West Park Bird's Eye (Piri Piri) Pepper

This Bird's Eye Chili, or Piri Piri Pepper, is a South African heirloom with intensely hot flavor. The small, slender fruits are about 1-in long and and ripen from green-purple to red earlier than other frutescens peppers. These plants are incredibly productive. Bird's Eye peppers were brought to Mozambique from South America by the Portuguese and are now popular across southern Africa, as well as Brazil, Portugal, India, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. The fruits are commonly dried and used to to make traditional piri piri sauce. 

Days to maturity: 60-70

Seeds per pack: 25

Germination rate: 77% on 01/23/2025

Planting / harvesting notes

Start seeds indoors 8-10 weeks before the last frost and transplant into garden well after the danger of frost. Keep seedlings moist but do not overwater. Transplants should be initially watered in well, and plants will be most productive with regular irrigation and full sun.

Seed keeping notes

Peppers are generally self-pollinating, though we isolate different varieties of the same species by at least 50 feet, in hopes that flying insects will not cross pollinate them unexpectedly. There are several important species of peppers, so check your scientific names! Pepper seeds are ripe when the fruits have turned their final fiery color - in this case, fully red. Cut the fruit, scrape out seeds, and lay them out to dry on a labeled screen or paper product in a ventilated place away from direct sunlight for a week or two. Drying the peppers before seed extraction can slightly lower your germination rates, but works fine for home seed saving as long as the peppers do not rot.

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