Illustration

        As you walk into the gated garden plot, you are first struck by the sheer size of it. Over seven hundred square feet of pure heaven on earth, filled with a large variety of heirloom vegetables. The next thing that strikes you is all the color that is spread all over, from pink to purple, red to brown, yellow to orange and all the other colors of the rainbow. The immense variety is mind blowing, over sixty different varieties of vegetables. Every kind of vegetable you can think of is planted here; tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, numerous greens, melons, and of course peppers, just to name a couple. The peppers being my babies have the most room in the garden, a four foot by thirty foot raised row that I have packed with plants.

The soil is ripe with organic matter and squirming with all sorts of life forms. The pepper plants bask in the sun till dawn, as the plot has nothing blocking the sun at all. The plants get a south blowing wind making the stems thick and strong, they look like tree trunks because of this. The green branches reach for the sky, heavy with pepper pods. There is one oddity in the row, the Cheiro Roxo pepper plant, which has amazing black foliage (leafs). The plants are spaced one foot apart so they touch some, but this is planned. There is an old wise tale that pepper plants like to hold hands, hands meaning leaves.  There are thirty one plants packed in this part of the garden, with mostly sweet peppers. The good stuff is in the garden in back of the house, where I keep my arsenal of heat.

You step out the back door of the garage and see a field of green and white. It has three four foot by eight foot raised beds, and twenty three five gallon pots. The pots are home made out of old pickle buckets, and are white with a handle. I drilled holes all along the bottom of the bucket for drainage, so the plants would not drown. I made my own potting mix to fill them with made of compost; peat moss, perlite, lime, and my own blended organic fertilizer mix.  All the pots are filled with hot pepper plants, and the other raised beds have various other vegetables such as bok choy, orka, broccil, and beets. All the pots and raised beds in the back rest on a wood chip bed, to help keep out weeds. The raised beds are made out of a brown wood, and are one foot tall. They are filled with a mix of compost, peat moss, grass clippings, and fruit and vegetable waste.  It really is a sea of fire in the gardens, and I could spend days swimming in it.  The joy you get from a simple plant will always amaze me, but it’s the simple things that really count. So dawn has come and the sun is setting, the plants are going down for the night. It is such a peaceful calm in the garden at this time, with the crickets chirping and the fireflies dancing in the sky. I love this place, such a simple thing, a garden.

Description Post

This beast from hell was a raging inferno of a pepper, like none I had ever laid my eyes on. Its name was Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, and it scared me to death. It was the hottest pepper in the world in 2011 according to Guinness World Records, just to give you an idea of how hot this pepper was. The scoville scale is the scale used to measure heat in a pepper, a jalapeno is 3,000-5,000 on the scale, and the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T is 1.4 million! So knowing all of this I did what any sane person would do, grew some Butch T plants.

The plant did not put out a land slide of peppers like some of my other plants did. What it lacked in quantity though, it made up for with scorching hot peppers.  It had a rough texture with small pimples all over it and was fire truck red. It was a little smaller than golf ball and looked like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, almost like a space ship. The top of the pepper was shaped almost like a brain, and the bottom end had a tail that stuck out. A quick wash really made it shine a nice glossy red, it looked so innocent.

As soon as I cut it in half each half started to pool with capsaicin oil, which is what makes peppers hot. This devils spawn of a pepper had so much capsaicin oil; it just oozed it from its walls. The smell was very floral with a hint of citrus at first, with a slight acidic after smell. It had a very surprisingly good taste, almost fruity at first. This lasted all of three seconds, and like a train hitting a car on the tracks, bam! The heat hit me hard and fast, it went from cool to lava hot in those 3 seconds.  No other pepper I have ever tried has burnt me so fast; this thing was on warp speed. It kept climbing in heat like a never ending ladder of pain. Each breath I took felt like I had a blow torch coming out of my mouth.  Twenty minutes later most of the blaze had gone out in my mouth, only a small brush fire here and there.  What a mind bending pepper, it was almost unearthly how hot it was. This pepper has hot sauce written all over it, I can hardly wait to make it into a fiery hot sauce.

A Trinidad scorpion Butch T

Narration Rough Draft

I have loved hot peppers for some years now, since I was a young child. I remember the first taste of a fresh hot pepper I ever had; I was in 7th grade. I recall thinking it was hot, but loved the taste and adrenaline rush. Since then I have been hooked; always looking for a new pepper to try, to get that next pepper high. After some years I had tried all the pepper varieties you could buy at stores in the area. I had a problem; how could I try new peppers with out moving? Then it came to me, why not grow your own? I look back on it now and wonder why I didn't start sooner, but this is how it all started, my obsession with growing hot peppers. 

I had been looking online for information on a good source of seeds for weeks. I was very picky about where I bought seeds from, as there are thousands of seed vendors you have to make sure to pick a quality one. I ended up choosing pepperjoe.com; he had so many good comments and feedback, as well as lots of peppers I had never heard of. You can buy seeds for peppers in all heat ranges from sweet, to melt your face off hot. I had a hard choice to make, I remember saying to myself "How hot of a pepper do I think I can handle?". At this point the hottest pepper I had  tried was in the habanero heat range, and peppers get much hotter then that. A little unsure of what to get, I figured I would get a nice mix of heat ranges and colors. I ended up buying 16 different varieties of seeds that day. 

