Whew! I just got done dealing with all the peppers I picked. I had a plastic grocery bag full and it took a while to clean and process them. Luckily for me, the bell peppers are not quite ready for picking yet, they need about another week, but the sweet banana peppers and gypsy peppers had tons of mature ones, so a-picking I went.
I don't care for peppers that are water bath canned, I find them to be mushy (if you have a way to prevent this, please leave me a comment!) so I dehydrate part of my peppers and freeze the rest. This is the method I use:
- Cut off the tip and dispose of.
- Slice the pepper in whole slices up to the point the pepper is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and then stop.
- These whole smaller circles are what I dehydrate, as they are large enough to handle the shrinkage.
- I cut the stem end off and slit the pepper down the side and push out the seeds and guts with my thumb.
- I chop the rest of the pepper into smaller pieces (for cooking) and put them in a bag to freeze.
The seeds, stems and cores have uses too, though you cannot collect the seeds for planting, they are not mature enough. Three uses I can think of:
- Feed them to your chickens, ducks, or goats, if you have them.
- Put them in your compost pile (this is what I do)
- Toss them out in your grass for the birds and squirrels. Do NOT toss them in your garden, you don't want to attract the little beggars to your as yet unharvested produce.
I'm glad that this job is over for today, now I can spend some time writing before fixing dinner. I hope you are having a great day!
Jade
Jade
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