Archives for April 2021

Biquinho peppers – also known as Sweety Drop Peppers – are thumbnail-sized sweet peppers with a touch of heat. Learn how to grow biquinho peppers in your backyard or container garden. They’re beautiful plants with attractive, glossy green leaves and look like a well-lit Christmas tree when fruited.

I first encountered Biquinho peppers in a salad bar at a grocery store. They were lightly pickled, crunchy, and thoroughly delightful in my green salad. The bin wasn’t labeled, however, so I spent some time Googling small peppers … without success … to try to figure out what they were. Who knew there were so many small chile peppers in the world!

It wasn’t until several years later that I stumbled on them at the local farmers’ market. I picked the farmer’s brain about what they were and learned that he gets his seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, who sell red and yellow varieties. I ordered packets of each, and they immediately went on my list for the following year’s garden.

What are Biquinho Peppers?

Biquinho peppers (Capsicum chinense) – pronounced bee-KEEN-yo – are a Brazilian cultivar, featuring small, 1-inch, tear drop shaped pods with a distinctive tapered point protruding from a rounded end.

They’re also called Sweety Drop peppers, Little Beak peppers (the literal translation of biquinho), and Chupetinho.

The plants are both decorative and culinarily productive. They are very slow to take off, but do grow quite happily in containers, maintaining a compact habit. They also thrive in the ground where they bush out, up to three feet tall.

The plant’s foliage is very attractive, dark and glossy, and fills in to create a striking plant.

Fruits grow prolifically from tender flowering stems distributed throughout the plant. They ripen from pale green to yellow or red as they plump up.

The plants, like many peppers, are fairly late fruiting, but once they get going, they produce freely until cold weather moves in.

What Do Biquinho Peppers Taste Like? Are They Hot?

These Little Beak peppers are a delightful treat for sweet pepper lovers, as you can pop off the stem and eat them whole, seeds and all. They have a fruity flavor with a touch of smokiness on the back end. They remind me a bit of habaneros, only without the heat!

Strangely, Biquinho Peppers are often classified as a hot chile. But in my experience, they most definitely are not. At most, there’s a small buzz of spice when you bite into one. On the whole, though, they’re more comparable to bell peppers than, say, jalapeños. Along with Black Cherry Tomatoes, they’re my favorite snack in the garden: just pluck one off and crunch away.

Where these peppers really shine, though, is when they’re pickled in a sweet, vinegary brine. Oh my goodness. From there, they’re the perfect additions to cheese and charcuterie boards, as hors d’oeuvre and crudite – basically all manner of party trays – and also in green salads.

Try this refrigerator-pickle (read: super easy) Pickled Sweety Drops recipe on my food blog – they’re so tasty, you just want to eat them right out of the jar. I love that the harvest is so abundant, because that means pickled Biquinho peppers all winter long.

I also love to pan fry fresh peppers with cherry tomatoes, olives, capers and green onions, for a healthy Mediterranean/Blue Zones-inspired meal.

Buying Pre-Established Plants

Biquinho Pepper plants (vs. seeds) are currently not widely available in U.S. garden centers, but if you’re lucky, you can find plants from smaller nurseries that are willing to ship.

Pepper plants, in general, are fairly hardy and robust, and can tolerate spring’s chilly temps for a short period of time. To be on the safe side, plant your peppers outside after your area’s last frost date. Hold them indoors until then near a sunny window.

Early in my gardening career, I regularly thumbed my nose at my last frost date, and got a head-start on getting everything in the ground around mid-March. But now, it’s not uncommon at all to have significant snowfalls and sub-freezing temps through April (as we did here at the end of April, as I’m preparing to publish this post). Temps in the 40s for a few nights is one thing; accumulating snow fall is another!

Starting Biquinho Peppers from Seed

In 2020, I started my peppers on April 4th (below), and here in 2021, I’m running slightly later. No worries. As I’ve mentioned above, these peppers are slow-growing, so getting a late start is not going to impact the fall’s harvest one way or another.

