While some of my hot pepper seeds (poblano, Anaheim green chili, jalapeno) came from Burpee, the Cayenne pepper seeds came from High Mowing Organic Seeds. The packets are dated from 2013. Don’t forget you can use pepper seeds for a few years. Because I am growing my peppers in a small area, I don’t save the seeds from the peppers for the following year because they can cross-pollinate plus I am lazy!
Normally I plant 4 plants of each type of pepper. The prior year I had too many peppers so I attempted to plant just 3 of each. Since it was a cool summer, this was a mistake because I would have liked more peppers! In the picture above, there are poblano peppers on top and cayenne peppers on the bottom.  The middle pepper is a sweet banana pepper so it doesn’t qualify for this blog.
If you recall, I planted more Anaheim green chili pepper plants and less poblano plants by accident because I mixed up the seeds. So I had 5 Anaheim green chili plants and one poblano plant – what a bummer! I did buy an extra poblano plant. Next year I am going back to growing 4 of each.
See the picture above for the Anaheim green chili peppers. We like to stuff them with cheese or meat. Also we like to sautee them and put them on pork or tacos. In case you care, we like to make chile rellenos with the poblano peppers!
This is the first year that I didn’t get enough jalapenos which we use a lot. I actually had to buy some for all of the salsa that we canned. I typically grow the smaller jalapenos (see the peppers on the right in the picture below). Next year, I think I will try the larger ones and maybe purple jalapenos.
I put the cayenne peppers plants in a pot and they did really well. They are still producing . . .
In addition to growing more pepper plants and hoping for a warm summer, I think it will help to water the plants with soaker hoses instead of overhead sprinklers.
