DOTE Garden is a physical space in the city of Palermo, conceived and cared for by the collective Aterraterra. It is born out of Listening to Seeds, the third moment in our Year of Listening. You can visit the garden by reading the stories of the seeds that have been planted in it. This is one of the stories.
Pupi pepper is a very special and sweet pepper, it is the surprising result of a free and accidental cross pollination among different varieties of Pepper. In 2021 we started to grow some plants of Black Aztec chilli pepper that were very beautiful and gave us a lot of black peppers. In late summer we decided to store some seeds and we took around 30 seeds from a mature pepper fruit. The following spring we sowed all these seeds and the small plants that sprouted had leaves that were very dark, almost black, just like the previous generation. Only one had green leaves with some darker shades. When summer came all the plants grew and produced fruit, all similar to the previous generation: more or less pointed, very spicy and dark in color at first and at maturity red. The plant with green leaves, on the other hand, not only remained smaller than the others but produced small round peppers, first green then bright red, not spicy at all and with a very sweet flavor. We named this plant Pupi and at the end of last summer we harvested seeds from its fruits. Probably these seeds will also be the result of a new cross pollination with other bell pepper and chili pepper varieties that were growing nearby. We will find out this year what surprises these seeds will give us, some of which will grow in the Dote Garden.
Photo by: Stefania Galegati