I have a seed-starting set-up in my home that serves all of my various plants’ needs:

• I have two table-top grow lights with vertically adjustable light fixtures to accommodate growing sprouts.
• I have heat mats that fit the grow lights above.
• I have seed-starting soil mix. I’m not married to any particular brand or mixture: frankly, I’ve used them all, and they work just fine. The seeds’ environment has a bigger impact on germination than the specific soil mixture. If you’re new to seed starting, don’t stress over it. Long-time gardeners like myself can get wrapped up in our favorite brands and inadvertently put pressure on new gardeners to duplicate our set up or be doomed. It’ll all be fine.
• And I have a hodge-podge of containers for the actual seeds. Most often, I sow the seeds in either 4″ fiber pots (shown above) or these netted fiber coir pellets.
• Most importantly, though, I have several sizes of clear, domed trays, in which my newly sown seeds sit until they’re well sprouted. A domed environment keeps the soil moist so that you’re not watering your seeds twice a day. (The square tray shown above has a matching dome.)

If you already have your preferred set up for seed starting, the good news is that Biquinho peppers will not require anything special.

• Fill a pot with dampened starter mix.
• Push one seed into the center of the soil in one pot, about 1/4″ deep. Repeat for remaining seeds.
• Water each pot well, but gently, so that the seed doesn’t float out of position. Firm the seed back into place if it does.
• Place in a domed container on the heat mat. Check at least daily to ensure the soil doesn’t dry out.
• When the seeds sprout, move under the grow lights. You can keep them under the dome for as long as they fit, to control moisture.
• Keep them under the lights until they’re ready to harden off. I keep my grow lights on a 16-hours-on/8-hours-off cycle for all of my seedlings.

Planting time

Biquinho Peppers are ready to be moved to their permanent home when they’re no longer fragile. As a rough guideline, that’s around 4″ tall, with a strong central stem.

Because these pepper plants are slow-growing, they’ll need to be self-sufficient for a long stretch when put outside, especially if going in the ground where furry woodland creatures will be regularly cavorting. Small seedlings would be trampled in no time.

Take a few days to harden off the plants outside: leave them outside in a sunny spot for several hours a day, or in an open window.

If growing in containers, choose a container that’s at least 14″ wide. This will provide not only sufficient nutrition from an abundance of soil, but also stability from falling over as the plant stretches upward. Depending on the plant’s growth habit, it will likely benefit from staking/supporting its main stem later in the season, so keep that in mind as you choose a pot.

If planting in the ground, space plants 24″ apart in a sunny spot, and dig the hole large enough to accommodate the current root ball, with extra space to add fresh soil with a little bit of compost. Firm the ground around the plant and water well.

It’s not a bad idea to place a support cage around the plant at this time. If the cage has wide open spaces between the wires, consider supplementing the sides with chicken wire, to keep critters off the plants. The chicken wire can be removed once the plants reach a foot tall or so.

How to Care for Biquinho Peppers

Pepper plants in general are wonderfully low-care vegetables, and biquinho peppers are no exception.

Peppers should not be allowed to go bone-dry, but they also don’t like to have perpetually wet feet. So, water regularly, but don’t drown the plants.

Keep an extra eye on potted plants, as they dry out faster than if planted in the ground.

Fertilizer with a regular commercial fertilizer or fish emulsion every two to three weeks through the growing season. If the leaves start to mysteriously yellow, add about a tablespoon of epsom salts to the soil: sprinkle around the base of the plant, and gently work the crystals into the top layer. Then water well.

Epsom salts are a good source of magnesium, which peppers love.

The plants will produce ripe peppers about 5 months from seeding with an increasingly abundant harvest as the season moves into fall.

I hope you’ll enjoy these fun peppers – they’re beautiful to grow and a delightful culinary addition for peppers lovers!

Okinawan Purple Sweet Potatoes are a lovely and delicious cultivar, featuring a creamy, beige skin encasing gorgeous purple-magenta flesh. Full of the antioxidant anthocyanin, they’re also high polyphenols, vitamin C, and soluble fiber. These sweet potatoes are easy for the backyard gardener to grow in the U.S. climate.

What is an Okinawan Sweet Potato? What does it taste like?

Despite the geographic name famous for cultivating them, they’re also commonly grown in Hawaii and are often known as the Hawaiian Sweet Potato.

Okinawan Sweet Potatoes – a.k.a., Okinawan Purple Sweet Potatoes or Hawaiian Purple Sweet Potatoes – are a beautiful cultivar, featuring off-white or beige skin with a vibrant purple-pink interior. They’re starchy – more so than their orange-fleshed counterparts – but have no saturated fats or cholesterol.

They were, in fact, a dietary staple of the people in the famous Okinawa Blue Zone (an area designated as having a high number of centenarians).

