Started 42 Peppers New Year’s Eve

[karstopography]

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Peppers are growing and setting fruit. So far, harvested 3 padron peppers. Not sure what’s next.

[Mark_Thompson]

I really like Corbaci, the pig tail shape plus harvesting them green, orange, and red makes it a crowd pleaser.

[bower]

The Corbaci is gorgeous. It's a bit like my old fave the Italian Pepperoncini from West Coast Seeds, except bigger and curly! On my must grow list for sure. Jimmy N is an old favorite for us, quite early and for sure delicious.

[karstopography]

@Bower when I put in Corbaci in the turkish to English translator on Google, I get “soup maker”. Leads one to believe the Turks make soup with this pepper. I’ve mostly dried mine and made paprika. The peppers don’t have much flavor while that light green, but really come alive on flavor when they turn an orangy red. Zero heat.

Corbaci is pretty early here. I transplanted these into the beds February 19th. Corbaci is a 75 DTM pepper as listed, but I believe it has generally been faster than that. Handles cooler weather better than most peppers and hangs in there in the humid, disease encouraging heat better than most sweet peppers. Corbaci outlasts Jimmy Nardello in the summer, mainly as Jimmy Nardello seems more prone to fungal issues.

[karstopography]

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Peppers all perking up. Giant Aconcagua was a total runt, but has recently blossomed, literally.
The three Bell Peppers are making fruit. I have two more bell peppers I planted much later, we’ll see how they do. Padron is surprising, putting out bigger peppers than I expected.

[karstopography]

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My favorite pepper of the year and henceforth forever on my must grow list is Padron. These are amazingly fragrant peppers and delicious on the grill.

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Tonight, I’m grilling the Padron peppers along with the Giant Aconcagua, manganji and Jimmy Nardello.

This will be my first time trying Giant Aconcagua. The GA plant was such a tiny runt and sickly looking I almost trashed it, instead I decided to stick it in an unfavorable spot in the beds and see what happens. The plant almost immediately perked up and looks pretty good now with a couple more large peppers like one in the photo and some smaller ones. GA is also fragrant, but not on the level of the Padron.

[karstopography]

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Lemon Drop appears to be a pepper making machine. One pepper now ripe, looks like many more getting close.

[karstopography]

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Lemon drop peppers are turning ripe. Most of them I am drying. They dry in about three days on the hot copper, humid heat and all. The Guajillo are the most fragrant of the bunch when drying. The fragrance could be described as the best smelling pipe tobacco smoke known to mankind. My Guajillo peppers are getting nibbled on by a rabbit, but I’m feeling sorry for bunnies in general since my parent’s cat killed and ate a whole nest of the baby rabbits under the celery patch.

Next season, I’ll put the Guajillo peppers in a better spot in the garden and give them more protection from bunnies. Those peppers are worth growing just for that fragrance.

Fresh ripe Lemon drop peppers brighten up a salsa. If the jalapeños are a bit too tame and they often are, toss in a lemon drop with them and that will liven things up, but not too lively.

[worth1]

I grew lemon drop and it tasted like a woman's purse smelled.
All manner of fragrance from the perfumes powders and so on.
Not a good experience at all.

[pepperhead212]

I wasn't crazy about it the one time I grew it, but to each their own. There have been a lot more that I didn't grow again, than the ones I have to grow again, but the list of keepers in peppers continues to increase, faster than with other things.

[karstopography]

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My 2023 collection of dried peppers. Still harvesting and drying peppers. Still working through my 2022 inventory of paprika and dried peppers. Will grind these and whatever I manage to dry before the season shuts down once and for all, likely in November or December.

Sort of a down year for peppers only because I neglected feeding, watering, or otherwise caring for them quite as well as I did in 2022. Have a lot of young peppers still maturing and more fruit setting so I can at least try to finish strong.

Some mystery pest is eating some of them right from the plant. My hunch is it is grasshoppers that attack at night. If not them, then a night feeding rodent. Definitely not a caterpillar. Birds have been ruining some of my sun dried peppers as they dry on the copper.

Next year, I’m going to give peppers more attention.

[karstopography]

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Gatherer’s Gold, Calabrian Caviar, and one oddly shaped San Luis Poblano.

Plan is to grill the gatherer’s gold and poblano, maybe stuff and grill the Calabrian Caviar.

First ripe Gatherer’s gold split and got invaded by ants. Unusual to have peppers split here.

I gave a pile of various peppers to my daughter yesterday, she was making salsas and such. Peppers doing well this year.