Ornamental hot peppers are a great addition to any garden. They add beauty and spice and everything nice!
As a vegetable gardener, you probably want to have a beautiful veggie garden! So why not grow some ornamental peppers to add pops of color and beauty!
We have a whole selection of ornamental hot peppers that will look great in your landscape, plus you can harvest them for spicing up salsas, hot sauces, sandwiches, burgers, burritos, soups, stews, stir fries, you name it!
The rainbow of hot peppers shown above in the video and in the photo below are our NuMex Twilight Peppers, which are HOT and gorgeous, too! They make beautiful colorful borders for vegetable gardens and flower gardens, alike.
However, Twilight isn't our only ornamental hot pepper!
A few other of our favorite beautiful pepper plants include:
A few other of our favorite beautiful pepper plants include:
Bolivian Rainbow Hot Pepper
This beautiful unique and bright ornamental landscape plant will amaze everyone who sees it in your garden! It bears beautiful colored peppers early and all through the season. The 24" tall plants have purple tinged foliage and purple flowers. Fruits are small at 3/4" and turn from purple to yellow and then to red when mature. The rainbow of all the colors on the plant at once make it a very showy garden highlight. You can also grow these ornamental hot peppers in containers too for a blast of color on your patio! This Bolivian heirloom hot pepper has been grown there for centuries.
Another one of our favorite Ornamental Hot Peppers
is the fabulous Goat Horn Pepper:
Another one of our favorite Ornamental Hot Peppers
is the fabulous Goat Horn Pepper:
Goat Horn Pepper
This ornamental hot pepper can be grown in containers or in the garden – the long slightly curling Goat Horn peppers dangle off the plant like gems. These cayenne-like peppers are full of heat and flavor and are great for hot sauces, salsa, or even drying to ground into hot pepper flakes for year-round use. The plants can be very productive, so you'll have all the hot peppers you need for spicing up your dishes.
Easter Peppers
While these edible pastel-colored jewels may look sweet, they are packed with some heat. This ornamental hot pepper grows into a beautiful and compact, 8-12” plant with many small clusters of 4-6 fruits on top of the plant – the peppers grow upward toward the sky making for quite a show! The beautiful range of colors GLOW in the garden, starting out in lavender, then as they ripen they turn light yellow and then maturing to a light orange. Easter Peppers are heat and humidity tolerant and persevere in rain or drought, therefore earning them an All-America Selections Award. These winning ornamental hot pepper plants really turns heads and is stunning in containers or mass plantings. Easy to start from seed!
Patio Fire & Ice
Ornamental Hot Pepper
Add Patio Fire & Ice peppers to a patio pot and they will look like flames as they mature! This unusual ornamental hot pepper plant is eye-catching with its slender peppers that stand straight up in the air. All three colors of yellow, orange and red are on the plant at the same time resembling flames of a fire. Their cheery colors are wonderful for a patio, landscape, or garden.
How long do Ornamental peppers last?
Ornamental peppers usually put on their show for a couple months, it takes some time for the pepper plants to mature and bloom, but once they start producing the peppers will last the rest of the summer in your garden. You can harvest them as they ripen to their final color, or just leave them on the plant until the end of the season and harvest them all at once to make hot sauces, salsas, or dry for hot pepper flakes. If you dry these peppers they will last for a year in your spice rack!
Ornamental Peppers Scoville Units
Many ornamental peppers don't have an official Scoville rating, but they are typically spicy hot so they're good for spicing up salsas, hot sauces or other recipes. Look at our ornamental pepper listings to see if there is a Scoville rating, some of them have it some of them don't - but typically most ornamental peppers are all pretty spicy, similar to cayennes.
Are Ornamental Peppers Edible?
Yep, you can eat ornamental peppers just like any other pepper! Just because they're pretty doesn't mean you can't eat them!
What to do with ornamental peppers?
Eat them, add them to salsas, hot sauces, sandwiches, pizza, burritos, tacos, you name it! Ornamental chili peppers are edible, so don't toss them into the compost at the end of the season! Freeze them, dry them, or add to salsa or hot sauces or anything else you want to spice up! Ornamental peppers are NOT poisonous, so don't worry about eating them!
Can you eat ornamental peppers?
Yes, you can eat ornamental hot peppers! They may be spicy though, so beware! If you're growing Ornamental Hot Peppers, check out these ornamental pepper recipes to use up the harvest after the summer show.
View all of our Ornamental Hot Peppers »
Ornamental peppers are great to plant in containers and pots to brighten any patio. They also are great conversation starters. Easy to start from seed, ornamental peppers are a perfect addition to any vegetable garden.
Happy growing!
