Hi Rodger,
I'm wondering if you ever found an answer. I have the same pepper seed so I was curious also. I looked around a bit and found that a study was done in Spain on Padrone peppers and they found all the peppers to have pronounced heat if the plants were water stressed. (I know many types of hot peppers will be hotter if grown in drought like conditions.) So I'm wondering if they all really carry a "hot" gene, and sometimes it just expresses itself, so which peppers to save seed from doesn't matter. Or if as you say saving from the hot ones might make the peppers all hotter over time.
If you never found an answer, I suggest re-asking your question over on the Hot Peppers forum. There are few knowledgeable people over there who do not read this forum.
Remy

Roger, after viewing in your profile that you grow many peppers, my first thought was cross-pollination. But you did not mention whether you grew the peppers from saved seed, so that may not be the case.

Do you ever get both sweet & hot peppers from the same plant (perhaps in different stages of maturity), or are all of the peppers from one plant hot, while all the peppers on other plants are sweet? If all of the peppers on each plant are the same, it would tend to eliminate environment as a possible cause... and crossing could be responsible. In that case, you would want to save seed from only the peppers with the flavor you wish to preserve. Pollinators would have to be excluded, to prevent crossing in the saved seed.

If you get both sweet & hot peppers from the same plants, then the question becomes: Were they harvested at the same time?

I grow a "hot" pepper called "Pizza". I say "hot" because its heat varies, depending upon the conditions at the time of harvest. In warm weather, it will be mildly hot, especially when immature. But as the Autumn frost approaches & temperatures cool, nearly all of the heat is lost, and it becomes a gourmet sweet pepper. I plant it late for that reason, and harvest just before the killing freeze. If "Padrone" behaves similarly, then as Remy stated, it would not matter which plants you chose to save seed from.

Hi Zeedman,
I think you misunderstood. Padrone peppers have long been known to be an odd pepper normally with one in ten being hot for most growers. I remember originally reading about the weird heat aberration thinking this is ok for cooking mixing together, but fresh eating is a gamble,lol. Maybe that is why they were used in the experiment I wrote about.
Remy

Here is a link that might be useful: Padrone Pepper description

So this variation is normal??? According to the description, Remy, "...If left to ripen red they will be quite spicy." This seems to imply that _all_ peppers will develop heat as they ripen. Perhaps it is not a question of which peppers are hot (since they all will be eventually) but of which immature peppers will begin to develop heat first.

In which case, to answer the original poster's question, it would not matter which plants were used to save seed. You might be able to select for plants that develop heat more slowly; but unless the strain is genetically diverse, it may not be possible.

The "Pizza" pepper I mentioned above possesses similar characteristics... I would be very curious to see if "Padrone" behaves in a similar manner when harvested in cool weather. Perhaps it, too, will sweeten.

I bought seeds from these peppers from 2 sources to try this season. Here are my research notes, with sources. I don't know any more than what you read below, except there are pix of them cooked. Note size suggestions in one description and harvest time suggestions in another... plus they can be a patio pot if my 40-yr-old schoolroom Spanish got it right?

greentongue -- who LOVES her peppers, as long as they rate under 6 Scoville Units. The rest of them become Jerry Baker deer repellant.

From a lady in California who sold their seeds on eBay this spring: "PEPPER PADRON(55 days) Originating from Galicia, Spain comes this taste sensation. Also called the "Pimiento de Padrone" pepper. Little sweet chili size peppers often fried whole. Horned shaped about the size of a habanero pepper they are an heirloom pepper of Spain and very relished there. Every 10th or so will be extremely hot making for a fun game of culinary roulette. If left to ripen red they will be quite spicy. To get them just right pick when they are about the size of large olives. Toss the peppers, seeds, stems and all, into a hot skillet with olive oil. The tiny peppers are blistered first on one side, then the other, before being salted and plated for serving. Provides a very spicy and wonderful paprika if ripened and dried."

From Wikipedia:The most famous produce of Padrón are its peppers (pimientos de Padrón), which are small green peppers from the Capsicum Annuum family. They are served fried with olive oil and coarse salt. Most taste sweet and mild, though some are particularly hot and spicy, which gives its character to the dish and is perfectly captured in the popular "Os pementos de Padrón, uns pican e outros non" (Galician for "Padrón peppers, some are hot and some are not"). The level of heat varies according to the capsaicin of each pepper. Although it's not always the case, the peppers grown towards August/September tend to contain more capsaicin than the ones of June/July.

