A heavy frost did-in my pepper patch, so I harvested all the peppers that remained and were not ruined by the frost.  That yielded a full basket of sweet bell, banana and lipstick peppers: more than we could possibly use before they go bad.  I have a shelf full of canned, sliced peppers; bags and bags of frozen peppers, several jars of dried peppers… what can I do with these final sweet peppers for a bit of variety?

Marie turned to the internet and came up with a recipe for sweet pepper relish. This one is tagged with the word Heinz, so I assume that company is somehow the original source, so I’ll mention that, although the recipe was found on www.food.com.

 

Ingredients for Sweet Pepper Relish

• 6 medium green bell peppers
• 6 medium ripe bell peppers (red, yellow, orange, mix & match)
• 3 medium onions
• 2 – 4 hot peppers (optional)
• 1 ½ cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon pickling salt
• 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 1 tablespoon celery seeds
• 2 cloves garlic

Tools & Supplies

• At least 4 pint canning jars with lids and bands
• Hot water bath canner
• Canning tool set (wide mouth funnel, jar lifter, head space tool, etc)
• 6 – 8 Qt. enamelware or stainless steel sauce pan or stock pot
• Paring knife
• Ladle
• Wood, plastic or stainless stirring spoon
• Measuring cup and spoons
• Rubber gloves (optional)
   

Directions

 

Set up your canner and use it to sanitize 4 to 6 pint jars and lids by boiling them for 10 minutes.  Reduce the heat but keep them hot while you prepare the relish.

Stick your onions in the freezer for a few minutes to reduce the eye irritation that occurs while chopping them.

Wash, core and seed the peppers.  If you are including hot peppers (jalapenos, habaneros, Serrano – I’m using Cajun belles) you may want to wear gloves to prevent spreading the capsasin to delicate parts of your face. Washing your hands, even with soap and water does not remove this element from your skin.

  

Skin and cut the onions to manageable pieces.

Mince the garlic.

In a food processor chop the peppers and onion.

Combine all your ingredients in the saucepan or stock pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.

 

Boil for 25 – 30 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Turn off heat.

Ladle the relish into hot canning jars, leaving ½” of head space. Use a skewer or other non-metallic item to poke the relish to release any trapped air bubbles.

Clean the jar rim and threads and the lid seal with a clean paper towel.  Install the lid and band, tightening the band just to finger tight (careful, they’re HOT: use your jar wrench to hold the jar while you snug the band).

Use your jar lifter to place the filled jars into the canner (still containing hot water) as you fill them.

When all jars are filled, in the canner, and well covered with water, turn up the heat under the canner and bring it back to a boil.  Cover and reduce heat as necessary to maintain a rolling boil, but not so vigorous as to splatter excessively or to knock the jars into one another.  Check it occasionally to be sure the jars remain covered with water.

Process in boiling water for a minimum of 15 minutes, adjust this for your altitude.

When processing is complete, turn off the heat and allow to cool a bit before removing the jars.  Mine took only a few minutes to cool to the point that the lids sealed down and went “plink” even though still in the water.  If you MUST remove them from the canner immediately, handle them gently, do not tilt them and snug up the bands as quickly as you can to insure that the lids are held tightly to the jar rim until they seal.

Let the jars cool completely.

Refrigerate any jars that don’t seal and use those first.

If you choose to leave the bands on the jars, remove them first, wipe out any moisture that remains and put them back on.  Once sealed the bands are not needed but, if you prefer the appearance or feel better about having the bands on them, get the moisture out so the band and lid don’t corrode. 

Uses for Sweet Pepper Relish

You can use this relish in place of sweet pickle relish in most dishes such as deviled eggs or potato salad and as a condiment on hot dogs, hamburgers and sandwiches.  Traditionally (here in the South), vegetable relish or chow-chow is used as a topping for white beans as a low cost main dish.  Pepper relish is also a favored garnish for pork.  It is unique and flavorful enough to be used alone as a side dish if you wish.  Spice up your family’s dining table and try some sweet pepper relish.

