Friday, October 9, 2009

pick a peck


We don't quite have a peck of home-grown peppers, but we do have the best crop I have personally grown. LOVE this inland climate! With greater coastal influence in other locations, my peppers were small, thin-walled, and stayed green, barely worth growing and eating. This year, further inland (with some shade), I chose three varieties and planted them in two different locations in our garden.

Not pictured are the Gypsy peppers, an earlier, pale yellow-green, pointed tip sweet pepper, supposedly with wonderful flavor, though I did not find them very tasty and will not grow them again.

Pictured above are some Corn Di Torro, an elongated heirloom stuffing pepper which ripens to red. They taste good fresh or lightly stir-fried, which is how we eat most peppers. The other night I also roasted some for a pasta dish, and they were so delicious I think I will do more roasting next year. A farmer colleague of mine told me years ago that he would freeze roasted peppers to preserve for winter eating. With greater production we could do that too.

Also pictured are a few ripe Ace bell peppers. This is a popular hybrid variety, ripening to red, and very good fresh, stir-fried, or roasted. And no less important, the green-red striped one is so pretty! The plant did not get very big, and had some significant competition from a vining squash and drooping tomato, but it kept popping out peppers seemingly too big for itself (there is one still ripening right now). Definitely will grow these again, and more too.

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