Poison = Success

I know I'm killing my traffic, writing about gardening and tools. Fortunately I don't care.

Because I have decided to annihilate everything in the yard that moves, I got in touch with a yard-spray guy recommended by my friend Pat. He's supposed to come by today, but it's rainy, so maybe he won't. I truly look forward to his visit, because I want to see all the bugs bow down to me and retch their rotting guts out before dying in agony.

I think I'm going to drench the dirt around my existing container tomatoes. With imidacloprid. It's safe to kill whiteflies with this stuff even after the season is underway, and I would rather do that than throw out plants which might very well produce after the first cold front.

The tomatoes are still looking hopeless, but boy are the peppers taking off. The Jamaican red Scotch bonnet suddenly decided to spread out yesterday--pepper plants do this for some reason--and now it's maybe five feet wide. The Jamaican hot chocolate next to it jumped up about a foot this week. Soon the gazebo's sun will be very nicely blocked, to a level of six or seven feet. If I could keep bugs from killing them, these would make a very interesting hedge. With juicy-looking red and brown fruit hanging on it. For the dear little unsuspecting children to pick.

None of my Scotch bonnets or habaneros are getting ripe except for the tiny white habaneros, but my PC-1s started turning bright red, and I can see yellow bits on my huge fatalii peppers.

After transplanting several times, I got lazy about labeling pots, so I have three or four mystery peppers. I'm still not one thousand percent sure my Caribbean red and Jamaican red aren't...each other. And I've been trying to differentiate between my prig ki nu, yellow habanero, and Tobago seasoning pepper. Today I had some breakthroughs. Maybe. The peppers on one of the plants have turned out kind of boxy-looking, so they can't be Tobago seasoning peppers. That makes them yellow habaneros, I think. And the prig ki nus are pointy, like PC-1s, so now that I can see a few tiny peppers, I can eliminate that plant from the chinense confusion.

Chinense is the species name for most of the world's really nasty peppers. Habaneros, Scotch bonnets, naga jolokias, datils, 7 pots, etcetera.

The cayenne plants look sort of peaked, but they're producing like crazy. My second crop is already hanging on the plant; I'm just waiting for it to turn red.

It is becoming apparent to me that I need a plan for these peppers. I am going to be swamped in around two weeks, and after that, it will only get worse. I figure I should dry and grind up a fair amount of each pepper. I will of course collect seeds. And I should vacuum-seal and freeze some peppers for later use.

I will never be able to give these away. Can you believe that? People are such wimps. Eventually I'll have to start throwing peppers out. It's a shame, because crazy-hot peppers are very useful in the kitchen. You can taste the flavor when using an amount too small to make a dish inedibly hot. I've had a bowl of chili for dinner three times this week, and every time, I threw a teaspoon of minced habanero or Scotch bonnet in it, and it wasn't hot at all. I mean, not REALLY REALLY hot. Tasted great.

I should start offering seeds to my readers. Just to get rid of them. The seeds, I mean. There's a small chance you'd get something cross-pollinated, but peppers generally self-pollinate. Right now all I have are PC-1s and cayennes (which could be hybrids), but later...Katie bar the door.

The hardest thing to get used to, about writing cookbooks and studying food, is the waste. I throw food out constantly, and now it looks like I'll be doing the same thing with produce. And don't tell me to give it to the homeless. First of all, it's impossible and a stupid suggestion, second, I hate coddling bums, and third, the homeless aren't going to be very grateful for habaneros. I mean, come on. They get pepper-sprayed twice a week.

Come on, poison guy. Daddy needs his tomatoes.