Stevia for the Sugar Sensitive

In this batch I substituted ground raw stevia from our garden for the sugar. I harvested the stevia plant just a while ago (it builds the most sweetness in the late fall) bundled the sprigs and hung them to air dry.  Use just the leaves, the stems and flowers don’t  contain the stevioside that make this plant sweet.

 

You may drop a leaf or two into beverages like tea or coffee to sweeten it and retain easy retrieval.  Raw stevia does not dissolve even if ground to a powder and will form “dregs” in the bottom of your cup if used as a beverage sweetener.  However, stevia has a very sugar-like taste that holds up well to most cooking and it has no appreciable effect on your glucose levels, so it makes an excellent sweetener for diabetics or the diet conscious.  It also lacks the nasty side effects of aspartame.

 

Your only limitations on the use of stevia are that it will not caramelize; so making fudge or caramel is not possible and it does not activate yeast; so many baked goods will not rise like you expect.  In most other cooking ground, raw stevia will not make a difference in appearance or taste from sugar.  You can buy a white, powdered stevia extract that will dissolve in liquids; but the other limitations remain.

 

Using stevia is simple: for each cup of sugar called for in the recipe, use 1 tablespoon of raw powdered stevia or 1 teaspoon of the dry processed stevia extract.

I have found that stevia grows well here in Tennessee even though it is a tropical plant.  It will not survive winter, and starting from seed is almost impossible; so I take cuttings in the fall, root them, pot them and keep them indoors until late spring when warm weather returns.  Then I transfer them back to my herb bed in the garden.

I hope you have enjoyed this recipe and will give Sweet Pepper Relish a whirl.

I have decided that there is nothing like a dish of fresh peas to make a spring day perfect! Yesterday afternoon around lunchtime, I went to the garden hoping to rescue a few final pods before I pulled up the vines to plant the jalapeños. This spring has been unseasonably warm in the Shenandoah Valley, and the peas have not been happy at all with temperatures hovering around 90 degrees. To my surprise, there were still quite a few chubby shells hanging bravely on the wilted pea plants. Enough pods to fill a little bowl with springtime goodness!

I found a perfect recipe for fresh peas: Bring a small amount of water to boil, add shelled peas, return to a boil and heat for about 10 seconds. This creates a sweet, firm texture and the peas literally pop in your mouth!

In other gardening news, I think I harvested the elephant garlic too soon. At least that’s what Edna tells me. But there were flowers forming on top of the plants, so I thought it was time to dig up the bulbs. The garlic seems to be fine, although I will admit the bulbs  would probably have gotten bigger had I heeded my neighbor’s advice (not that I’d ever tell her that!).  Nevertheless, I now have a garage full of fragrant garlic braids, drying in the steaming heat of this too-early summer. 

The rabbits are eyeing my newly planted broccoli plants. I reminded them that I didn’t mind sharing as long as I didn’t know I was sharing! I hope they understood the gravity in my voice. We negotiated quite well with the spinach, I can only assume we will divide the broccoli crop equally well.

Seven more days in the Schoolhouse, and then I will be a full time Theoretical Farmer. I am certainly looking forward to changing hats.

This year I planted a whole passel of peppers: bell peppers that can be harvested as green peppers or allowed to ripen and become red, yellow or orange bell peppers, jalapeno peppers that can be harvested green as standard jalapenos or allowed to ripen to bright red and become hot chilies, cayenne peppers, hot banana peppers, sweet banana peppers, and chocolate bell peppers.  But, we can eat only so many peppers as they come in from the garden; especially the hot peppers – a little of those goes a long way!  So I needed to find ways to preserve the excess for use later in the year.  Here’s what I came up with.

NOTE: When working with hot peppers, wear rubber gloves and be careful not to touch your eyes, mouth or other sensitive parts of your body.  The capsaicin in the peppers that gives them their hot flavor is an oily substance that does not wash off your hands and will cause serious discomfort if rubbed into a sensitive area.  Even regular skin like your arm or leg can become irritated if you scratch an itch while working with hot peppers.  Take care in cleaning up your counters and utensils because the oil can transfer from one item to another or back onto your hands.

