The place we got our seeds no longer has them in stock, so browse around and hopefully you’ll have some luck. If you’d like to grow purple reapers yourself, try finding some seeds on our favorite places to buy pepper seeds online. If you grow these, don’t do it for the taste, do it for the heat. It tastes fine, but it was slightly bitter, and, in my opinion, overly floral. Unfortunately, the purple reaper is no different.

It just doesn’t have that fruity and welcoming sweetness that some of the Caribbean varieties do. When it comes to flavor, the Carolina reaper was never my favorite. This is purely anecdotal, but the purple reaper seems more fierce! I even sampled a purple reaper against a normal Carolina reaper, and found the purple variety to be more of a challenge. This means the purple reaper likely averages around 1,600,000 SHUs on the Scoville scale! Ripe purple reaper pepper. There hasn’t been any Scoville testing for the purple reaper, but I imagine it is equivalent to the Carolina reaper. I have tried many superhots, but this one seemed a cut above the rest. However, I did take a bite of a fresh purple reaper to test the heat, and I was impressed. I love spicy food, but I am no Johnny Scoville. I can’t imagine the surprise of those poor deer if they accidentally chomped into a fruit…

However, the purple reaper plant still achieved a height of around 5 feet, the tallest in our in-ground bed! All of this despite being eaten by deer on multiple occasions. Planting in the ground in New England leads to somewhat reduced plant size (since we have to wait until early June to transplant). Unripe and ripe purple reapers.Īside from the beautiful coloration, the plant was also very fast growing, and grew to be quite large. However, the stems remain their dark purple color, making them really stand out. This is thanks to high levels of anthocyanins, or purple pigments.Īs the peppers ripen, they turn from deep purple/green to a rich, almost burgundy red. The more sunlight they receive, the darker they will become. The leaves, stems, and pods are a dark purple, almost black color. Not just the peppers, but the foliage and branches stand out against typical pepper varieties. The first thing you’ll notice is that this plant is stunning to look at. Learn to grow Carolina reapers here Purple reaper pepper on plant. The purple reaper is still unstable, but our plant grew vigorously, producing well over 60 pods in a single season. Purple peppers are nothing new, but growing a purple variant of the hottest pepper in the world is just plain cool. However, I think the purple reaper may be even more awesome (and not just for how it looks). Being the hottest pepper on Earth demands a lot of respect.

Reaper pepper plant