Short Attention Span Theatre: peppers container garden balcony

Thursday, May 27, 2010

pepper planter one

Peppers are going to take a few days to post. ( thunk fans, my thursday thunks will post later today ) First let me explain that there are many basic types of peppers. Bell, Cayenne, Cubanelle, Pequin, Aji, Habanero, Blocky, Cluster, Anaheim, Ancho/poblano, Tabasco, Lantern, Banana,Chiltepin, Jalapeno, Cherry, Serrano, Peperoncini, Squash - wow. Each of these have many different types of plants whose peppers range in sweetness/heat, size, color, ripening time. So one pepper that is an anaheim can be a completely different heat/ size/ color than another. I never knew this until recently. I thought habanero was the pepper- i didn't realize there were almost 100 different habanero's out there. Granted a lot of this is due to hybridization, but still makes picking out peppers a bit tough for me.

This is Pequin Large black Chili. As the name implies, it is a Pequin pepper, it really doesn't have a large pepper IMHO, 1" long by 1/2 " wide. It is a late season pepper with purple leaves ( kinda cool) and black fruit that turns brown then red. ( here's a secret for all hot peppers - it is kind of counter intuitive. The longer you leave it on the plant and the more it ripens - the more heat it loses) This is "merely" a hot pepper.

The large pepper on the right side of the picture is a Patriot hybrid. This is a sweet bell pepper, 4-5" long by 3.5-4.5" wide., it is a midseason pepper that ripens from green to red.

This is the Jamaican Gold pepper. It is a hot, squash pepper - 1.5" tall by 1.75" wide. It is a prolific ,mid season pepper that matures from green to gold.

Meet the "Masquerade pepper". It is a hot cluster pepper ( you can see it already has a cluster of peppers) 3" long by 1/2" wide that goes from green to purple to red.

Here is bouquet, a medium heat, pequin pepper 2/3" long x 1/2" wide, matures from purple to orange to red,

This is gypsy, a sweet Cubanelle frying pepper 4.5" long x 2" wide ranges from pale yellow to orange red. Definitely a fun pepper to cook with!

Lastly one of my personal favorites- the cowhorn chili.a medium heat anaheim pepper. 6-8" long x 1 1/4" wide it matures from green to red, but sometimes green to yellow ( no idea why the color change) . It is a super versatile pepper to cook with.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Garden Update

My bush cucumber is doing really well in it's upside down basket. I had given up on cucumbers because I had never actually harvested one. I have a bunch of flowers, one cucumber is about 2-1/2 inches long.

Here you can see the cucumber I referred to before. I have some net trellising that I am going to hang between the deck railing and the fascia board under the roof to give the plant something to "grab" otherwise I'm afraid it will start vining over to the oak tree, which has a branch about 2 - 3 feet away from the deck. Then I wouldn't be able to get to my cucumbers!!

This is the first tomato which showed up. According to the size on the tag, it has about another inch to go before it starts to (hopefully) ripen. My husband has been eying it, becuase it's a bush goliath tomato, which I got for his sandwiches!