When washing your peppers for processing and storage, using a bath of 3 parts water and 1 part white vinegar to soak peppers (or most any vegetable for that matter) for ten minutes will kill 98% of the bacteria on them.  Rinse with tap water before processing.  This will also extend the time fresh vegetables can be stored in the fridge before they begin getting that slimy feel as a result of bacteria growing on them.

Red vs Green Jalapenos

According to The Peppermaster, (and many others who I checked with) green jalapenos do indeed turn red when left on the plant long enough (this came as quite a shock to me when mine did this).  Normally the jalapenos are picked while green, smooth and waxy in appearance for appearances sake.  But if you want heat… let them mature.  When the brown striations appear heat is building.  When they mature into red chilies they take on the most heat.  I think they also develop a sweeter taste.  The Peppermaster says the red jalapenos are also higher in Vitamin C than the green peppers.

Freezing Peppers

Peppers are really easy to freeze because you don’t need to bother with blanching or pealing them first, just cut the peppers up into manageable pieces, remove the webbing and seeds, lay them on a cookie sheet, and place in the freezer.  When they are frozen, quickly transfer to a zippered freezer bag, squeeze out as much air as you can and pop them back into the freezer.  To prevent freezer burn even more, using a vacuum packing machine to remove all the air greatly extends the life of the frozen peppers.

When vacuum packing I like to package them in portion sized packs; what we would typically use to make a pot of soup or casserole because the vacuum bags don’t reseal.  Peppers for short term storage in zippered freezer bags can be larger amounts and we’ll just pull out what we need and put the rest back in the freezer.  This is the advantage of freezing the pieces individually before bagging.  If you toss the raw peppers into a bag and freeze them, they tend to freeze together into a lump that must be thawed and used en-masse.

Freezing peppers will cause the skins of some peppers to get tough and fibrous, but their skins will slip off easily when they thaw, just don’t dice these peppers.  Naturally, when you thaw the peppers they will not be as crisp as the raw peppers, but they will still have all the flavor and can be well used in cooking or sandwiches – they’re just not all that great in salads.

Drying Peppers

Dehydrating peppers is also easily done and has the advantage of taking up far less space than the frozen variety because they will shrivel considerably as their water content is removed.  Once dried, most peppers can be reconstituted by soaking them in hot water and used in cooked dishes, but they will be even squishier than the frozen peppers.  Crushed up dried peppers can be used as a spice to add flavor to your cooking.  I have not tried this with sweet peppers, but doubt that the flavor would be the same.  Adding heat to your meals with crushed, dried hot peppers works very well.

Cayenne peppers can be dried by stringing them, spaced an inch or two apart, on fishing line or light string tied to the green stem part and hanging or by laying the peppers on a paper towel on a cookie sheet and turning them daily.  Store the peppers in a relatively cool, dry place while drying.  Either method takes several weeks to dry the peppers.

Drying peppers in an oven set at 135° (door propped open a little to let moisture out) or a food dehydrator makes faster work of it and works for all peppers.  The fleshier peppers tend to mold before they dry at room temperature.  Cut the caps off small peppers to allow the warm air to circulate inside and leave them mostly whole if you like (the seeds and webbing contain a lot of the heat from hot peppers) or cut the peppers open and remove their “innards”.

Sun drying peppers can be done in areas that get strong sunshine for 8 to 10 hours a day.  Cut the peppers into strips and lay them on cookie sheets or plastic wrap covered pieces of plywood.  This may take a few days; plan to refrigerate them between sun sessions.

Canning Peppers

Any fleshy pepper (this would exclude Cayenne’s) can be canned.  Again, the cooking process will make the resulting peppers softer than the raw peppers, and canning can take away some of the flavor.  Canned peppers are good for use in soups, stews, casseroles, and on sandwiches.

Cayenne peppers can be added to canned foods to impart flavor, but will need to be fished out and disposed of when the product is opened.

