Market Farming

[Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>]

Ok, I suspect that's not the same pepper as Fedco is selling. I've grown the Fedco pepper, and it didn't look like the ones on the Irinas page; at least, not if the pictures on that page are of that pepper; the two pictures look to me as if they're of two different peppers.

What's going on here may well be an example of a common problem: at some point, different people gave the same name to different peppers; presumably without either of the namers knowing about the other case.

Note that Fedco gives the history of their Fish, and specifically states that it's a serrano.

I can't read the site you linked, so I don't know whether it says anything about the history of their Fish; if you look at the Fedco link, you'll see that theirs dates to sometime before 1900, USA in the Philadelphia/Baltimore area. -- however, while I can't read the Irinas page, I think it says they run 2.5 to 5 centimeters long; I'm not great at metric, but my conversion program says that's roughly 1 to 2 inches. Which is not what I, at least, would describe as a long pepper. Is it possible that you're growing a third cultivar with the same name? Or maybe you're growing the Irinas version and they do just get bigger for you.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly

Fresh-market organic produce, small scale

On Dec 9, 2011, at 5:56 PM, Halstead, Kate wrote:

Nope, it’s not a Serrano type at all. Serrano are much smaller, bullet shaped, and have a much different flavor.

What I have noticed, and the pix from Fedco mimics, is that the peppers are punt when the plant is not well fed and is left to its own devices. Still produces a large amount of fruit, just much smaller in size, with a pronounced curl. When the bushes get plenty of nutrition and water they set larger fruit that is conical in shape like the long hots and a lot straighter.

This Danish site shows something closer to what we get from the plants: http://www.irinas-shop.de/fish-pepper-p-400.html