My mouth is salivating when reading this forum. I don't have any peppers ready to harvest yet. Actually, I haven't seen anything but flowers on my plants so far. I'm getting very anxious with July 4th and my birthday just around the corner. I want to eat peppers grown in my own garden for those days, especially for my birthday.
I had to go to Walmart yesterday, because I needed another gallon of milk. I go through about 3 gallons a month. I know I should have gone to Smith's because it is much closer, but Itty Bitty and I wanted an outing that wouldn't bring us home too quickly. And Walmart does have a garden area. Just to look. Hehehehe.
The peppers in my garden have a lot of room because the seeds I sowed have been a no-show. So disappointing, because I wanted a lot of Anaheim peppers. All the Anaheim at Walmart looked tiny and/or not so healthy. The best looking were the Marconi, I think. But I have never had those, that I know of. And then I saw a few cayenne that looked really good. I decided to make note of them because payday is just a couple days away. But somehow, my hands didn't get the message and they picked up a cayenne and put it in my cart. Okay, so we will visit with the plant as we roamed the garden center, which was completely empty except one security guard. Itty Bitty and I spent a couple hours going up and down each aisle and getting the wheelchair cart stuck several times. Security guard came to the rescue and I think she was very relieved to have something to do.
We finally made it to the checkout and I just couldn't part with my little cayenne pepper. It was marked down and so inexpensive, that I decided to pass on the lettuce I was going to get for making soft tacos. And a bit less store-bought peppers. This morning, I rushed out to the garden to water after I made the new cayenne addition comfortable in its new home. Now I just gotta hope Home Depot has some healthy Anaheim's when I go buy some 2x4, probably on Thursday. I have room for 2 more pepper plants in ground. Three more, if I'm really greedy. Many more if I manage to add more planters to the yard.
I have never made my own dried peppers - I usually eat them up too quickly. But this year, I am growing more peppers than I have before because last year the harvest was so pitiful. The roommate doesn't like peppers or garlic as much as I do, but since we usually cook our own meals, I enjoy my food much more with a lot of peppers and a lot of garlic. With the amount of peppers I will hopefully harvest, I plan to learn to dry some for the winter. And experiment with making my own powder. I love the flavor of the Anaheim peppers, so getting a couple more plants would be great, to use them as the base for my powders. And, I will probably do all the grinding and chopping outside because the house doesn't have good ventilation as most of the windows won't open. The kitchen windows don't open at all.
