I'm really excited to be growing some peppers again this year. They're on of the more pricey items I could be buying this season from the market - so growing as many as I can to suit my needs is both functional and sustainable. Then again, my family goes through tonnes of peppers, between grilling them, adding them to sauces and stir-frys, nachos, chopped in wraps and dips, we love our peppers. Below is a list of this year's peppers - however I might be adding a plant or two of jalapeno and mixed sweet bell peppers to meet our needs.
White Lakes
Yellow Monster
Lilac Bell
Midnight Dreams
Fish
Chocolate Beauty
Purple Beauty
Violet Sparkle
Monzano Chile
Monzano Chile
Most of my pepper seeds were purchased from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I have saved seeds from my fish peppers last year and some unique seeds collected from Cuba. 2015 will only really be the 2nd year I gave any spoiling to my peppers, last year's harvest was pretty great, so I can only imagine this year will be leagues better. Each plant - it's own support cage and stake. Mulched to perfection and placed in the sunniest-hottest bed in my garden.
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| Chocolate Beauty |
Chocolate Beauty Bell Pepper - A classic auburn-chocolate pepper with average sweetness and both fresh eating and cooked qualities. I thought it would be a nice mix to the pepper basket and definitely something you can't find at the vegetable stand or market!
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| Midnight Dreams |
I really love the oddities of the edible world, blacks, deep purple, variegated, a strange colour always gets me. Midnight dreams is so cool, I knew I just had to try it! Oily-black purple skin and high anthocyanin - evidence of purple colouration through-out the stem and leaves. A great sweet pepper for fresh purple salsa!
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| Violet Sparkle |
More of a novelty then anything else, I decided to throw-in Violet Sparkle peppers. Smaller flavourful sweet peppers with a curved pointed end and almost a water-colour stained outer skin with a yellow interior. Not only do they look like small blown-glass ornaments, they are visually very unique from the rest of my pepper selection. Could be a neat cross with the Fish pepper.
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| Yellow Monster |
Yellow Monster seemed like another cool novelty, but it's also just a massive great tasting pepper with the ability to serve an entire plate of nachos with one fruit. These plants will certainly need some extra staking and water! I could also be a neat show piece at the fall fair displays! Maybe I'll make a record breaker!
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| Lilac Bell |
Another beauty, Lilac bell is a smaller sweet bell pepper that I will mostly be growing for it's looks. It could also be a great freshly chopped addition to fresh salsa or purple veggie omlettes! Purple beauty on the other hand is essentially a green bell pepper, but I purple form. In the past I let one keep ripening on the bush to see what would happen, and it did in fact fade into a nice reddish colour. With fancy peppers it's a waiting game to see when it's nicest colour form will appear - at the same time, you also want to taste it. In my experience they taste sweeter the longer you leave them on the plant, but the colour you grew them for is long-past.
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| Purple Beauty |
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| White Lakes |
So far my white-lakes pepper seeds have had the poorest germination, the seeds have gotten mouldy before they get the chance to sprout. A shame, but I'm determined to try anyways because these are such interesting peppers. The goal is to pick them when white-cream coloured, but you can also wait and get tints ranging from the cream to orange and red. A nice ombré mix of peppers all from one plant. Small peppers perfect for pickling or grilling on the BBQ!
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| Fish Pepper |
Finally I have one of my old-new favourites - the Fish pepper. An edible variegated pepper out of the southern United States - rumoured to be developed by slaves in Louisiana and later established as a classic soul food and bayou pepper. It's flavour really does suggest that origin. I read that it's best picked a bit early to avoid the stronger heat and spice that rolls off this pepper. They are well suited to being finely chopped into bisks and soups for spice and flavour or added to sauces for heat. The colours ranged from highly striped and variegated to very little. They also turn from yellow to orange and red when left longer to ripen. A real rainbow of colour and contrast - practically ornamental - the foliage alone is stunning.
More pepper updates as the season progresses! It's a long ways away before I get actual fruit, but I'm excited non-the less. The key for now is the space them in the garden and not crowd them to fit more - plant hoarding is a real thing. Happy spring!
