Edibles: Peppers take to the NW rather well

When Peg Tillery, Master Gardener coordinator for Kitsap County, visited my garden recently, I think she was surprised most by the peppers. "How do you get them so big and so plentiful?" she asked.

The truth is I don't do anything special with them. That they're early- to midseason varieties probably has the most to do with how well they grow. My earliest -- Gypsy -- ripens in about 60 days from transplanting; my latest -- Holy Mole -- in about 85.

Local gardeners are skeptical about growing peppers, perhaps because they've been convinced by experts that these semitropical plants can't get enough heat here to ripen fruit. But that has not been my experience. I can't remember a year when peppers haven't ripened in my garden, and that includes this sorry growing season.

Only one variety -- habanero -- has ever failed to fruit in my garden. According to the Territorial Seed Co. catalog, that variety takes 90 to 100 days to mature. Any crop with those requirements is going to fail here most years.

Though peppers will make do with very little fertilizer, they fare much better with a generous supply of nutrients. Accordingly, when I set out the plants in June, I mix homemade compost, chicken manure and complete organic fertilizer with the backfill soil. Later in the season I top-dress with fresh coffee grounds.

Since research suggests peppers are chummy, I space my plants 8 to 12 inches apart so they'll touch each other when they reach full size. When they have enough nutrients, the plants will be productive at this spacing.

My peppers are on the same watering schedule as the rest of the garden -- once a week unless there has been rain. As for amount, it's roughly an inch.

Other than occasional rots on the fruit, usually when it's cool and wet, peppers have been trouble-free in my garden. Though they belong to the same family as potatoes and tomatoes, my peppers have never been hit by late blight. And insects seem uninterested in gnawing on them. They're far easier to grow here than tomatoes.

Our small-fruited hot peppers -- jalapeņo, serrano and aci sivri (a Turkish heirloom variety) -- are full of fruits, many of which already have turned red, indicating full ripeness.

For other peppers, we eat some of the fruits green, though they're a bit sweeter when allowed to ripen fully. What we don't use fresh, we'll dry and grind into hot red pepper.

A visit to Oaxaca, Mexico, last winter persuaded us to try growing three of the large chiles most used in moles -- pasillas, anchos and mulatos. By mid-September, the fruits of all three varieties were full size; some were even turning red. A few of the earliest pasilla fruits to ripen had rotten spots on them, a problem I attribute to cool, wet weather. The anchos, mulatos and later pasillas all have been clean. We'll dry most of these chiles for use in Mexican recipes.

Our sweet peppers include Italian sweet, Marconi Rossi and Jimmy Nardello -- all frying peppers. They go into omelets, stir-frys, succotashes and on antipasti plates.

Alma, a round, sweet paprika type will be dried and ground a little at a time to keep the condiment fresh and flavorful.

As for the never-fail Gypsy, we'll use it wherever we'd use a bell pepper. Any Gypsies we can't use fresh, we'll quarter and freeze for soups and stews.

I hope more of you will give peppers a try in your gardens. They're really among the tastiest and least fussy crops you can grow.