Last edited on 9 Oct 2019. View history
Guajillo Pepper
A variety of chili pepper
How to sow guajillo pepper: Direct seed indoors, transplant seedlings outside after hardening off
Sun requirement for guajillo pepper: Plant in Full Sun
Guajillo chiles are a Capsicum annuum variety of chili pepper. The upright plants produce 7-15mm tapered peppers that ripen from green to orange, red, or brown when mature. The peppers are mildly spicy and sweet, with a Scoville rating of 2,500-5,000 units. Guajillo means "little gourd" in Spanish and the peppers get their name from the rattling sound the seeds make in dried pods. Guajillo chiles are in the "Holy Trinity of Chiles" with ancho and pasilla peppers - the three are used to make Mexican mole sauces. Guajillo chiles can also be added to salsa or dried and made into a paste for flavoring meat.
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Guajillo pepper facts
What are growing degree days?
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For guajillo pepper, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 8°C and a shortest growing cycle of 60 days at its best temperature, about 930 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your guajillo pepper will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Growing guajillo peppers
- Sow seeds indoors somewhere warm 10 weeks before planting out
- Pot on the seedlings 6 weeks before planting out
- Harden off the seedlings 1 week before planting out
- Set or refill beer traps for slugs and snails at planting out every week
- Stake the plants 2 weeks after planting out
- Water regularly at planting out every week
- Check for aphids 2 weeks after planting out every 2 weeks
- Feed with tomato fertiliser 6 weeks after planting out every 2 weeks
- Pick chillies regularly at first harvest every week
- Bring pots in before the first frost 3 months after first harvest
Plant guajillo peppers with
ginger
Video
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Ecological requirements
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Capsicum annuum L.
| Family / Taxonomy | Magnoliopsida Asteridae Solanales Solanaceae |
|---|---|
| Optimal temperature | 17 - 30 °C |
| Absolute temperature | 8 - 35 °C |
| Optimal rainfall | 600 - 1250 mm/year |
| Absolute rainfall | 500 - 1700 mm/year |
| Optimal soil pH | 5.5 - 6.8 |
| Absolute soil pH | 4.5 - 7.0 |
| Crop cycle | 60 - 180 days |
| Max altitude | 3000 m |
| Life form | herb |
| Life span | annual |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | medium (50-150 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | medium, organic |
| Optimal soil fertility | moderate |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | short day (<12 hours), neutral day (12-14 hours) |
| Optimal light | very bright |
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