It may be Fall, but our little balcony garden is about to overrun with spicy, (hopefully) delicious mammoth jalapeños! Just three weeks after I shared my delight on Instagram about our first budding pepper, the plant has grown 4x larger and is producing a half-dozen more! I snapped a few quick pictures, because I can't contain my excitement about this.
I've never been the best at keeping plants alive. Succulents, maybe, but this is my first attempt at growing a vegetable plant—especially one in such a small container. We recently had to move it to a larger pot, because the first one we put it in was beginning to topple over under the weight of the growing jalapeños. The last thing we wanted was for the plant to fall over onto the ground, or have the peppers alone fall off and, inevitably, be devoured by our little Gretchen pups.
Neither John or I had any idea what the peppers would look like when they were actually starting to form. We kept looking at it every day, trying to figure out what stem might become a jalapeño. Once the plant started to flower, I got nervous when the petals would brown and then fall off. Maybe I wasn't caring for it properly?
Little did we know that the shedding of the petals would give way to little green nubs, so long as the stem stayed attached. So I did my best not to mess with any part of the plant (no poking or prodding), and voila! Pepper-y goodness!
John is waiting as patiently as he can for these guys to grow to their full size. He already has plenty of recipe ideas, which is good, because I have a sneaking suspicion all of these jalapeños will be ripe at the exact same time. Perhaps it's time to learn how to jar and pickle these veggies.
Do you have any jalapeño recipes you love? Other than using them on top of pretty much everything, I've never really cooked with them. Ideas would be welcome!
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