest position you can and let the fruit fully ripen on the plant to develop that glorious orange colour.

Jo's growing tip: I like planting chillies and capsicums in pairs. Although their flowers are self-fertile, I've found plants grown together perform particularly well — they create a sheltered little growing pocket, physically support one another as they fill out, and give visiting pollinators plenty of flowers to move between.

Care

Grow in fertile, well-drained soil in a warm, sunny position. Water consistently, particularly while flowering and fruiting, but avoid leaving the roots waterlogged. Feed regularly during fruit production and protect from frost.

What you'll receive
One healthy, established seedling grown here at A Garden Between. Plants naturally vary in size and shape and may be supplied in reused nursery pots or growing bags — perfectly useful plastic doesn't need replacing simply because it doesn't match.