Home Grown: Peppers

Peppers seem to be one of the easyer things for me to grow on my deck. They have been very forgiving if i forget to water them in the morning. Thy don't complain if they get blown over in the wind. And if I keep watch on them I can get a huge payload of tasty tasty food.

My Sweet Banana Peppers have been producing like good little troopers. I have a gallon freezer bag in the freezer right now. I have over a dozen on my counter to cut and clean before I can put them in the freezer as well. I put them in & on everything that I think will taste better because of them. I will mix fried chopped bits into my macaronir & cheese. I put them on my pizza. These are a very good idea to grow if you like them and a good bank for your buck.

I have grown Cayenne Peppers before. We dried them and didn't use them for about a year. At that time my dad was making cajun creole and needed more cayenne powder. So he just grabbed what we had and ground it. When he tasted it his eyes were bigger then the moon. He said the homegrown peppers were far hotter then the store bought powder. Next summer we will be growing more. Unfortunately we do not know if letting them dry on the bush made them hotter. Either way I think I'm going to trim them as they get red and put them on a string to dry.

I have only tried growing Bell Peppers once. They need a alot of water and mine did not do very well in pots on the deck. They would always be dry and wiltty by the afternoon. If I had the space to plant them in the ground I'm sure they would do better.

The Scotch Bonnet. I grew one plant once by accident. I had it in a pot that was far too small for it so I only got two peppers to grow on it. One was chomped by a chipmunk. The one that did survive dried poorly and we ended up tossing it.