dash 2, 2014: You're Doing It Wrong!

The story so far...
 
     I guess we can call this my 2014 glog, but truthfully this started back in late December, 2011. That was when I started to get serious (lol) about gardening. Along with my in-ground garden of peas, tomatoes, chard, beans, squash etc., I had eight peppers planted in 5 gallon buckets, four of which I overwintered. Last year I expanded my garden (I have a REALLY cool landlord - as long as I feed his jalapeño jelly addiction). I added four 4'x8' raised beds and grew 40 pepper plants. Of those, I kept the same four from the year before and added another nine. Also, as an experiment, I started six seedlings in August to get a head start on this season.
     This brings us to today.
 

Back row (white bucket): red habanero
Middle row: anaheim (2yo), cayenne, carolina reaper
Front row: jalapeño (2yo), corno di toro, red habanero
 

Big pot: chocolate habanero, chablis, giant jalapeno
Other pots: 2 caribbean red habaneros (2yo), chocolate habanero
 

 
5 month old starts: Lemon drop, fatalii (x2), mustard habanero, 7 pot yellow, Numex big jim
 
I'm also in the process of starting WAAAY too many seeds. Most will go into the ground in spring, some will go into containers to be grown up for overwintering. 
 
de arbol
7 pot Chaguanas
hot paper lantern habanero
lunchbox red
prik chi faa
Numex Suave
Numex Big Jim
lemon drop
corno di toro
fatalii
cayenne
mustard habanero
caribbean red habanero
Carolina Reaper
7 pot yellow
Jamaican habanero
chocolate bhut jolokia
Trinidad scorpion CARDI
bishop's crown
Tobago scotch bonnet yellow
7 pot burgundy
Tobago seasoning
 
     Whew! So that's where I am today. Like most growers on THP, I find deciding which peppers NOT to grow to be one of the most difficult tasks in gardening. Add to that my aversion to throwing out perfectly good pepper plants come fall, and… I need a bigger garden! Luckily I still have about 15 pints of jalapeño jelly in the basement. 
 
 
 

 

[juanitos]

putting link to your raised bed in faq.
 
looking good man, i made some pineapple sauce with some moa's you should try with your cardis or something yellow for a cool sauce.

 

[Hybrid Mode 01]

     Just a little pod porn to start things out. Bomp-chigga-wowow!
 
 
Bhut brown conjoined twins

 
 
 
7 pot "not yellow"

 
 
Carolina Reapers

 
 
The hot paper lantern hab that thinks it's a scorpion

 
Here's my pick from last Tuesday.

 
 
Here's two weeks worth of TS CARDI yellow, 7 pot "not yellow", Caribbean red, Fatalii, Scotch bonnet yellow and Hot paper lantern habaneros. All stemmed and ready for roasting.

 
 
Now THAT's a roasting fire!

 
 
 
The whole setup.

 
 
Hot peppers + 700oF = Heaven.

 
 
Silicon valley needs to get off their collective ass and invent the smell-o-interwebz.

 
 
 
 
Could I get a bump, please?

 

[Nulle]

bump

 

[Hybrid Mode 01]

     Looks great Dash,you are going to be busy,busy,busy.

 
     You weren't kidding! It seems like all I've been doing lately is picking, roasting, freezing, canning and drying. I love this time of the year. Time to pack the basement!
 
 
Here's a pic of some fataliis gettin' happy.

 
 
I swear, I was slowing down traffic by my house with the smell of this stuff… These are scotch bonnets

 
 
Here's the finished product (almost) from roasting, peeling and seeding red, orange and Chablis bell peppers. I roll them up so after I freeze them I can just dump a bunch of individually frozen, ready-to-go peppers in a ziploc inside the chest freezer. One or two of these in some homemade tomato bisque in the middle of winter is what gardening is all about!

 
 
Along with all the roasting I've been doing lately, my wife and I have been canning like the economy is about to collapse. Just yesterday, we put up nine pints of pickled okra (pictured below), 12 pints of pickled peppers and another six quarts of tomato sauce. 

I'll send a free jar to anyone who can guess which kind of pepper I added to each of the six 1.5 pint jars. 
 
 
And finally, here is a picture of my cat. 