They are, unfortunately, difficult to find in the typical American grocery store, which is a shame because they’re so delicious and are my very favorite variety of sweet potato.

Taste is subjective, of course, but I find them far less cloyingly sweet than the standard orange grocery store variety (often, Beauregard). Nutty and slightly earthy, they not only make excellent crispy fries, but are also quite lovely in salads (I’m an add-all-the-vegetables kind of green salad fan).

They cook up fairly quickly in a pressure cooker, and my favorite work-from-home vegetarian lunch is one topped with black beans, salsa, and guacamole.

Okinawan Sweet Potatoes retain their color when cooked and, in fact, deepen into a rich, dark purple, while the skins tend to take on the purple coloring.

What are Sweet Potato Slips and Where to Buy Them?

So, where do sweet potatoes come from anyway? Unlike most vegetables, sweet potatoes are not started from seed, but rather from mature shoots produced by the tubar, called slips. The shoots are removed from the potato once they leaf out, and then placed in water to develop roots.

You can definitely grow your own slips from a sweet potato, but if you don’t have a sweet potato in your possession right now, you’ll need to go ahead and purchase the slips from a reputable nursery for this growing season.

The slips will arrive carefully packaged, usually with the roots encased in a soil plug. You should remove the slips from the outer packaging immediately upon receipt, leaving the root plugs intact.

It’s important to note that sweet potato slips are not cold-weather hardy. This presents a challenge to the gardener: you either lock in your order as soon as you find them (whether you’re ready to plant or not), or you wait to order until the weather is perfect and risk everyone being out-of-stock.

For me, the decision is easy: I want my Okinawan sweet potatoes, lol, so I don’t take a chance. I order early. This year (2021), mine arrived a full month before they’ll be planted, as we’re still having floods and the occasional overnight dip into the 30°Fs here in March and April.

I purchase my slips from Baker Creek Seeds. I hit their Live Plants page early in March, and sign up for the back-in-stock notification. As soon as I get word that they’re ready to purchase, I pounce, no matter the date or weather forecast.

I keep them in their little plastic shipping bags, rolled down to expose the upper leaves for aeration, sitting firmly in a ramekin in a morning-sunny window until I’m ready to plant. Keep the soil plugs lightly watered, and the slips will thrive. This year’s slips:

When to Plant the Slips

Your slips will be ready to plant when temperatures in your area no longer dip into the lower 50°Fs. For my Zone 6a, that’s mid- to late-May. In 2020, I planted my sweet potatoes on May 17th; May 15th in 2021 (although we went on to have a freakish dip into the 30s late in May, and I had to cover the plants to protect them from frost).

But don’t go just by the calendar; let nature be your guide. If it’s still snowing after your last frost date, don’t take a chance (look up your last frost date in the U.S.).

If you received them early and have been caring for them inside, first harden them off a bit by letting them spend a few hours outdoors each day for a week, under gentle sunlight (say, morning hours), before planting. If you don’t have a safe space for this (e.g., if you live in an apartment and are planting in a community garden), place the slips by an open window.

Prepare the soil

Sweet potatoes are not terribly fussy and are, in fact, robust survivors. But, the goal of this effort to produce beautiful, well-formed sweet potatoes, and proper soil prep will take you a long way. The potatoes form underground, so the composition of the soil is everything.

At least one week before planting, you’ll want to deeply turn the soil where you’ll be planting the slips. Then, at least lightly turn the soil in a 10-foot radius in every direction: vines will drop roots at their leaves to secure the plant as it expands. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, the plant will produce another cluster of potatoes from the nodes, so turning the entire bed deeply would not necessarily be a wasted effort.

Amend the soil throughout the bed with compost. Smooth out the top with a rake, water lightly, and let rest.

Clay soil is not optimal for potato formation because it’s not pliable enough to allow the potatoes to form naturally. It’s not impossible, but you’ll need to add a lot of compost to the crown area to lighten the soil.

At the other end of the soil spectrum, loose, very peat-y soil is also not the best for potato formation. Potatoes need a little resistance – a guiding hand, if you will – from the soil to keep from growing too long and skinny, or to become malformed in a way that’s awkward for cooking.

