Rosie Reaper 

Year 4 

Making hot sauce is like torturing yourself (honestly, I don’t know why I do it). However, each year I still do and I love it. I make the hot sauce in my home and it takes about 1 hour, 30 mins of actually making it, and 30 mins of recovery…. burning eyes, burning throat, and so much coughing. When you think you're done coughing there is always more coughing. The whole goal is to make hot sauce and hot pepper flakes without waste and that goal has finally been met after four years. 

Year 1 

As the story goes, I wanted a cactus, because I had killed the last one and I was determined to care for one. I knew it was supposed to be easy and many people had confirmed this fact, but with each attempt before, each would end in failure. During the month of May, my family and I went to the plant adoption place (otherwise known as a nursery). Upon arrival, I was dead set on getting my cactus after all it was the only reason for me being out here. I searched and searched yet nothing. Just like every angsty teenager, I became angry when I couldn't find what I wanted. I wasn’t leaving empty-handed but was beginning to lose my shit. 

Then in the back corner, I spied with my little eye a red WARNING tag. EXTREMELY HOT PROCEED WITH CAUTION! I knew what this hidden corner gem was, and with the words Carolina Reaper scribbled on the plant stands I could only stand there shocked. I knew I needed to grow it! At the time I knew it was a hot pepper to never be messed with. 

To put it into perspective, the Carolina Reaper Chili Pepper is 400 times spicier than the Jalapeno pepper that some people get on pizzas. They measure the heat intensity via the Scoville scale. Jalapeno is spicy for some at 2,500 but the Reaper is like fire at 1,400,000 on the scale. 

Quickly I glanced through the plants and snagged the smallest but the healthiest looking, however, they all looked pretty pathetic. As I showed my parents I couldn’t help but notice my mother seemed almost uncomfortable with it. She saw the warning signs and wondered why it had to be this plant of all plants. But her sense of upset and concern didn’t stop me and so I got it anyway! 

Never got that Cactus! 

We got home and I quickly planted it in its own pot, a pink pot. Day after day I watched as that plant began to shed its old leaves and replace them with healthier leaves. I measured it as the plant quickly grew taller by the week. I watched as the green stem quickly hardened and turned a barkish tan. My plant was growing (take that cactus people) and growing strong. Watering each dusk as the summer heat beat down on us all and dragging it inside if there was a heavy storm (I still do that). After the first year, I noticed that it had not grown any peppers. This caused me to do some much-needed research, and I found that some peppers do not produce their fruit until after they have grown out of adolescence, meaning my Reaper was not old enough to produce. I wouldn’t lie I was disappointed by this, but I came this far and I wanted results over anything else.    

Year 2

We repeated the process with the Carolina Reaper. After the harsh winter, we placed it outside once more. But a few weeks in, I returned to its side and noticed the plant had flowers, tiny white flowers all around the leaves and branches. I was ecstatic. Those white flowers quickly popped off and with close inspection, you could see a tiny green pepper for each. Days turned by and green peppers turned to yellow, orange, and then finally red. I watched as the plant produced enchanting yet dangerous fruit. They don’t tell you that gloves, masks, and eye protection are much needed when handling such a fruit. As more fruit came in I began to research hot sauce. I could not let them rot, there needed to be a goal to reach and this was it. 

The first time I made the hot sauce I wanted to die, gasping for air only to inhale more spice, the temptations of not touching any part of my skin with the infected gloves. As I mixed the ingredients together I learned for the first time the smell of the fruity death. Slowly I placed each liquid into a clean hot sauce bottle that we bought online and the first four bottles were made, the holy grail of the Reaper. I was very proud of myself, I had done it. Yet each year doesn’t come without concerns. 

Year 2 End    

Anger would quickly set in as I watched the Aphids destroy what I created, I wouldn’t let them. I had no idea how hard it would be. Someday I wanted to call it quits, but I wouldn’t let them win. “I don’t raise a bitch” quickly became my slogan for the battle against the mites. The leaves falling off, the endless mites, the infinite search for organic pesticides and Neem oil, and it seemed like they were winning. They were spreading like crazy, the sap from their feast all over the wood paneling of my flooring. It seemed like my plant was going to die. Until one day the mites had nothing left to eat, every leaf was gone and every branch barren. I was so angry. But once more I wouldn’t let it die. After all, I don’t raise bitches, and leaf by leaf the greens began to return and the plant revived itself. This would happen once more and the mites would feast again at the end of the next year. But this time I was prepared, I found a spray (the soap spray), “unlocked its secrets and shattered my enemy's resolve” (Halo Reach). 

Today 

I still have the plants and I am actually raising many more this year. I have a Trinidad Chocolate (not real chocolate, these peppers turn brown when ripening instead of the default red) Scorpion which is 2 years old now, and I also have new seedlings, Thai, Habanero, Long Hots, and a genetic alteration of the Carolina Reaper, called the Peach Reaper (not a real peach they just look peach colored) and lastly a Ghost pepper. I know they will all grow tall because I don’t raise bitches.

But we'll see who survives….    

Works Cited 

Halo Reach [Video Game] Halo Reach: First-Person Shooter. for Windows PC, Xbox, Playstation, Bungie, and 343 Industries 2010 - 2022.