My earliest encounter with a chili was when I was probably seven or eight years old. My mom had several of us kids with her and we were grocery shopping in town. While we were going through the produce section, my younger brother reached up and grabbed a pretty little yellow chili pepper from the bin. I don’t remember if he ate it or just bit it, but I heard the results of his actions. He was crying, trying to wipe off the heat, and grabbing for Mom. She tried water, wiping with her hanky, and I think finally ice cream, but nothing really helped put out the fire.
Now, 50 years later, I am growing these chilies and many more even hotter varieties in my back yard garden. I started about 10 years ago with the usual small garden with a few different tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and two chili plants. That first year I had serranos and Anaheims. Anaheims are a very mild long yellow-green pepper that seems to grow easily. Serrano’s are a smaller green and then later on red pepper that is much hotter. Well, like most back yard gardeners, I tend to plant and grow plants that grow easily.
Sometimes even plants that produce things that no one in my family likes. So the next year I planted more chilies. I added jalapenos, poblanos and cherry peppers. Now I have five types of peppers and I am the only one that will eat every different type. Oh, my family would eat the poblanos and the Anaheims if they were in a salsa, but I had no takers on the hot ones. I wasn’t discouraged, though, the plants were beautiful, healthy and bearing well.
I have added more varieties, left out some, and this year I had 10 varieties growing. I have jalapenos and jumbo jalapenos, serranos habeneros, Caribeans, cayennes, Super F-Is, tabascos, Santa Fe grandes, and a small berry-like, extremely hot pepper that I call a pequeno. I call it that because when I was in the hills above Mazatlan a few years ago I saw these little peppers growing wild and a local called them that. I have tried finding them and finally I found a small seedling at Home Depot and added it to my garden. I produced beautiful shiny green, bright red, yellow, and orange peppers with a few brown and cherry red ones thrown in.
I use only mulch and manure every year, only organic fertilizers, and I have a great healthy, well producing bunches of peppers. I give most of my crop to my Hispanic friends at work and I make what I am told, a “to die for“ pico de gallo salsa. When my tomatoes stop ripening I pick all the green ones and make a killer green salsa. I love my chilies and I am glad that there wasn’t someone like me stocking that grocery store’s produce section 50 years ago. The little yellow pepper that my brother got hold of that night is like catsup compared to my current crop.
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