Peppers can be canned as pickled peppers in a vinegar based brine, or packed in water if you don’t care for pickles.  However, if you go the water-packed route you MUST use a pressure canner.  Only a pressure canner can heat the contents to the 240° that is necessary to kill the Botulism bacteria that are present in the food and would grow in the anaerobic environment of canned foods to cause serious illness or death.  The vinegar used in the pickled versions is acidic enough to kill botulism at the 212° degrees reached with a hot water bath canner.

Canned foods are perfectly safe as long as you are careful to process them correctly, prevent contamination, and get a good, tight seal between lid and jar.  If you don’t have one already, get a good canning cookbook as reference on how to process various foods.

Smaller peppers can be canned whole, but be sure to poke three or four holes or small slits in the pepper to allow air to escape and brine or water to enter while processing.  Also note that some pepper recipes require the peppers must be HOT when packing the jars and filling with brine; you will want to be boiling up your brine or water while blanching the peppers.  Read that recipe carefully before starting!

According to www.JalapenoMadness.com, canning will also cause jalapeno & chili pepper skins to get tough.  To remove the skins, roast or blister the peppers before processing.  Roasting your peppers on a grill over hickory or apple wood chips adds a delightful smoky flavor to the peppers.  Use tongs to turn the peppers frequently just until the skins are blackened evenly (unless you’ve cleaned the peppers already, then leave them skin side down).  Don’t overcook them.  Remove from grill and cool enough to handle.  The skins will now peel right off.  Similarly, you can blister the peppers under the broiler of your oven or in a skillet with the burner set on medium high, but you won’t get that roasted pepper flavor.  Other recipes for canned peppers did not mention this aspect of jalapenos.  I just canned four pints of assorted hot pepper pickles; I’ll let you know if the jalapenos get tough.  Or if you’ve done it before, you tell me what to expect.

A Few General Notes on Canning:

Be sure you adjust the processing time for either pressure cooked or hot water bath for altitude – higher altitudes need longer processing.  Check your canning cookbook for the charts.

If you don’t like the sharp flavor of pickled foods, add some honey or sugar to mellow the taste without diluting the vinegar.

Always use canning or cooking salt, not table salt.  Table salt often contains anti-caking additives which cloud the brine and iodine which will darken many foods, including peppers.

Always use bottled 5% vinegar - malt, distilled, wine, cider, spiced all work.  Draught vinegars are not strong enough, and unless you’ve had it tested, home-made vinegar is not certain enough for use in canning.

If you choose to add spices to your canning solution or brine, use whole spices, not powered, as these will make your brine cloudy.

Use unchipped enamel, aluminum or stainless steel pans for boiling brine. Copper, brass and iron pans will react with the vinegar, giving it a bad taste.

The vinegar in pickling brine can react with and corrode plain steel canning jar lids, buy the ones with a white coating inside to prevent this.

Summary:

To preserve your pepper crop through the winter and spring you can dry them, freeze them, can them – or you can do like I’m doing and split up the crop and try some of each method.  Whichever you choose, it is best to process your peppers within a couple of days of picking, this will mean processing in small batches as they come in rather that storing them up for large runs at the end of the season.

If you’re like me and love the flavor of peppers in cooking, plant yourself a pepper patch, use what you want of the fresh peppers then pack a peck of pickled peppers (or frozen peppers) for use year round and enjoy!

Resources:

http://www.jalapenomadness.com/preserve_jalapenos.html
http://www.pickyourown.org/pepperspickled.htm 
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09314.html 
http://www.canningpantry.com/pickling-chili-peppers.html
http://forums.floridasportsman.com/showthread.php?1610-Canning-Sweet-Peppers 
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art5044.asp 

 

Here at the Bear Cave, we like our food spicy. During the summer and early fall, we love to overdo on fresh peppers in spicy salsa, pimento and cheese sandwiches, stuffed bell peppers and many other pepper dishes. Once in a while, when the poblanos are big enough, Barbara treats us to a great dish of chili relleno, peppers stuffed with a great cheese, breaded, and fried in hot neutral oil. I can’t resist them and have to say it’s a good thing she makes them on special occasions only.

By the way, anchos and poblanos are the same pepper.  Down here in the southwest, we refer to the Capsicum annuum as a poblano when it’s fresh and an ancho when its dried.

