My first year of growing peppers

I’m really excited to show the result of my first year of growing peppers. I’ve tried 5 different varieties of peppers and they all did pretty well.

Because I don’t have a greenhouse yet I tried to grow them outside and was surprised by the result I got. Especially because Belgium is not exactly known for it’s dry and warm climate. There is a difference in plant growth but the volume of peppers you get outside is still really good. So if you have a small greenhouse I wouldn’t hesitate to put these outside, so you keep the precious greenhouse space for plants that really need the extra heat.

Below is an overview picture of the different varieties side by side. From left to right we have bell pepper, sweet pointed, Anaheim, Elephant trunk and pilipili. This order also matches the amount of spice.

Because the sheer volume of peppers you get from these plants you need to get creative with what you do with them. Part of them I’ve put in the freezer to use in winter time but another good idea is drying the peppers so you can use it as pepper flakes to spice up a dish.

I’ve also blended some of them up to get home made pepper powder which tastes amazing. The cool thing is that you can mix and match to make it as spicy as you want.

The only problem is that drying some of the bigger peppers can take a lot of time. I used my oven for this but it’s ridiculous how long it takes, let alone the amount of energy that is spilled during this process. To solve this I’m planning to build a solar dehydrator next summer.