2006 Garden
Roger, Christine and I have been hard at work planting our 2006 garden. We have the community garden plot all prepped and weeded, with carrots, strawberries, gladiolas, and wildflowers already in the ground.
In the garage, I built an indoor mini-greenhouse out of a 3 foot high by 4 foot or so long shelving unit, a couple of florescent lights, a heating pad and some painter’s drop plastics to keep the humidity and head in.
In that, Roger and I have planted cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, butternut squash, gourds (the birdhouse kind), lemon cucumbers, japanese long beans, “red beans” (climbing beans with beautiful flowers), watermelon seeds (that Roger collected from a yummy farmer’s market watermelon he had last year), Sunzilla (16 foot tall sunflowers), eggplant seeds (more farmer’s market seeds), and a mini-herb garden of parsley, dill and basil.
The bottom shelf, on top of the heating pad, is the collection of peppers seeds. From left to right:
- Desert TepÍn
- Some count this as the oldest chile species of the four or so species commonly in cultivation (the other species have many sub-species). In any case, it is a very hot and unique flavored chile pepper. Vicious bite, but doesn’t last. Hard as hell to grow — takes a long time to germinate with a low germination rate. I’ll be lucky if any of the seeds germinate.
- Red Savina Habanero
- This is often counted as the hottest pepper in the world by scoville units (though England has a new pepper that may be hotter). However, the Tepin is counted as hotter by some. In any case, this is a classic habanero. I would rather be growing a Scotch Bonnett, but this’ll do this year.
- Serrano
- The basic Serrano pepper. A staple in a all kinds of cooking when you simply need some distinct chile heat without being either overwhelming in flavor or hot. I greatly prefer Serrano to Jalapeno.
- “Red Devil Pepper”
- I have no idea what kind of pepper this really is. The ripe fruit is about 2.5″ long and 3/4″ of an inch in diameter. It is extremely hot with a very distinct flavor. Larger (and hotter) than a Thai Hot. It was left behind in the garden plot that we took over near the end of last year.
- Black Pasillo or Ancho Chile
- This is an Ancho chile pepper whose seeds my parents collected while we were in Mexico (Baja trip). This particular variety was claimed to be one of the most expensive chiles in Mexico. In any case, it will dry well and make for a wonderful base to home made chile powder.
April 6th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Thanks for the tips on those hot pepper varieties; we were looking for some new ones to try this year. So far, we only have our poblanos and carrots started in their tiny seed pots, and are still looking for a good habanero seed locally. Although with some actual variety names to work with now, we may just look online.