I was down at the Native Seeds Search Store in Tucson.
www.nativeseeds.org and I discovered the secret to growing your own Tepin!
Since the plants were originally brought up from birds from south
America it makes sense to pass these little guys through a bird first.
They say that the seeds must be passed through a bird or soaked for
sometime before the seed will germinate. Some kind of protective coating
on them.
I started feeding whole tepin peppers to my girlfriend's parrot and the
bird loves them! I will soon be knee deep in parrot poop! I do not have
any tepin peppers to work with from my own plant for a few more weeks
but we have been feeding it the peppers from the Sierra Madres species
and so far so good. We plan to plant those at her place so not to cross
polinate with my AZ variety.

I will keep you posted on when I can feed her bird some of my new crop.
I wonder what I can get for parrot poop on ebay?

B