    

We've grown four kinds of peppers this year at the Bear Cave: bells, jalapenos, anchos/poblanos, and pimentos. We find that the sweet, heavy bells and pimentos are delicious if we allow them to ripen, then roast and pickle them. Many cooks recommend roasting peppers under the broiler or over the direct flame of a gas range in the kitchen, but around here it's still WAY too hot for that. We prefer to keep the heat outside by using the gas barbecue. The peppers acquire a rich, smoky flavor and the kitchen stays cool.

    
 

So it's pepper harvest and time to crank up the barbecue and roast those babies! Some peppers, especially pimentos and red bells, are perfect candidates for this treatment. They are thick-walled and sturdy, which makes them easy to peel once they're roasted. Besides being much easier to peel prior to pickling when roasted, we enjoy the flavor of a smoky pepper.

The process is simple. Turn all the bbq's burners on high (Our unit has three, and we roast up to a dozen peppers at a time.) and place the whole peppers over the hottest part of the grill. Protect your hands from the heat with oven mitts or heavy gloves, and use long bbq tongs to turn the peppers from time to time as they char. You want to end up with the peppers black all over, the skin completely charred.

    
 

Once the peppers are well blackened, they are put in a sealed container. We use an oven-proof casserole dish with a lid and place the peppers directly in the sealed container to steam after roasting. Peeling is a breeze. We then pickle the roasted peppers in the same way we pickle fresh jalapenos which we describe below.

           
 

Jalapeno peppers are easy to preserve. Just rinse, halve, and remove the stems and seeds. Wear gloves to protect your hands from the hot pepper juice, which can sting skin.

Note: Do not handle these peppers with your bare hands and then rub your eyes or any other sensitive part of your body. Some serious discomfort will be the consequence. But with some care, the very chemical, capsaicin, that can sting will make a great eating experience.

       
 

Barbara is very good about removing the seeds and inner tissue from the peppers. They are milder and still very flavorful with the seeds removed. I admit that when making salsa or pico de gallo, I leave the seeds in the mix. I enjoy the contrast between muchopicante jalapenos and the garlicky frijoles that I make up in a cast iron skillet and then roll in a tortilla with my HOT jalapeno salsa.

Note: If you are experimenting with these fresh peppers and feel like your mouth is on fire, have some milk handy. It is the best fire extinguisher I know for a picante capsaicin overload.

      
 

Because we preserve smaller batches of peppers, we don’t use our big canning kettle. Any covered kettle will serve for canning as long as you place an insert of some kind in the bottom to prevent the jar bottoms from contacting the bottom of the kettle. We use the insert from our pressure cooker.
 

Pack the pepper halves into clean pint-size canning jars which have been heated in boiling water. Then cover them with a mixture of 2 cups distilled vinegar, 1 cup water, and 1 teaspoon salt, heated to boiling. Leave 1/4 inch between the top of the liquid and the rim of the jar, apply the lids, and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes. More detailed information is on our web site, www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com. Check the drying and pickling pages.

         
 

The pickling process is nearly the same for pimentos or other roasted peppers. Roast them according to the process we've described above, remove the stems and seeds, peel and pack them into clean, heated pint jars, fill with the pickling mixture to within 1/4 inch of the rim of the jar, and process for 15 minutes.

Pickled jalapenos can add zip to spaghetti sauce, chili, or salsa. Pickled roasted peppers are marvelous on sandwiches or in dips. We hope you enjoy these ways of preserving the bounty of your summer garden!

 

We’re into June already and I’m lagging even farther behind in my garden chores because of supply problems. But I've finally gotten the peat pellets I needed to start the next round of plantings. They are the wrong size; the diameter of the compressed “pucks” is 1/4” too large to fit into the grippers in the tray but I’ll work with them anyway. One advantage of these larger “pucks” is that when they are wetted and expand, they end up with a hole down the middle (think doughnut) that makes it a simple job to drop the seed right down inside. This would not be good for small seeds, but today I’m planting beans and chard. I set up 18 pinto beans, 18 black beans, and 12 Swiss chard. The chard is for Mom. Marie doesn't care for chard but Mom does. I've never had it, so I don't know... but I will try it when it's ripe. I set the clear cover on top and set it in the window to make a small greenhouse that will speed germination of the seeds.