The ideal soil is light and “fluffy”, but holds together well when damp and squeezed. The area should also be well-draining, as sweet potatoes like to be damp, but not drenched. Do the hole test: dig a hole 12″ deep and fill it halfway with water. The water should drain away in the soil at a fairly fast clip. Standing water indicates that the bed needs to be turned more deeply and amended with compost.

How Much Space is Needed to Grow Sweet Potatoes?

I won’t mince words here: you’ll want a big space!

Although the actual clusters of sweet potatoes do not take up too much two-dimensional area – in fact, you can absolutely grow them in a large burlap bag or container – they require nutrition from the leaves that the plant’s vines produce. And those vines grow incredibly long.

So, actual in-the-ground space needed by the potatoes: small’ish. Actual spread space needed for the vines: large.

I grow all of my sweet potatoes in a 10-foot x 10-foot plot. This plot is too small, lol, but it all works out: as the vines reach the fenced boundaries, I begin redirecting them to wrap around the plot’s edges in a circle.

Note that you can grow other plants in the same plot: anything that grows tall, whose own leaves will be well above the leaves of the sweet potato vines. Keep in mind, though, that late in the season, the area will be very covered in vines and leaves and will be difficult to reach. You could, however, plant something like bell peppers along the border of the plot, where you’ll easily be able to reach the peppers without squooshing the sweet potato vines by walking on them.

Last year, I grew honeynut squash in the sweet potato bed, and even though there were vines e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e, it all worked out rather well, and both harvests were quite abundant.

How to Plant Okinawan Sweet Potatoes

You’ll want to plant the slips 12 to 18″ apart, so that the potatoes have plenty of room underground to sprout, separately from each other. They don’t have to be in rows.

As you saw from my plot illustration above, I plant three slips in a little triangle, with the varieties separated from each other with additional space.

Pluck off the lower leaves of the slip, leaving an umbrella of leaves on top.

Dig a hole 4″ deep and set the slip firmly all the way in, pressing the soil firmly against the plant. Water well.

Finally, you’ll want to mark the crowns – the base of the center plant. The majority of sweet potatoes will be produced in a cluster beneath the crown. Simple enough, right?

But in a good year, healthy plants will produce an abundance of leaves from numerous vines shooting out in every direction, filling the surrounding space with gorgeous greenery and obscuring the location of the crown as the season wears on.

I always drive in a 3 foot stake near each crown, so that in October, I know exactly where the concentration of sweet potatoes will be located.

Caring for Okinawan Sweet Potato Plants

One of my favorite things about growing sweet potatoes is that they’re very easy to care for and are basically hands-off for much of the growing season.

After the plants have acclimated to their new soil home (two to three weeks), I fertilize once every two weeks early in the season, but as soon as the vines are robust and leafy, I halt fertilizing altogether, unless we’ve had a lot of rain.

Regular fertilizer with a formula of 5-10-10 or 8-24-24 is just fine, keeping an eye on the nitrogen. Even though sweet potatoes need their leaves for nutrition, you still don’t want to encourage the plant to go completely overboard with the greenery by overfeeding it with a too-heavy nitrogen concentration. This would produce too many leaves and not enough tubars.

Protect the leaves!

Furry woodland creatures love sweet potato leaves – they’re edible to humans, too – so plant your sweet potato slips in a fenced-in plot, protected both from deer and bunnies.

Remember that deer can jump very impressive heights, so my fencing is 7 feet tall, with chicken wire wrapped around the lower 2 feet, sunk a bit into the ground, to keep out the hungry bunnies.

However, if your sweet potato vines do get stripped of their leaves by a clever rascal, don’t give up. Sweet potatoes are determined survivors and will usually leaf out again fairly quickly.

Because the plot I use for my sweet potatoes is fairly small in proportion to the plant size, a few of the vines inevitably escape through the chicken wire and grow from there. I consider anything outside the fencing to be fair game for the furries. 😉

There is one distinct advantage to sharing the area with sweet potato leaf-lovin’ creatures: at the end of the growing season, about a week or so before my planned harvest, I remove all of the fencing, and let everyone have at it.

This clears the area of leaves and reveals the sweet potato vines. It also makes digging so much easier, because I’m not struggling to get through the thick bed of leaves to find the ground in which to dig.

I hope you’ve found this article helpful! Growing Okinawan sweet potatoes is a low-hassle joy, and the resulting potatoes are absolutely delightful and worth the space they occupy in the garden.

Stay tuned later in the year for harvesting tutorials!

Happy Planting!