anyone know of a short/medium height strain that will give me that strong pepper taste again?
Most strains with a lot of sativa in them are taller, but you can use a SCRoG or other similar training technique, and/or pruning them down a bit after the veg cycle to keep the height down.
A guy I know grows mostly sativa strains (mostly Kali Mist) like this to keep them under 3 feet tall (with added instructions if you want them even shorter):
1. He lets them grow up to 5-6 sets of real leaves (not including the little baby leaves it starts with) in veg stage. This also gives the plant time to develop more roots which he feels makes it flower much stronger and develop more bud when that time comes.
2. He then trims it down just above the second set of real leaves using this technique which he sais usually gives him 4 main colas instead of just one. This cuts the height down several inches.
Reference link:
https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/151706-uncle-bens-topping-technique-get.html
3. He keeps it in veg 3-7 more days until the plant recovers fully from the shock of being trimmed and he sees the new limbs starting to grow and look healthy.
4. He then begins flowering the plant by changing from MH lighting to HPS and cuts the light cycle from 18/6 to 12/12.
He has 4 feet of clearance which gives him room for 3' of growth and 5-6" between the plant tops and light (he has an enclosed 250 watt digital HID with good cooling so he can have his light that close without causing any damage).
He sais you could easily use a SCRoG or training to keep the vertical height to as low as 18" (or MAYBE even 12") if you wanted, as long as you have enough horizontal space to let the plants grow wide instead of tall. He estimated you'd need about a 3x3 horizontal growing space to keep one propery trained plant that normally grew to 4-5 feet down to only 18-24" tall this way. He also suggests if you decide to do this, you will need either a 400 watt or two 150-250 watt HIDs to adequately cover the additional horizontal space (which is why he prefers to let them grow taller because he has the vertical space and gets good results with just the one 250 watt light that way).
I've never done this myself, but he grows Kali Mist this way and it is
spectacular stuff! He claims he gets 4-6 oz minimum per plant this way and sometimes an ounce or two more than that on exceptional grows. I can't vouch for the
quantity of his stuff, but I sure can for the
quality of his harvests! And yea, it has that spicy/peppery taste! heh
I hope this helps...