 

When the seeds sprout, I remove the peat pellets and their seedlings and put them in small planters with potting soil. Here I gradually acclimate them to full sunshine while the first (baby) leaves are replaced by the plant’s initial mature leaves. Once the small plant has been “hardened off” (or made able to stand full sunshine without withering up and dying), I’ll take them out to the garden and plant them in the designated squares. The beans will go into the ground on the inside of the fence line, with the corn/cucumber row outside the fence. These three play well together, but crop rotation will require doing something else next year as beans can be planted in the same place only once in every three years. Maybe the beans will go outside the fence and the corn/cucumbers inside next year.

 

Overall, the garden is doing well considering that I’m new to this. My one major ‘fail’ this year has been the cauliflower and broccoli; Looper worms ate the centers out of the plants, then started chewing holes in the leaves. Once the centers were destroyed any chance of getting edible parts from there was gone so I pulled them out. The gardening sites say to prevent Loopers I must spray both sides of all the leaves with insecticide at least once a week. I wanted to avoid insecticides if I can, Mom has a “natural gardening” book - I think it’s by Jerry Baker, which offers several suggestions. One is to sprinkle corn starch or rye flour on the leaves. The bugs eat this, it swells up inside them and causes them to burst. There’s a visual I don’t want to entertain! Adding a little salt or cayenne pepper helps to repel the bugs. I’ll give this a shot and see if it helps on the second round of these plants.

The lettuce is still prolific. Marie says she has never seen anyone grow lettuce as tall as this. My theory on this is; it’s because instead of waiting for the lettuce plant to get to 12-14 inches tall and cutting it off at the ground, I snip off the lower leaves and leave the plant to continue growing. This seems to encourage the plant to keep putting new leaves out on top and I keep snipping off the lower ones. Eventually I get a lettuce tree! This works great for the leaf lettuce, head lettuce would be entirely different, and the Mesclun mix lettuce has all different shaped plants - some pretty bizarre looking, but they all taste great and make for a very interesting salad.

  

The squash plants are beginning to bloom and from the number of buds I see waiting to flower out, we will be pushing squash off on the neighbors and co-workers just like we are the lettuce. I've got yellow squash, summer squash and zucchini, but none of the bigger varieties like crook-neck or acorn; those would be just too much for my little garden!

 

 

This year I’m growing both red and white radishes. I’m sure you’re familiar with the red (Cherry Bell) radishes, but the white ones are rather unique. They are white on the outside, red on the inside and when sliced look for all the world like hunks of watermelon. 

 

They taste like a radish except they are more spicy than the red radish – so much so that nibbling on two of these as a snack gave me quite a case of indigestion! A little of these goes a long way. They are good in salads though.

The tomatoes have many blooms and a few green tomatoes the size of marbles. When they get to the size of golf balls I’ll need to fertilize them with some ‘Mater food. I've got a couple of green peppers almost ready to pick and many more in process. I have watermelon seedlings hardening off now what will go in the ground in another week or so. Everything else is coming along pretty well, and plant chomping pests aren't much of a problem, except as noted earlier, so I’m happy.

As the weather gets hotter, lettuce and spinach will have a hard time growing. The chard will grow well in the summer heat, as will peppers, tomatoes and squash. Once we reach mid-August I’ll be ready to start another round of the cool-weather crops as well as Brussels sprouts.

And there you have it. Not exactly ready to set up a canning operation yet, but we are enjoying what we’re harvesting and I’m having fun managing my micro-farm.

The month of March brings exciting happenings in the world of gardening. We “spring ahead” by turning our clocks forward an hour in March to usher in the arrival of Spring and with this much anticipated arrival, we begin to start planning and planting our seeds! Starting seeds is a ritual that brings pure excitement to the gardener’s soul! The basic ingredients necessary are soil, seed, water and light.

