About this variety
Habaneros are not usually grown for size. The standard orange habanero is a small lantern of a pod, and a good plant gives you a great many of them — but they are fiddly to process, and anyone who has stood over a chopping board working through a batch for sauce knows the feeling. Big Sun is the answer to that. It is a habanero in every respect that matters, with the same tropical fruit and the same considerable heat, but the pods are noticeably larger than the type, and the flavour has not been traded away for the size.
The pods start deep green and ripen through to a full sunset orange, and they are worth waiting for. An underripe habanero is mostly heat; a fully coloured one carries the tropical fruitiness the species is known for sitting on top of the burn. Because each pod weighs more, the yield by weight is better than a standard habanero from the same amount of plant, and that is the whole argument for growing it. If you make hot sauce in quantity, or dry and grind your own habanero powder, this is the one that saves you an afternoon.
It needs a long season and it needs glass. Sow in January or February at 25-28C, and expect chinense seed to take its time coming up. From there it wants to stay under cover for the rest of the year: greenhouse or polytunnel, in a large pot or a border, with steady warmth right through to autumn so the last pods have time to colour. It is an upright, well-behaved plant that carries a heavy crop without much fuss, and it will still be ripening in October. Grow it if you want habanero flavour by the jar rather than by the pod.
