A Peck of Pretty Peppers

I picked a peck of pretty peppers from my garden - okay maybe not quite a peck (which apparently is 2 gallon jars full), but fairly close if you count both both my hot and sweet peppers.  Look what a gorgeous red they are!  You will note one green guajillo at the back that is looking wrinkly.  I am drying some for use later in chilis and stews, and it has begun the process.

It was a bumper crop this year, in spite of the slug problem.  Apparently they loved the sweet peppers, but not the hot peppers.  They crawled inside the sweet peppers (Yuck!), but only attacked the leaves of the hot pepper plants.  Fortunately, I had all the pepper plants in pots or planters, and moving the planter with the sweet peppers out of the garden helped.

This is the first year in a long time that my peppers have turned red while on the plant.  Usually they are still green when it gets to the end of summer, and it's perfectly okay to use them that way in food.  But I wanted to save some seed, and they need to turn red while still on the plant in order for the seeds to be mature enough to germinate.  This summer, the heat started earlier, and rather than wait till the first weekend in June, I planted my bedding plants a couple of weeks early.  It made a huge difference with both the peppers and tomatoes.  I was very excited because I was able to save seed from each kind of pepper I planted, all heirloom varieties - Yay!  Fresh seed for next year.

I'm also hoping to save seed this year from my 3 varieties of romaine lettuce.  It is quite a process because you have to wait for them to flower, and growing the flower stalk, which makes the plant almost 4 feet tall, takes awhile.  Then you wait for the flowers to bloom, close up, and then reopen with fluffy stuff attached to seeds -  just like dandelions do.  Lettuce is part of the dandelion family - who knew!  You pretty much need to check the plants every day because the flowers bloom at different rates.

And this year I finally grew Calendula, also called Pot Marigold.  I had been given seeds a long time ago, and tried them this year, but they were too old.  I did manage to find some bedding plants grown locally, and they produced an abundance of flowers and seeds.  You can see the cluster of seeds in the bottom right hand corner of the pic.  I'm drying the Calendula petals to use later in making infused oils for handmade soaps and creams.  It is very soothing to dry irritated skin which is why I love it.  And they are such a sunny flower!