I needed some other key pieces of equipment before I could get started planting the seeds. I ordered a heating mat to help keep the seeds at proper  temperature for germination, which is when the seeds sprout. I found a good deal on root plugs and a tray to hold them, which is where the seeds go to germinate , and a humidity dome to keep in the heat and moisture. Lastly, I went to Menards in La Crosse to buy a fan to blow on the plants once they sprout, and a light fixture with bulbs. A week went by and all my packages had come in the mail.  I figured I was very well set, and was ready to get started! 

It was January 15, 2013 when I started my seeds, in the dead of winter. I ended up planting two of each seed, so thirty two in total. I remember thinking "not to bad for a first year, thirty two pepper plants should give me peppers for the year". I should have done this along time ago, it was too easy not to. I thought it was going to be easy at first, but would soon learn of how much work really goes into growing a plant from seed indoors. Work that, in the long run would be well worth it, I just knew it had to be. 

I checked the seed trays each day to see if the root plugs needed water and to ensure the temperature was right. The humidity had to be kept in check as well, so I would take off the humidity dome for a half hour each day. The morning of January 19, 2013 I came into check on the seeds, and had a surprise waiting for me. I looked down at the seed flat and one of the seeds had sprouted! Words can not express how excited I was, I jumped for joy. I felt like it was my wedding day and daughter being born wrapped up in one, that’s how good I felt. "So who are you little guy" I asked the sprout, and I checked the label I had on it. "O my, you’re a yellow 7 pod, what a cute little guy you are", I found myself talking to the seeds a lot, my wife was starting to think I was crazy. After the first sprout came up it was time to turn on the lights, as the sprouts would need light now. From this point on I was so excited to check each day for new sprouts, it was like Christmas each day. 

As the weeks passed by, more and more seeds sprouted. After a month all 32 root plugs had sprouts in them, and were ready to be planted in a bigger container. I had purchased some red Solo cups, cut holes in the bottom, and filled them with a organic potting mix. I made a little hole in the potting mix and put the root plug in, then covered the plug up with the mix. This was very rewarding to me; getting my hands dirty in the dead of winter. I watered each cup and put them back under the lights; it was a good day. At that time things became easier as the plants needed water less often, since the larger containers held more water. As they became older, it was time to add some food to their diet. 

It was time to start the seedlings on a fertilizer, and I had  some research to do again. I found a great organic fish and kelp fertilizer, that fit all of my needs. I had never used this product before, but read it was stinky. Now,let me tell you the plants loved it, but my goodness does it stink! My wife said it reminder her of her home town, which is right on Lake Michigan. The whole basement would smell like this for a few hours. Luckily I only had to feed them once every 2 weeks, so I could deal with the smell. The process of water, feeding, and fanning went on for 6 months inside my house. 

After 6 months inside, it was time to introduce the plants to the outdoor environment. The first day I placed them outside for one hour, then brought them inside. The next day 2 hours outside, then inside; third day three hours outside, then inside. This went on until I could leave them outside for a full day; it was a time consuming process. If the plants are in the sun for too long without slowly being introduced to it, their leaves will burn, which is not good. Three weeks of this went by before I was finally ready to transplant my peppers to their permanent soil. It was a perfect day in the first week of June that I chose for my planting day; the weather was just right. Finally it was time to get out my garden shovel and knee pads, and get dirty. I spent 2 hours planting peppers, just basking in the early morning sun, loving every bit of those moments. After a good watering and quick fertilizer feeding it was time to sit back and enjoy my work. After months of babying these little guys it was bitter sweet to see them outside and in the ground.  

After all of the work that went into the plants it was time to harvest my first pepper. Oddly enough it was from my first sprout, the little yellow 7 pod. This was just the start, over the next weeks and months, more peppers were harvested. I soon had a good amount of peppers, I really could not believe how many actually. For being my first year doing this, I would call it a success. I now have all the hot peppers I could want, and then some. This was a experience I will never forget, one that I hope to share with my daughter some day. 

 

 

 Hello, my name is Ian young and I have a pepper problem. It all started as a young child, when I first tried my dads hot sauce and salsa. I fell in love, and from that time on I had to try all things pepper, and the peppers got hotter and hotter. For the past 4 years I have been growing peppers in my large garden. Some how I keep getting more and more pepper plants, this year I am up to  55 total. So you could say I like peppers, now lets get this blog started.

Welcome to the exciting world of mild to hot peppers! Is your food seeming a little bland, think it needs a little kick, a extra something? Well try some peppers, I would be willing to bet its that little something you where looking for. Peppers come in all heat ranges, from sweet to super hot, so even if you do not like the heat so much, there is a pepper for you. My own passion in life is mild to super hot peppers, the hotter the better in my book. In my blog I will be focused on mainly hot peppers, but I may from time to time talk about a sweeter pepper, as I like them also, but they are not as fun as the really hot peppers.

Not only do peppers taste good, they are super fun to grow as well. If you grow them from seed, you get to care for them for a good 7-10 months. You get to see them grow each day, from a little sprout inside your house, to a full grown plant that is full of peppers. I can not put into words how good of a feeling this is, to see mother nature at work, right before you eyes. After the growing is done, you get to harvest the peppers, this is where the real fun starts. There is a number of ways to preserve your harvest, so really the sky is the limit. One could make hot sauce, salsa, pepper powder, pepper flakes, to name a few. This is a great way to save money, as some of these products in the store are very pricey.