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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 13, 2021 14:51:50 GMT -6
A long-time friend of mine and I were talking about our gardens on the phone this past winter. She gardens in upstate New York, and I’m in south central Texas, but we both have four hungry children to feed. I was lamenting that the banana peppers that had grown so well for me in the fall were hotter than my children liked, and she suggested that I give shishito peppers a try. They’re a small Japanese pepper in the capsicum annuum family. I had never eaten them, but a quick internet search revealed that a packet of seed was cheaper than a bag of peppers at my local grocery. Apparently they’re all the rage as an appetizer or side dish once they’re “blistered” in a hot pan or on a grill. We had our first little harvest for such a dish the other night and sautéed them in oil with salt and garlic. They were a big hit. They’re a sweet peppers, but apparently about one in ten can be hot. We sautéed twenty-six, I believe. The first bite I got was hot, and the same thing happened to my eight year old. We shared our peppers with others who wanted to sample them. All the rest were sweet, except possibly a mildly hot one that my five year old ate. I liked both the sweet and the hot as the hot wasn’t too hot and gave some nice variety. The next day when my five year old and I were in the garden, he asked me to harvest more shishito peppers. I showed him the plant and let him count the little ones that still needed to grow, but I’m excited to have been introduced to such a yummy pepper that seems to be growing well for me. My only regret is that I put two of my three plants in containers, and those two aren’t doing as well as the one in my garden bed. I think maybe all our rain washed two many nutrients out of the soil, so I did give the containers a bit of fertilizer yesterday. Here’s a couple of photos: the first shishito pepper harvest (some were small, but I wanted to encourage the plant to keep on producing), and the garden plant today.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 24, 2021 12:54:52 GMT -6
I think the fertilizer helped my container peppers. Now I just have to concentrate on keeping them having enough water. The containers have a large water reservoir, but I’ve also got some pretty bushy tomatoes in there, and the water goes fast. We had a good harvest this morning, though, and had blistered shishitos at lunch to accompany our black bean soup. My kids are definitely fans.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 24, 2021 23:13:12 GMT -6
Those sound like very interesting peppers. I've never heard of that variety before. I love reading about your kids helping in the garden. Thanks, for posting that.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 25, 2021 16:11:19 GMT -6
We’ve enjoyed learning about them ourselves. I would never have thought to try them until my friend suggested them.
My five year old is my best garden helper. He doesn’t seem to mind the heat the way the older ones do at this point. I love that he can identify every different type of cherry tomato that I currently have growing in my garden, and he asks for each by name when he finds one he wants to pick.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 25, 2021 19:56:18 GMT -6
That's wonderful! Children are so precious at that age and grow up so fast too. It's very heartwarming to hear that you're making time to enjoy them. (Not all moms do that). Those will be great memories for the little one too. I still remember helping my mom, my aunts, and my grandma in their gardens. Now, that they have all passed on, those are really treasured memories to have. I'm so glad they took the time to make it that way.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 19, 2021 15:21:45 GMT -6
I just wanted to give a little update on my shishito peppers. They have been producing really well, and we’ve had a couple of meals where we have really enjoyed using them in place of bell peppers: pepper steak and beef fajitas. The occasional hot one in a recipe does add a nice touch. For both of those recipes I did remove the seeds from the peppers. It was pretty time consuming compared to just chopping a bell pepper, but my bell peppers didn’t produce, and these plants did, so they are the winners in my book. Yesterday I ended up with nine ounces of sliced pepper (after my young daughter cut off the tops, my older daughter sliced them in half, and I scraped out the seeds with a baby spoon, all assembly-line fashion). It was enough to put some in the freezer all ready to go for the next time we need it.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 22, 2021 13:46:44 GMT -6
I zoomed in on that photo. Those sure are some pretty peppers!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Dec 27, 2021 17:08:36 GMT -6
I thought it was time to add another update to this thread. It’s just a couple of days after Christmas in an usually warm December, and I just harvested a small batch of shishito peppers for our dinner. The red ones were hiding on the back of a plant that goes through our deck railing, and I hadn’t been walking back there for the past several days. I felt as though I had a belated Christmas present when I saw them. I probably ought to move the plants on the deck somewhere where they can get more sunshine since they are in containers. They’re still growing, but the peppers are small. (They probably need fertilizer, too, being in containers, but I don’t know that I can bring myself to feed plants that ought to be dead already if the weather had behaved itself.). The plant in the garden gave the bigger peppers, and it has all sorts of new growth on it today. I saw an 8 oz package of shishitos in the grocery store the other day, and the price as about $6.00. If I remember correctly, they used to be about $3.50. I know they’ll go up when they’re not so much in season, but I was still kind of shocked. I plan to keep growing these. We’re hoping that the older, redder peppers will have a higher chance of being hot. I’ll try to remember to update this after our dinner.
