Kitchen Pepper
An AAS Regional Winner 🌟🏆, the Wildcat Cayenne Pepper is big, bold, and beautifully approachable! 🌶💥 Compact, upright plants are packed with jumbo chilies — long, straight pods measuring 8–12 inches 📏 — with thick, fleshy walls and a smoky-sweet...
CASA VERDE · HEAT PROFILE
Mild
- Sweet
- Mild — this variety
- Medium
- Hot
- Super hot
Understanding the heat
A diamond marks the midpoint of a listed range, or the listed value when only one number is given. An arrow marks a stated limit. These are variety guides, not measurements of our seed lot. This guide uses unequal numerical bands: sweet 0; mild up to 10,000; medium 10,000–50,000; hot 50,000–800,000; super hot from 800,000 SHU (display capped at 3 million). Heat varies between fruits and with growing conditions.
Shop all pepper seeds in Canada
- Packet
- 10+ seeds per packet
- Maturity
- 75 days
- Heat
- 500–1500 SHU
- Season
- 2026
CASA VERDE · GROWER’S NOTES
Get to know your pepper.
10+ Seeds/Packet
🐾 Wildcat Cayenne Pepper (F1)
Capsicum annuum
An AAS Regional Winner 🌟🏆, the Wildcat Cayenne Pepper is big, bold, and beautifully approachable! 🌶💥 Compact, upright plants are packed with jumbo chilies — long, straight pods measuring 8–12 inches 📏 — with thick, fleshy walls and a smoky-sweet taste 😋. Despite their size, the heat stays mild (500–1,500 SHU) 🔥❔, making them perfect for everyday use.
👅 Flavor Profile:
Smoky 🌫️, sweet 🍯, and savory 🌿 with just a gentle burn 🌶❔.
🍴 Culinary Uses:
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🥫 Perfect for pickling + chili pastes
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🔥 Roast, grill, or sauté for smoky-sweet depth
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🌶 Dry into golden-red cayenne flakes ✨
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🍲 Add to soups, stews, and stir-fries for balanced heat
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🍕 Slice fresh over pizzas, tacos, or grain bowls
👨🍳 Chef’s Pitch:
Wildcat Cayenne is the chef’s gentle giant 👨🍳🐾. Long, straight pods that slice clean, roast beautifully, and deliver smoky-sweet flavor with just the right amount of heat. Perfect for sauces, flakes, and pickling jars that look as good as they taste.
🌱 Growing Notes:
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🪴 Compact, upright plants (36–42 in tall)
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📏 Extra-large pods (8–12 inches, 2–3 oz each)
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🎨 Ripen green 💚 ➡️ glossy red ❤️
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⏱ Early harvest (75 days from transplant)
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💪 Resistant to PVY + tobamoviruses, with moderate Fusarium tolerance
🌶 Scoville Heat Units (SHU): 500–1,500 (mild)
Cook your harvest
Use your harvest in these recipes. Check the variety notes and substitutions in each recipe.
Start indoors 8–10 weeks before last frost. Germinate at 26–30 °C on a heat mat; peppers stall below 22 °C. Pot up to 10–15 cm before hardening off outside after nights stay above 12 °C.
Feed balanced through bloom, then bump potassium for fruiting. Stake taller varieties. More detail in our full Canadian growing guide.
Match the pepper to the technique: thin-walled varieties blister fast in a hot pan; thick-walled ones roast or stuff beautifully; fruit-forward ones make balanced sauces and pickles. The variety's flavour profile is your shortcut — see Choosing the right pepper for a use-case guide.
