Well I thought I’d get a few bell peppers, but I got bupkis. I’ve not had much to do in the garden, on account of the rain- but as today was the first clear day, I thought I’d at least do something out back, for exercise if nothing else.
So I thought I’d harvest what bell peppers were viable and then finally compost the plants and throw out that old ugly plastic container.
Well the first pepper I clipped off was basically rotten mush- which was a bad sign. The second pepper I clipped off I dropped, because a spider crawled out- from inside the pepper. It was like that for all of them.
Man just… so many spiders. I’m not arachnophobic I’m really not but… there is a thing as too many spiders.
See I fucked up when I got these plants and put them into a shallow pot. I didn’t know that in order to grow peppers in pots, you need to have a sufficiently deep pot.
This was not a sufficiently deep pot.
The result was a plant that never grew properly, even though it did put out peppers. But the peppers themselves were as runty as the plant. One or two were ok- but possibly due to the ill health of the plant so so many were infested and well. That was that.
This whole situation I’m chalking up to a lesson learned. I’m still unsure about the other two failing plants, the shishito might be salvageable if I prune it properly, but frankly it’s never grown right and the peppers I’ve gotten were just not right.
The “hatch” also. It was originally in a too small pot too, and then it got flattened and transplanted. It gave me a good half dozen peppers, but dad and I agreed, they weren’t the right level of heat, though the texture was quite nice. So I might pull them out too.
The only pepper I’m definitely keeping for next year is my mole pepper whose real name has been lost to time and the fact that the name was written on a plastic label with a sharpie which has faded. “Chi” or “cua” something? It was a long name in Nahuatl. It’s a Mexican mole pepper- and it’s grown really well. I do have baby peppers on it- which has only shown up in the last month or so- and it was in the right pot from the start and has just grown very well from the beginning.
The problem was I had two surgeries this summer and so I put the peppers in very late in the season. If they’d been in by late March… but they weren’t. I’m lucky that the Mole pepper seems to have done so well, even if I haven’t gotten any peppers from it yet.
So all I have from my red bell pepper plant is an empty plastic planter ready for recycling, some crap for my compost bin, and a bunch of dirt all down my grey sweater.
But on the bright side…
May these sun golds be the first of many!
The Neanderthal Gardens 