My Backyard Earthbox Garden - Jalapenos

The jalapeno harvest was tremendous this year. I planted 12 seeds in an Earthbox and ended up culling several to make room for 6 jalapeno plants.

I attribute the bountiful amount of peppers this year to the dry weather we experienced from early June to mid-August. The picture below was taken after the weekly harvests started to decline as the weather cooled here in the early fall. These covered about 1/3 of the large collander I use for harvesting. Throughout the year I lost count of how many overflowing collanders of jalapenos I actually harvested, but but it was at least 3 1/2 amounting to hundreds of peppers.

Jalapenos grown my backyard Earthbox garden

Jalapenos halved and ready for drying in the oven

We had a unique problem...what to do wtih all those jalapenos? A few Google searches later and we decided to dry them and grind them in a coffee grinder to make jalapeno powder.

It's a simple 4 step process:

•  Halve them
• Pop them on a cookie sheet
• With the oven on the lowest setting, dry them for 4 hours or so
• If they are not dry, put them back in the oven for another hour or so

These are not "exact" times. You would do best to keep an eye on them and pull them out early if they begin to develop a "burnt" look.



Homemade jalapeno powder

Caution: If you are going to handle jalapenos with your bare hands, be careful. Don't rub your eyes. Don't touch your lips, face, or other "sensitive areas". Surgical gloves make handling hot peppers much easier.

Serrano Peppers for Salsas and Barbecue Sauce

Here's a picture of a serrano pepper growing in my backyard. 

A couple of years ago I started above ground gardening and after several trials and many errors, I've been successful in growing several pepper varieties in a simple, but very effective, hydropinc bubbler constructed from an inexpensive 18 gallon plastic tote.

At my house, we eat lots of green and orange bell peppers, cubanelles, poblanos and even some jalapenos now and then.  But the serrrano is a little out of my league. It's quite a bit higher up the Scoville heat scale than anything I could eat fresh from the garden.  When I purchased the seeds, I didn't pay much attention to the potential mouth scorching qualities of a "hot" pepper, but luckily I did a little research before plopping on in my mouth.

A jalapeno ranges 2,500 - 8,000 Scoville heat units, while a serrano ranges from 10,000 - 25,000 Scoville heat units.

Fortunately for me, one of my co-workers loves to make salsas. She took a batch of the serranos last week and made a batch of very tasty salsa that went well with a bag of Tostitos.

If you like hot bbq sauce, maybe you should consider growing your own hot peppers too. I can help if you're interested in building a cheap and easy hydropnic bubbler, but if you prefer the traditional gardening route, Gardenersnet.com has a nice article you might find helpful.

Funny story....I was making ABT's last year from jalapenos and decided to casually munch on one while I was cleaning up.  Apparently someone put a green serrano pepper in the bin where the jalapenos were being stored at Publix. Ohhhcheewowow!! I grabbed ice cubes, milk, water and any other liquid I could get my hands on quickly.

Backyard Hydroponic Peppers

A few pictures of the peppers growing my homemade hydroponic bubbler I made from an inexpensive 18 gallon storage container, an air stone, a cheap aquarium air pump, with some fish emulsion for nutrient.

Bell Peppers

Cubanelle Peppers

Guess how many pepper plants are in this picture? All are currently fruiting.

There are a total of six plants in the picture including bell, Cubanelle, poblano, and hot chili.

I made the bubbler as an experiment and have less than $30 invested in the entire project.  A commercial version can run upwards of $90 or more.  I'm unsure whether the commercial version works 3 times better because I don't own one, but my homemade version is working pretty well so far. 

I need to fine tune the nutrients more and my results would likely be even better.

If you look closely at the picture, you'll probably notice that I had to add some small stakes to support the plants.  Windy days were wreaking havoc on the plants and these bamboo sticks I had in the garage are doing the trick.

Here's another idea for a homemade backyard hydroponics system that I'm going to try later this year. I've seen a wicking system idea that is similar, but I want to continue experimenting with cheap and easy hydroponics.  "Even a blind hog finds an acorn every once in awhile."