 
 
 
 
 

putting link to your raised bed in faq.
 
looking good man, i made some pineapple sauce with some moa's you should try with your cardis or something yellow for a cool sauce.

 
     Thanks, OK! I'm humbled to know that my garden is held in such high regard! I want to try a sweet, tropical sauce with some scotch bonnets or CARDIs. I'll see if I can find your recipe. I love seared pineapple and I bet it would go AWESOME with some of those pods I just roasted!
 

bump

Thank you, enjoy the pics!
 
 
     That's all for now. Once I get sick of pickling and roasting, it'll be time to start making pepper jelly. I'm gonna have some fun with that this year, so be sure to check it out later. Thanks for stopping by el jardin del dash-o dos!
 
 
 
One more parting shot of the view of my raised beds from where I was roasting.

Yeah, I have jalapeños growing! No fruit yet, all late starts. PM me the recipe so I can find it easier later on? Sounds amazing.

 
I haven't forgotten yet. Recipe and pics should be in the next update.

 

[Nulle]

What a lovely cat

 

[juanitos]

lookin good
 
gotta get one of these so you can roast quicker ?
http://edgohio.ecrater.com/p/17453880/the-grill-smokin-assistant-3-tiers#

 

[Hybrid Mode 01]

What a lovely cat

 
     Yeah, I love her. Dammit's been part of my life ever since I founder her in the lobby of my apartment building at 3:00 am on Halloween about thirteen years ago. I was so drunk, I didn't care that she smelled like a dumpster and looked like her previous job was cleaning gas station toilets with her own fur. 
     The first night she spent with me, the only thing I had to feed her was canned tuna. I didn't want to feed her too fast and risk experiencing first hand the horrors of her current stomach contents, so I only gave her a little at a time. She protested by, in one shot, leaping from ground level up onto my sweatshirt, where she velcroed herself face to face with me (I'm 6'5, so that was quite a leap!). This was a LOT easier for her to do back when she was a svelte (disturbingly malnourished) 4 lbs. She has "rounded out" nicely since then! 
 
 

lookin good
 
gotta get one of these so you can roast quicker ?
http://edgohio.ecrater.com/p/17453880/the-grill-smokin-assistant-3-tiers#

 
     Thanks! Thanks for looking out, but I don't think that would do it for me. The whole point of fire roasting is to get as much pepper surface area over a hot fire as possible. You want to burn the outside of the pods, preferably via some direct contact with flame. Smoking pods is an entirely different endeavor. And the device that you linked to would perform wonderfully for that.

 

[AZ-Mason]

I'll pass on the jar offer, but considering how great they taste, I'm going to guess you put a carribean red? No rush on the recipe, I won't have ripe jals for a while, although having a grandpa that loves growing and hates spicy food does have it's advantages... Lol. Great pod shots, I still can't get over the conjoined bhuts.

 

[Hybrid Mode 01]

I'll pass on the jar offer, but considering how great they taste, I'm going to guess you put a carribean red?

     That's one of them. There are five more. Is your grandpa gonna hook you up with peppers?

 

[AZ-Mason]

Yeah, he claims he has no use for them, but he's just starting to get pod sets.  I would over a month until anything ripens. The wait is KILLING me!

 

[Hybrid Mode 01]

     If you're planning on making jelly, make sure to only pick pods once they're good and ripe. It even helps to ripen them in a bag for an additional week, too. When the pods are blood red and almost a bit mushy, they make the best jelly. The color of the finished product is surreal.

 

[PIC 1]

Nice harvest and processing photos.......peppers look good blasting on the Weber Kettle

 

[Hybrid Mode 01]

Nice harvest and processing photos.......peppers look good blasting on the Weber Kettle

 
     Thanks! Yeah, a grill full of habaneros is a beautiful sight (and smell!).

 

[John1234]

Those roasting peppers look aaaaaah-mazing! Might have to drag my ass out and grab a bag of habanero to follow suit
 

 
     Yeah, I love her. Dammit's been part of my life ever since I founder her in the lobby of my apartment building at 3:00 am on Halloween about thirteen years ago. I was so drunk, I didn't care that she smelled like a dumpster and looked like her previous job was cleaning gas station toilets with her own fur.