Wanna Heat Things Up in January??

[digitS']

Tell us about your peppers!!

:tools

 

[patandchickens]

I haven't grown hot peppers for years and years, because unless pickled, even just one plant produces much more than I alone can eat while they're still fresh (and now that I'm married, I'd STILL have to eat 'em all myself, since DH and small children do not Do capsaicin).

However, back in grad school I grew a pretty nifty pepper that I would certainly recommend to anyone. The plant made a very tidy strong-stemmed little round bush, quite attractive, and the peppers were maybe an inch, inch and a half long. Red, fairly narrow, narrow but rounded (not pointy) tip, pretty hot. No idea anymore what they were, except the seed was probably from Park's or Burpee's and the variety might have had 'Thai' in its name.

The great thing was that when frost threatened and the plants were still full of gazillions (gaZILLIONS!) of little red peppers standing up like little candles, you could rip the whole plant up by the roots, hang it to dry, shake the leaves off, and it made a wonderful ornamental thing to hang in the kitchen. Like bundles of dried flowers except you could pick dried peppers off this to cook with! I really liked it.

I keep thinking about trying a short-season jalapeno, but I am more likely to just buy a bunch at the farmers market and pickle them for my wintertime grilled-cheese sandwiches and such. It is sad being the only spicy food eater in the house


Pat

 

[Hencackle]

Patandchickens...you might like the Senorita jalapeno for your family. It really is mild, it has a jalapeno flavor without the heat. My DH enjoyed it.
What I grow:
Pizza Pepper--I use this in place of a bell pepper
Fish (an African-American heirloom with beautiful green & white variegated foliage) this is used in medium-hot to hot sauces. It is perfect for Shrimp & Grits, one of my favorite dishes
Tennessee Cheese--a heirloom from Spain, seed donated by a couple from Kingston, TN.
The peppers are small, tomato-shaped and great for stuffing.
Pepperoncini--if I can get the Greek variety. Does anybody have seed?

Can anybody recommend a good paprika pepper to be used as the spice?

digitS'...Love that picture! What varieties did you grow?

 

[digitS']

The little peppers in the bottom of the bin there are Super Chilies. They stand up like the Thai peppers.

Those large "flames" shooting out are mild, mild, mild Giant Marconi - no heat at all but wonderfully sweet and tasty.

Even tho' the plants don't grow very large and the season is short so I can't grow things like habaeroes, peppers do well in my otherwise-tortured garden. I have learned to adjust my diet accordingly. But unfortunately, I can only take so much heat.

So, it's LOTS of sweet peppers for me (with just a few extra somethings for spice

Pizza Pepper--I use this in place of a bell pepper

Is that an Italian sweet pepper?

Steve
:tools

 

[Hencackle]

The Giant Marconi sounds good, I have to remember that. :happy_flower
The Pizza Pepper is a hybrid, in the "hot" catagory. Maybe it's my soil or my taste buds, but I don't think its hot at all and I'm no "chili-head". The best picture that portrays the shape of the Pizza Pepper is this from Totally Tomatoes website. These aren't big, they are perfect for just 2 people. I think you will really like this one.

 

[digitS']

Well, those certainly look good ! Do you suppose my wife would actually go ahead and learn to make pizza dough if she had something called a Pizza Pepper?? I usually order from Totally Tomatoes and maybe I could have something new & special for pizza this year!

I was looking at a Stokes catalog a little while ago and they have something called a Kukulkan habaero. It's new and supposed to be only 60 days! This is remarkable and probably indicates Stokes location & purpose in world - what can you do for the habaero lovers of Canada?! I have to admit that I've never tried this pepper even tho' I had about 4 habaero plants one year. I think each had like one pepper that started to turn orange before frost. I kept coming up with an excuse not to eat 'em - they looked lethal!!

The Thai critters are quite enuf for me - Thai Dragon and Thai Hot and there seems like there was another Thai something (maybe that was basil . Since Super Chili isn't too much different from the Dragon, I've got a few Thai Hot each year.

Garden Salsa is my "warm" one that is just real good and productive. You really don't need many plants with Garden Salsa and it's easy to "tone down" the heat with tomatoes in a salsa.

The Italian Sweets were a big find for me but it took awhile. First I grew Corno di Toro and they were incredibly productive but I didn't really care much about 'em. Along there somewhere I tried Cubanelle and it was sort of the same - a little too tuff and not much sweetness. It was certainly no good for salad, or, at least, not without peeling. Then it was Marconi and I thought, "Hey, this is a pretty good pepper!" Finally, I gave Giant Marconi a try.

Giant Marconi is just wonderfully sweet and flavorful but I still grow Marconi because the GM isn't nearly as productive. I've grown Aruba also but didn't give it a very good trial - the plants were a little late coming out to the garden and got really tall and leggy. May try those again or one of these other new cubanelle-types. I still am not quite sure if these are really Italian peppers but some catalogs classify Cubanelle that way. But, now we have all these Caribbean names . . . Like Stokes' new Naples!! Oh, well . . . that must be Naples, Florida!

The world is a wonderful place :rainbow-sun !

Steve

 

[Hencackle]

digitS' said:
Do you suppose my wife would actually go ahead and learn to make pizza dough if she had something called a Pizza Pepper??

Pizza dough is simple to make, especially with a food processor. Mix some chopped, fresh herbs in that dough, maybe some grated parmesan cheese, too...Pizza Hut pizza, frozen pizzas will never taste good again! Do you need a recipe?

I use the Pizza Pepper as my general purpose pepper because DH & I like the taste better than regular large bell peppers. The Pizza Pepper is a good producer, it yields better (in my garden) than something like Big Bertha or California Wonder.

I've never ordered from Totally Tomatoes before, do you know if their seed is GMO-free?

 

[patandchickens]

digitS' said:
Do you suppose my wife would actually go ahead and learn to make pizza dough if she had something called a Pizza Pepper??

Pizza dough is simple to make, especially with a food processor.

or with a bread machine. Easy enough by hand too as long as you can knead.

Steve, *you* could always learn to make pizza dough...


Pat

 

[digitS']

Totally Tomatoes was owned by 1st by Shumways and then that old seed company was bought by Jungs. I don't know if TT ever had an independent existence.

They sell vegetable seed from Seminis, which is now owned by Monsanto but so do a number of other seed companies. I don't believe Jungs sells GMO seed thru its home gardening catalog but this is a huge business. You can imagine that far more seed is sold to farmers than to gardeners anywhere in the world.

Jungs is a major supplier of farm seed and, yep, yes indeedy - they sell GMO farm seed. I'm not sure if there's a company that sells to conventional agriculture that does not.
Pizza dough - betcha a dime to a doughnut that the Pizza Hut flour is made from wheat developed . . . Oh heck, we all know that the GMO horse left the barn a few years ago .

Anyway, back to our non-GMO gardens - for a bell, what do you grow (if not Big Bertha or California Wonder

Steve

 

[Reinbeau]

I am pretty sure Johnny's doesn't sell any GMO seeds, and they do sell to conventional agriculture/commercial growers. They're a great company to deal with.