My herb seeds were started a few weeks ago and the lettuce seed indoors just recently. This week the peeper seeds found a home in the soil and will be under my watchful eye until I see the first sprout and then until they are transplanted outside.

Peppers are relatively easy to grow and they claim their space in the garden and stay there … they don’t roam all over or invade the space of others. I found that they do take a little longer to germinate but once established they are a hardy plant and a good candidate for the first time garden grower. There are many varieties to choose from and sweetness versus hotness is one of the main components when deciding which pepper to grow.

My pepper list this year includes; Red Mini, Jimmy Nardello, Marconi, Tam Jalapeno, Alma Paprika, Long Cayenne, Purple Beauty and Padron. All I have grown in previous years; except the Purple Beauty, first year for this one. I planted or potted up the seeds two different ways; either in individual pots or in a whole flat. The reason I did this is there are several varieties I hope to grow in mass quantities; such as the Jalapeno for canning:

the Cayenne for drying and the Alma Paprika for roasting and making soup or freezing for later use. These I planted in a full tray and scattered many seeds in the soil, covered with plastic and set under the grow lights. The other pepper types are planted in individual pots (4-5 seeds in each one).

The Red Mini Peppers are exactly that – Mini! Each plant produces a good quantity of small peppers and they remind me of the typical green pepper just a smaller version.

When left to turn red they are very sweet and useful for salads since you don’t have to cut up a whole larger pepper. These I also cut in half, disposed of the seeds and froze as is. The Marconi Pepper is another sweet pepper and a real treat; left on the plant to turn red they are delicious.

The Marconi grows to about 5-6 inches in length and I snacked on them fresh and also used them for stuffed pepper dinners.

The Cayenne and Jalapeno along with the Padron are hot peppers and caution needs to be taken when handling the seeds and also the harvest during the season.

I dried the Cayenne by stringing them up using needle and thread through the stem and once dried I loaded them in the blender and processed into flakes and powder. I did try to dry the Jalapeno in the same manner, but they molded first, so canning was the solution for them. They can also be frozen whole or cut in half; same goes for the Padron which was a bit of a shocker first time around. I saw them advertised on tv as an appetizer and the seed catalog promotes them by saying “one out of 10” is hot, the others are mild. Not so in my garden! Every single one of these Padrons packed a super hot punch! The trick we found was when we harvested them and the size they were. If rather small, about an inch in size, they are neutral. Once they grow past that point, it’s all heat! I witnessed grown men crying over these peppers!

The heat scale on these peppers is based on my tolerance for hotness which is pretty low, so others may think a pepper is mild or hardly hot when they make me scream!

I really fell in love with the Alma Paprika Peppers – they can be harvested at 3 different stages.

In the beginning when they are yellow they are quite hot and they mellow out as they turn orange and then finally red. The flavor is a spicy hotness that adds just the right kick to recipes. I roasted these peppers and used them in tomato pepper soup; made in batches and froze for later enjoyment. The tomato hornworm took a liking to these peppers down south and ate quite a few in my absence.

Any of these peppers can be roasted and the procedure is as follows: rub oil on the peppers and put them under the broiler until blackened (the skins will bubble up a bit) I cut them in half so I didn’t have to keep turning them once in the oven. Remove them from the oven and place in a paper bag and seal for 15 minutes – this allows the peel to come right off and the core and seeds fall out. Chop the peppers and add to recipe.

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

1 teaspoon oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 red bell peppers (or equivalent other type)
4 large tomatoes – peeled, seeded and chopped
1 ½ teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons paprika
6 cups chicken broth
Dash of hot pepper sauce and/or ground cayenne pepper (not necessary if using hot peppers)

Roast peppers. Cook onion and garlic in oil about 5 minutes. Stir in tomato and peppers, thyme & paprika.

Cook until tomato juices have evaporated, about 25 minutes.

Stir in chicken stock, bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 25 minutes. At this point you can strain the soup, reserving broth. Blend the solids in a blender until smooth and add back to the broth. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 ½ tablespoons of flour, cooking for 1 minute. Stirring slowing add the broth mixture and simmer for 10 minutes.