Hot Peppers from my garden

This summer I undertook a potted garden on my apartment porch (8'x8'). It is a two tier affair with long planters hanging from the railing and pots placed below the planters on the deck. in one of my biggest deck pots I planted one cayenne pepper plant (Cayenne Long Slim) and one orange habanero plant. Now I love hot food (hence the plants) and have been very excited by the bountiful number of peppers my plants are producing. This past week the first peppers have started to ripen and I harvested a cayenne pepper for a pasta sauce I was making from the tomatoes I have grown on my deck (I've harvested 28 lbs of tomatoes from my deck so far). Now being the foolishly curious type, I sampled a small sliver of my cayenne pepper by itself (with a glass of milk on standby). :eek: Oh my god was it hot.:flare: The oils even burned my fingers. Making matters worse, the oils from the pepper embedded in my fingers and I couldn't touch my face for days without burning my eyes. The pepper help make for an awesome sauce (tomatoes, cayenne and yellow bell peppers from my garden; mushrooms, smoked bacon, Italian seasonings, salt and black pepper from the store).

So, I've learned my lesson, maybe, and probably won't be eating my hot peppers very often by themselves. However, I'm not above giving taste samples to daring friends, which I did the other evening.

This one friend took a slice of my cayenne pepper (seeded), and chewed it diligently with no change in expression. He used no milk or any other chaser to cool the tongue. His comment was that it was really good and about as hot as the habanero peppers he is used to. Talk about an iron tongue! Well, I was dully impressed and before he headed back to his home in NJ I gave him three freshly harvested cayenne peppers and the very first habanero pepper to ripen from my plant. The only time I've seen someone more egger for a favorite food item is when you give an exotic dark chocolate to a chocoholic.

Now I have to wait for another habanero pepper to ripen so that I can find out just how hot they are. Although I expect I will only taste a small sliver with a glass of milk standing by. My ultimate plan is to dry my peppers for use in sauces and to feed fresh ones to some of my more boastful friends to see just how well they can handle the peppers.:p

One day I was cutting up hot peppers for some dish or another (salsa?), when I had to go to the bathroom. A few seconds after I returned I started to feel uncomfortable. That quickly changed to "My god it burns! It burns!" It took me a few minutes to figure out what had happened and jump in the shower. Just be careful what you touch after you've chopped up hot peppers.

hahahah, I have had the exact same thing happen to me.

My problem with hot foods isn't eating them, but what comes after ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Selkirk

Just be careful what you touch after you've chopped up hot peppers.

---

:eek:
Just thinking about this isn't pleasant. I'm getting plastic gloves for the next time I work with my peppers. I now even avoid touching their skin when picking them and only handle them by the stem if at all possible.

I planted a whole load of hot peppers this year, and had high hopes of lots of peppers to cook, eat and store - then forgot to water the things.

Never mind, will try again next year.

Ya, watering is kind of important. :p

Other things that really help is fertilizer and manually cross pollinating plants. I used a small soft bristled paint brush to pollinate flowers between similar varieties of plants. This helped raise the percentage of flowers producing fruit to almost 100%

Awesome :)

I love hot and spicy stuff too.

I'm about to move into a house and can't wait to get a lil garden growing :)

Speaking of cayenne, I've been taking cayenne pepper capsules lately and when they erupt in your stomach you can sure feel them! LOL.

I thought I'd give a gardening update.

Not being one to let something like fall stand in my way of fresh tomatoes and peppers from my garden, as things started to cool down, I brought all of my pepper plants indoors and put them by my windows. Then when the first frost became a real concern about two weeks ago, I brought my best performing tomato planters indoors.

I'm telling you, indoor gardening is something I want to prefect. While garden fresh tomatoes is becoming a fading memory for others, I have tomatoes ripening almost faster than I can use them. This past weekend I cooked up a large pot of really thick salsa that is oh so good. :)

Today I harvested 21 habanero peppers that were perfectly ripe. I have no idea how I'm going to use this 100g of tongue searing goodness, but I'll try to come up with ideas. Between what I harvested today and what I've already strung up to dry, I could eat 1 habanero and at least 2 cayenne peppers per week and still not run out before next year's peppers start to ripen.

I have discovered that as long as one avoids the seeds and inner membrane, habanero peppers aren't too hot and are actually very tasty.

Next year I plan to expand my pepper selection to include Jalapanos and hot chilies. Since I'll be able to have a real garden rather than just some planters on a small deck, I plan to seriously expand my garden and will start my seeds indoors around march so that I can extend my primary harvest season as much possible.

I also discovered that I can get clippings of tomato vines to root, so I'm thinking of taking clipping of some of my best vines to start new indoor tomatoes for the winter. This will allow me to continue my tomatoes while getting rid of the large and tired vines. My goal will be to have a production of a few tomatoes per week.

Just think instead of useless house plants that only look pretty, with an indoor garden, one could also get fresh vegetables even in the middle of winter. All it requires are some good south facing windows and an understanding wife.