In from the Cold

I brought peppers inside today, pretty much all that I could find out in the yard, since they don't like cold weather. In the basket, one bell pepper is off to the left. The large oblong peppers are the variety Spanish Spice. Those plants produced really well this year, and the peppers were delicious stuffed with cheese and then grilled. The longer, skinny peppers are Jimmy Nardellos that haven't fully matured. They aren't especially wonderful when green, but they turn astonishingly sweet when they ripen fully to what is, essentially, fire-engine red. However, even green they are plenty good enough to eat. The yellow peppers are banana peppers. I only planted one of these plants, but it was a prolific producer, and the peppers are great on sandwiches and pizza. The rest of the peppers in the basket are jalepenos. We are going to rig our little grill to act like a smoker, and put these in it for a day or two to give them a smokey flavor and to dry them for later use.

The other peppers that I grew this year are Minibelles. I grew two of these plants in pots, and quite a lot of little peppers are still on the plants, so I brought those into the house with the hope that the remaining peppers would ripen.






I have never before brought pepper plants into the house for the winter, but a few weeks ago I talked with someone who does routinely. Really, I started out talking with someone else, because I had been given a huge stack of 3-gallon pots that a friend had picked up off the side of the road where a major landscaping project had just been completed. I was offering to share this treasure trove of pots (since the person I was talking with is also a gardener), when I heard someone nearby say, "I could use some 3-gallon pots!"

It turns out that she digs up a couple of pepper plants every Fall to bring inside so she can have fresh peppers all winter, and she was out of big pots. We finally worked out a way to meet up and share the pots, and I am assuming that her pepper plants are now safely indoors. Because of this conversation, however, I brought the two Minibelles inside. I don't know whether my window will provide enough light for more growth, but I am hoping that the peppers that are on the plants now will have a chance to ripen.

I don't plan to grow Minibelles next year, because the other peppers I grew are so much tastier, but I am interested in finding out how the indoor peppers will do.