Six of the best Chilli plants to send as gifts
Ripe and ripening chilli fruits in size order; Thai Demon, Prairie Fire, Quick Fire, Basket of Fire, Pot Black and Scotch Bonnet.
Chilli plants make great Gifts. They are colourful, super productive and super easy to grow on a sunny windowsil.
At Plants4Presents we've been growing chillies for over 15 years and we've tried and tested over 40 different varieties. Over the years we've narrowed our selection down to the very best varieties for gifting.
These are all plants with great flavour, that look great and that are super productive in a small space. We also know when a plant is a gift, they need to be easy to look after, so all these varieties are guaranteed to thrive for everybody, not just experienced gardeners and like all our gifts they come with an A4 care guide and the reassurance that there is always a helpful expert on the end of our care line if you ever get stuck.
Our pick of our favourite chilli plant gifts listed in reverse heat order.
Quick Fire
Our mildest chilli, and a super early ripening variety. The waxy green fruits start to ripen to red as early as June and like all chillies, the more you pick the more they'll continue to fruit.
Pick them green for a milder flavour to use fresh in salads and salsas and when scarlet for maximum kick.
Scoville Rating: 40,000 SHUBuy Now
Thai Demon
This is a great chilli for Thai dishes and also for making chilli chocolate deserts. It has a late heat, so you first get the flavour of the dish then the heat sneaks up on you, landing on the roof of your mouth for a fiery after burn. We've been growing this variety for over 10 years and it is so prolific, producing literally hundreds of tiny chillies in a compact space. A great variety to grow on a winter windowsill, we've known these to fruit continuously from July until the following March.
Scoville Rating: 30-50,000 SHUBuy Now
Pot Black
A really striking chilli variety with beautiful purple flowers and dark foliage that are followed by Jet Black fruits that will eventually ripen to a smoky red.
We love to use the fruits when they are black/purple for a fresh zesty flavour in salads and salsas where you can really enjoy their fabulous colour but they also have a good smoky flavour and add a sometimes surprisingly hot hit to curries and stir fries too.
Scoville Rating: 30,000-50,000 SHUBuy Now
Prairie Fire
Officially a medium hot chilli, these colourful chillies were a new addition to our range for 2024 and we've been really pleased with their performance.
Attractive and bushy plants with masses of small rounded chillies that turn from pale yellow to orange to red, we can see why they have an RHS Award of Garden Merit.
Scoville Rating: 70,000 SHUBuy Now
Basket of Fire
Another firm favourite of the Plants4Presents team, these chilli plants look stunning on a patio or a windowsill and produce masses of classic good size yellow, orange and red chillies.
A great all rounder for any dish that benefits from a bit of heat, these colourful plants start ripening in July and often continue right through to December.
Scoville Rating: 80,000 SHUBuy Now
Scotch Bonnet
Famously hot, these chillies are not for the faint hearted. Scotch Bonnets are part of the Habanero family or Capsicum Chinese so they look different and have a different growth habit than our other Capsicum annum varieties. They mature later and when they are fully grown are much taller plants with larger leaves.
Prized for their intense flavour, ripe Scotch Bonnets, have a smoky complexity to their heat. Up to 10 x hotter than some of our other varieties, prepare and use these chillies with care!
Scoville Rating: 100-350,000 SHUBuy Now
What is a Scoville Rating?
The Scoville rating is an internationally recognised way of measuring the heat or 'spiciness' of chilli fruits. Invented by Wilbur Scoville in 1912 its essentially a measure of how far you have to dilute a solution of any particular chilli to make the active part the 'capsaicin' compound impossible to detect. Mild chillies like Jalapenos might rate around 5,000 whilst the hottest chillies in the world, like Ghost chillies, the Carolina Reaper chilli and most recently Chilli X have been recorded as hot as 318,000 SHU or Scoville Heat Units. That is far too hot for any normal human to enjoy in our humble opinion. The chillies listed here are all varieties that we enjoy cooking with and will create a range of delicious dishes with plenty of kick.
It's also worth nothing that a Scoville rating for any given variety is just a guide, a rating given by a plant of this type when tested by a team of experts in a laboratory. Heat, light, watering and other growing conditions will affect the heat of individual chilli plants and it's common to find variation even between fruits on the same plant. It also various from week to week and from month to month. Chilli fruit heat tends to peak in the autumn when then warm weather and longer daylight in the summer months has allowed the fruits to reach maximum flavour. Remember for a milder heat pick your fruits on the under-ripe or green side, for maximum fire wait until they are a deep read, if using straight away you can even wait until they start to soften and ripen on the tree. If harvesting for drying, pickling or freezing choose firm red or green fruits for best results.
