Chilli peppers.

A different crop from sweet pepper, and a different house

Chilli covers a wide range of pungent peppers across several species, sold into culinary markets that specify heat level as the primary quality. Plant habit ranges from compact to tall and indeterminate, and fruit form varies as widely, so there is no single chilli crop to design a greenhouse around.

What the crop needs

System and cycle are crop-specific, because the plants differ so much. A compact type and a tall indeterminate type place different demands on structure, spacing, support and picking labour. The controlling decision is which pepper is being grown for which market, and that decision precedes any design work.

What the greenhouse has to do

Chilli is not a sweet pepper in a different colour, and building for it as though it were is the common mistake. Plant size, cycle and fruit habit vary enormously across the species grown for heat — from compact annuals to plants that occupy a house for years — so the structure, spacing and support are drawn for the specific crop rather than from a block-pepper layout.

The heat specification is a design input. Capsaicin development responds to growing conditions, so a crop sold on a heat level is a crop whose climate is being asked to hit a target beyond yield and size. That has to be settled before the house is designed, together with whether the fruit is sold fresh, dried or processed — each of which changes the harvest and the pack area entirely.

DutchGreenhouses® designs the structure, climate, screening and irrigation around the pepper actually being grown and the heat specification it is sold on, rather than around a sweet-pepper envelope. Get in touch to discuss a chilli project.