I'm really lucky, in that i (so far) don't suffer from ring-burn. I'm guessing my big ol' gut is just like a furnace, and it burns all the cap before it goes thru... but who knows? I'll definitely revise my diet if ever that changes. A bit of burn while i'm eating is enjoyable, but i bet the flipside ain't much fun at all.
As far as growing in NJ, it alld epends on the plant. I've grown a lot of Poblanos, Jalapeños, Serranos, and other "easy" annuums just by starting them indoors by a window (or in the greenhouse at work) in early March and planting them outside in mid April---after i'm pretty sure we won't get any more frost...
This year, I'm growing hotter chinense peppers, which take long, and i just moved so i've been too busy to get in gear as far as starting those. I wanted to startm' by mid-January; hopefully, i'll get to them this week. My plan is to get some fluorescent grow lights and flexwatt heat tape, to help jumpstart the germination. The plants should be pretty strong by the time the last frost is done, and these varieties take a whole lot longer to throw out flowers and fruit, so you gotta start'm early and they'l need light.
I'm not sure what you've been growing, but this will be the first time i had a real garden of my own in a while. I'd been growing through a "jopbsite" at work, and i'd been starting seedlings that a friend of mine grows out in her garden, but i've been an apartment guy for a long time now. I will say that, these past few years in NJ, seems like a lot of folks are struggling with blight on their tomatoes. The friend of mine is a hippie, and the farm we got at work is quasi-"organic," too, so we always have problems with pests like borer beetles, grasshoppers, etc.... all the critters too big to get done-in by ladybugs and lacewings. But, some stuff, like eggplants, zucchinis, okra, and some of the chile peppers (especially Serranos, Hungarian Wax, and Jalapeños) just grow like weeds and produce a whole lot for me.
I'm lucky in that my mom is an accomplished gardener with like a thousand years experience growing food in NJ, so she's always good for advice when problems pop up. I got plenty of work to do out here; my house is in Gloucester, so the soil is suspect. I wanna build some raised beds and load'm up with compost and clean fill by Spring. . . as if i don't have a hundred projects going on inside, not to mention bike projects.... But, if i get even a half-decent crop of evil chiles, I'll be happy. (I'm probably going to start a lot of seedlings and donate them to the farm site at my job.... see where that gets me.)
I can't just eat whole peppers when it's the crazy stuff. But I really like the flavor of ghost peppers, so I buy ghost pepper sauces for sammiches and such. And I cook with ghosts and dried adobos. I had a carolina reaper sauce at work a few days ago that was great. We have a lot of sauces made fairly local. There are two stores here with a local sauce selection, basically all NC-made sauces. The variety changes quite a bit, so we get to try a lot of different stuff.
I guess there are some worse things to argue about....