From eBay seller in Spain: Cultiva en tu propio balcón o terraza tu propia cosecha de estos sabrosísimos pimientos. La planta del pimiento es muy decorativa. My "pidgin Spanish" translation is roughly this: These extremely delicious peppers can be grown (in a pot????) on your balcony; Beautiful ornamental plant. (Plus you get to try the peppers)

There were 2 eBay sellers of this pepper in Spain plus a Spanish seed site on internet at large ... all with same stock picture, suggesting possibly a commercial source of the seeds in Europe?

Notes to seed savers: Garden Seed Inventory Sixth Edition and Seed Savers Exchange 2007 Yearbook do not list this pepper. It may be hard to find seeds in USA because we have such a wealth of other peppers to eat ... or just because they don't do well here. Guess I'll be finding out!!

I was also very interested in a pepper listed by one of the eBay sellers as PIMIENTO VERDE OIMBRA (Pimiento de Orense). Internet Research showed pictures of a festival in the town of Orense each August where 20,000 kilos of these peppers are roasted and served. The town is near the Mediterranean coast, which suggests climate needs of this plant. I'm planning afternoon shade for them here in Arkansas. They should handle humidity, but no cooling sea breezes here!

Seed people EVERYWHERE are so nice! I bought the last listed available pkt of Orense seeds, and my order came quickly. But I received a note of apology and a pkt of Italian Cornos as a substitute for the Orense ... then one day a month later the ordered pkt just showed up in the mail box! Hope my Spanish was good enough to express my delight in having my order filled after all! The Orense in its pix looks like a fat poblano or a mashed Buran ... no mention of heat that I could decipher. My Spanish ain't too good.... but if they're serving 50,000 pounds of them to turistas, I doubt if they are significanly spicy...

Greentongue

Gourmet Seed list Padron pepper page 31. gourmetseed.com

Thank you, Fez920. I don't have their catalog, but I ordered from their website, including 2 other peppers but I missed the Padrone listing entirely!! They put it under SWEET ??? peppers, and text is very similar to that used by eBay seller in California, but pix is not that same as others I have seen.

In all my web searches, I think I looked most often for a hot pepper, so that may have been why I didn't find very many references to it.

Greentongue

I will be heading to Barcelona twice at the end of Nov and if I can obtain the Pedron seeds, I will be bringing quite a few back, since its not readily available here. I have looked everywhere and were unable to find them. I will try and make them available if anyone is interested.

Hello Folks:
I grew Padrone this summer, and got the seed from
www.growitalian.com (Bill McKay of Massachusetts)
The Padrones I grew were mostly hot. I had six plants out and only a few of the small early peppers were sweet. So, I guess I had the reverse - 1 out of ten was sweet. Anyway, I liked them since I like hot peppers - they wake you up :-)

The seed is from Franchi Sementi. There are way many more seeds in these European packets than in American packets. sigh.

Good luck!
Maryanne in WMass (back to lurkdom)

Spent a fair amount of time in Spain and ate a LOT of padron peppers. Almost Always sweet, in fact I never had a hot one anywhere in Spain except Barcelona where every other one was hot!
We have been growing them in pots here in the NW for the last 3 summers, they seem to be slow to get growing and germination is slow. I figured out this year that heat will get them growing faster. We get hot in August and September and that is when we get peppers and once flowering starts they are prolific. The peppers we have grown have a hot one now and then (called, "Spanish Roulette") but not 1 in ten.
Galicia has a climate similar to the Northwest and I have seen peppers for sale
every once in a while around here. I think Oregon and N California are more like it. We are in Seattle and it's OK but not hot enough in the summer.
Rain's a lot in Galicia that is similar.

Hi, I just ran across these seeds from Renee's Garden and also Franchi Simenti carries them as well. Our farmer's market usually have fresh padrons as well in season. They are so yummy, if you haven't tried them you are really missing out.

I harvested some very hot padrones, and have taken some of the seeds and am drying them in prep to plant them. Has anyone used their own seeds like this? Luck? By the way, I've ground up and diluted in water and am using as earwig destroyer. Usually I use dry cayenne pepper around the plants - anyone used padrone spray?

Padrons are one of our favorites! Johnny's sells them now. We pickled them last year (fermented) and are still working our way through them, out of the fridge. They do quite well here in zone 5.