Tabascos Are For The Birds!

   The growing of any kind of hot peppers is something of a novelty for me.  I dehydrate them and use them occasionally...mainly in my herbal cure-all better known as the Bayou Fire.  Yep, the name says it all.  Still, I have no need for buckets of the things.  Obviously, the plants deemed it necessary to provide me with buckets full, regardless of the lack of a need.  A few weeks ago, the scotch bonnets were in full swing and I had to pick hundreds of those plump rascals.  Now, I have jars and jars of dehydrated peppers lining the shelves.  If I have get a hankering for some really hot dish, I have the means to spice it up a bit.

  That was all fine and dandy but now the tabasco pepper (yes, pepper as in single plant) has decided not to be outdone in the production of tiny peppers.  That single plant has over 500 peppers on it!  The only problem is that the sun has not shone for the past ten days so the peppers are not ripening. They are staying pale yellow instead of the fiery red that is desired.  The few that do ripen are snatched up by the birds!  It seems that the mockingbirds love hot peppers!  We had this same problem about 10 years ago.  Mockingbirds started visiting the gardens and picked every pepper that ripened.  At that time, I found it amusing.  I still do.  How in the world can those birds eat hot peppers one after another without setting their mouths on fire??  Tough birds!

  Both types of peppers are growing on plants that were in last year's garden. Last October, I dug the plants and stuck them in the greenhouse where they stayed for the entire winter.  They were plopped back into the ground in the spring and have grown with a fury.  The tabasco pepper is nigh on 4ft tall and is intertwined with the four-o'clock plants.  (Neither of these were supposed to get this big but something happened!)  I am tempted to pick about 100 of the tabasco peppers to see if they will ripen indoors.  If they do, they, along with more scotch bonnets, will be dried.  I sure hope somebody comes along and wants some of these things.  Otherwise, I may just have to start canning hot sauce!  Hmm, now there is an idea!

Last Year's Hot Peppers!

   Last spring, Darling Daughter brought me a couple dozen "hot pepper" plants.  She said there was a combination of tabasco peppers and scotch bonnet peppers.  Alrighty, then.  I suppose I never thought much about hot peppers as being anything but hot.  So....I planted hot peppers in the garden.  Spring turned to summer and that waned into fall.  Those plants made exactly five peppers and, believe it or not, the snails ate those.  Hmmm.  Something was surely amiss with the pepper plants but, since winter has a way of killing fragile plants, I dug up each of the surviving plants, potted them and stuck them in the greenhouse.  There, they sat besides some tomato plants that, on a whim, I dug and potted. What was I thinking?  These were just more things for me to tend over the winter months.  Sort of dumb.

  Anyway, come this spring, I planted all of those things back into the garden.  Surprisingly, the year old tomato plants bloomed and set tomatoes almost immediately!  Woohoo!  The peppers sat dormant.  Last month, however, as the tomatoes withered...the peppers started thriving!  Yes!  Now I had hot peppers....lots of hot peppers....too many hot peppers!  What can you do with an overload of the things?  I quickly found out that you do NOT want to put them in the dehydrator in the middle of the kitchen with no vent fan.  Nope..NEVER DO THAT!  EVER!  NEVER EVER!  Just take my word on it...don't do it.

  Thankfully, Darling Daughter made the offhanded comment that her pepper plants did not survive and she would love "some" peppers.  YES!  Tomorrow, a box of peppers is heading to her house.  I hope she is ready.  I have some sixty plus on the table and will pick that many more before sending the box to her.

  While the tabasco peppers are not extremely hot on the scale of "pepper hotness", those scotch bonnets rate pretty high up there in heat.  In comparison...using the Scoville scale, tabascos range around 30,000 to 40,000 while the scotch bonnets go at a whopping 100,000 to 350,000 (heat units).  Yep, that is quite a difference!  

  Being as this pepper is so hot, what in the world possessed me to even agree to have it in the garden?  Every time I am out there picking the peppers, I have to marvel at that fact.  What was I thinking?  No, I do not wear gloves to pick the peppers even though I strongly advise the use.  I am sure that some day I shall make the mistake of wiping the sweat from my brow and will regret the lack of good judgement.