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Post by macmex on Dec 27, 2021 19:32:31 GMT -6
If I could easily protect from cross pollination with Chile Rayado I´d surely grow these. They are kind of in a class by themselves in terms of culinary usage. I loved them when I tried them at my daughter's home back in March.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Dec 28, 2021 8:41:07 GMT -6
Here’s an update about the red shishitos. They definitely have a higher percentage of hot ones, which makes sense as the heat increases as the pepper ages, I believe. They were too hot for one of my children, but the rest of us really enjoyed having more hot ones than usual. Unfortunately, I had meant to save seeds to add to my collection, but I completely forgot. Since I cook these whole, I just threw them in the pan in which I had just made some garlic butter, and that was that. macmex, do you save seeds from Chile Rayado every single year, or do you take years off? I’m wondering if you could simply plant some shishitos in years when saving seed isn’t your goal. You could make that the year to save shishito seeds, and if they ended up crossed, you’d have much more option for replacing them.
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Post by macmex on Dec 28, 2021 9:10:46 GMT -6
I pretty much save seed every year. The problem is that if I grew Shishito peppers, I'd also want to save that seed. So for me I'd need to have another isolation grow out area to have them. Maybe I'll think of something.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Dec 28, 2021 17:43:39 GMT -6
You know so much more about seed saving and isolation techniques than I do that I’m not going to attempt suggestions in that particular area. My only other idea to have you enjoy shishitos is to suggest to heavyhitterokra that he consider them for Farmer’s Market sales if he still does that business and convince him to grow some. The shishitos sold in our local organic co-op this summer for $4.00 per half pound (an 8 oz package just like the grocery store had this week for $6.00) and were popular. I never bought any since I had my own, but they seem to be a very trendy food these days. Maybe if he grew a couple of dozen plants, you could get some of the bounty. They do take a little time to pick hunting through the foliage, but they were so productive for me, I can only imagine how they would thrive under his care. (Actually I’m not sure that I really could imagine it!)
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Post by macmex on Dec 28, 2021 18:05:22 GMT -6
Shishitos would be really great for a farmers market. They're consumed more the way I think of as green beans than other peppers. We'll see. I don't think Ron did much with the farmers market this year. He dedicated most everything to seed production.
I may yet figure out a garden plan where I could grow them. Need to chat with my wife about it.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Dec 28, 2021 18:33:41 GMT -6
I can see how seed production would take up a huge amount of his time. My mind still can’t really comprehend 179 + pounds of seed that he prepared plus his own stock.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 29, 2021 15:30:26 GMT -6
I think I processed somewhere around 190 pounds of okra seed this year, 180.09 for Baker Creek, and 10 or 12 pounds for home sales and replanting.
Covid kind of messed up the Farmer's Market. The customers were not allowed to touch any of the produce. That's how I sell all of my produce; by letting the customers hand-select what they want from my displays, then weigh it up, just like they do at the grocery store. (I don't pre-package anything). They've been requiring pre-orders and pre-packaging for the past two Summers. Because of that, I haven't been there for the past two seasons. Maybe, next summer things will finally get back to normal around here?
The sad part is that I'm not getting any younger, waiting for things to come back around to normal. Those are just lost years of production. Thank goodness for seed sales!
God really looks after us. We are very thankful for that.
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