PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOB KROGER
About 26 years ago, a group of avid, like-minded gardeners came together, looking to add a little piquancy to their lives. They loved spicy foods but were unable to find the varieties of peppers needed to generate just the right heat and flavors. They pooled their resources—seeds, plant stocks, and experience—in a collective quest. And the Cincinnati Chili Pepper Club was born.
Today, the club is a small, very informal group (there are no titles—leaders describe themselves as a “senior member,” “quarterback,” or “coordinator”) with a core of about 20 to 25 ongoing members.
While heat was the club’s original imperative, tastes have broadened and mellowed. When the club started, members “would have been looking for some of the hotter peppers,” says current “quarterback,” Bob Kroger. “When I first joined the club, everybody was like, the hotter the better.”
This is probably no surprise. Most people these days know at least one person who eagerly compares the Scoville number of the hottest pepper they’ve consumed to anyone else’s number. (Hardcore heat lovers even send samples of what they’ve grown to laboratories for Scoville number testing.)
Some pepper aficionados still covet face-shield-and-gloves-required-when-handling varieties with names that may include “scorpion,” “viper,” “reaper” or “ghost,” the vast majority want cooking and decorative varieties, Kroger says.
“I’d say that 10 to 20 percent of the people buying from us are into the extremely hot stuff,” he notes. “Farmers’ market varieties, decorative peppers like the medusa are what people are looking for primarily.”
In 2023, the Chili Pepper Club offered 65 varieties of pepper, the most popular of which was the jalapeno.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BOB KROGER
Hot varieties do have a legitimate culinary role in sauces and are not simply for a show of machismo. Still, when Club “senior member” Gary Askey offered a Fox19 show host a sauce buffered with kiwi fruit, he cautioned, “I don’t want to burn anybody up, but this is pretty hot stuff.” He also gleefully described “Seven Pot Bubble Gum Chili”: “It’s called ‘seven pot’ because one pepper seasons seven pots of stew in Indonesia. And it’s called the bubble gum because the pepper comes out and looks pretty much like a piece of chewed bubble gum.”
While the club focuses on cultivation of varieties of interest to members, it also helps support the Krohn Conservatory through the sale of pepper plants the club raises. All proceeds go to the Krohn and any plants left after the sales are donated to Franciscan Ministries.
The club grows plants on bench space provided by the city in the Warder Nursery greenhouse, but provides everything else—dirt, trays, pots, seed, labels. While greenhouse space and water are the only draws on city resources, Kroger says, “They are contributing quite a bit to our success.”
The plants are sold at Krohn plant sales, farmers’ markets, like the Montgomery Farmers’ Market, and other venues, including Fifty West Brewing Company, whom Kroger calls the club’s “biggest supporter.” In addition to free space, the brewery provided promotions such as the “Atomic Chicken Sandwich” that used “pretty much every pepper they bought from us,” he says.
All expenses and responsibilities are shared equally by members. Each year the club collects membership dues—literal “seed money.” This month, members will gather to make seed selections for the year. Planting is done in February and transplanting in March. Plants go to market around Mother’s Day and the benches are cleared shortly thereafter.
If you’re interested in growing peppers to add zest at the dinner table, be assured it takes a minimal commitment to successfully to do so.
“Peppers like it hot,” Kroger explains. “They like it sunny. As long as they’ve got water when they need it, they’ll be fine.”
It’s only three months before this year’s crop will be ready and plants go quickly so keep an eye out in the spring for sales announcements.
“Last year, we probably sold three-quarters of what we had at Fifty West in one weekend,” says Kroger.
Check the Cincinnati Parks website, the Fifty West Brewing Company website, and your favorite farmers’ markets for announcements.
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