A beautiful little pepper plant with it's variegated foliage and oddly colored/striped peppers. This guy was slow to start producing, honestly we didn't think it would even do anything. It's heat is a #3 according to the Seed Savers Exchange heat index. I found that to be true, although I don't eat straight hot peppers so I really wouldn't know. Average pepper size was around 2 inches, tiny but with a kick. I'll grow this again next year only probably not as many plants.
Sweet Chocolate:
Only a small handful of these got to the chocolate color before we had to pick them due to cold. The ones that did make it to the chocolate stage were beautiful, a shinny brown outside and brick red inside. Not as sweet as the name implies, they had a bit more heat for a sweet pepper given it's heat number is #0. Not anything unbearable but warmer than your traditional 'green pepper'. This little plant was pretty prolific, which was surprising. I only put 3 out this year, next year I will grow more.
Joe's Long Cayenne:
Prolific, loaded, weighed down. I put in 5 of these thinking that should be enough for all the salsa I want to can. YIKES I am over run with these. We had the same problem with the cayenne as the chocolate, due to cold not many of them are red like the name cayenne implies. Our harvest was mostly green but some we managed to pamper to red. Much of these we will dry and have green cayenne powder. I intend to grow these again but not as many since they did so well. Heat #3.
Quadrato Asti Giallos: (Green Bell Pepper)
I didn't think these would attain much size but was surprised. They didn't get to the grocery store giant size, but held there own for stuffed green peppers. A really good sweet taste it's heat number is #0. The plants only had 7 or less peppers on them. I had a hard time germinating these, so I'll make sure to double the amount I try. I was only able to put 3 plants out in the garden and I'd like at least 6 or more for next year.
Wenks Yellow Hots:
Another prolific hot pepper a #3. These guys were tall, leggy plants and loaded with little yellow hot peppers. They get a lovely fire orange the longer they are on the plant. I had the easiest time growing this variety. It was the first to put out "fruit" and produced for the longest time. I will grow this again but not as many since I had two other varieties of heat for salsa's.
Next year I would like to grow an Anaheim pepper for a larger roasted pepper. I ended up purchasing some of these from the farmers market to roast and freeze. I roasted much of the Wenks harvest they will make a great spicy addition to pizzas and hummus. Knowing how poorly the germination rate was, I will make sure to start more of the varieties I really like or felt I needed more of. I was pretty happy with our pepper choices for this year and how well they performed in this strange growing year.
I will point out this fAAAAAbulous post to Windy as he will thoroughly appreciate the peppers. My mind loves the growing and the stories - my body starts to go into alarm...
ReplyDeleteYou guys are fabulous! I am so proud of all the hard work you've been doing. Your royal harvest it the crowning glory of all that work. Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteI've been passing around your blog address to other friends who live on a city lot and want to expand their small garden to make the yard more productive and to supplement/improve their food sources.
You are lucky you don't have any tall trees to contend with. My back yard, while sizable, doesn't get sun until noon. I can raise tomatoes but everything is slow to grow and to ripen.
Do you have a feel for how much you harvest? I know it's a ton of food (possibly literally) but do you think you can feed yourselves for say, a year from your yard?
wow, nice harvest! I think I would like to grow anaheims too. Lovely blog!
ReplyDeleteWendy- Thank you very much!
ReplyDeleteThat is an awesome review of peppers. You are growing so many varieties that is awesome. If you like hot hot peppers, try growing habaneros / scotch bonnet pepper. We are growing them and they are so prolific and spicy!
ReplyDeletemeemsnyc- I think habaneros might kill me, aren't they the hottest peppers ever?
ReplyDeleteConeflower- Thank you! I am considering getting a big scale and weighing how much we produce next year. We can feed ourselves mostly from our yard but not completely since we don't grow any wheat or other flour grain. But almost all of our vegetables come from our back yard. The tree fruits we get from the farmers market since ours are to little to produce much. Someday we hope to be able to raise 90% of our food. But I may have to rethink that spiral garden out front in order to do that.... :o)