Gardening and Plant Thread

[CEO of Gay]

I generally like to plant peppers of different varieties near each other because you often end up with fortuitous crossing. My exception is for superhots which I usually keep separate because I specifically don't want crossing with those. I neither want to be shocked by a "mild" pepper suddenly turning out to be demonic, nor have a disappointing superhot.

That's a good policy to have, at least with different varieties in the same species (which is most varieties you'll get that the grocery store). With different species, the risk of crossing can vary, with the hybrid being viable for at least the F1 generation, or not viable at all. In either case, the nature of the pods themselves is determined entirely by the genetics of the mother plant, so a bell grown next to a ghost pepper won't produce spicy bells, but if you keep seeds year over year, your next year's bells might be surprise nuclear weapons.