Chile Failure!

Oh boy, big note for next year: if you let D mess up the labels on any of the starts, be sure they are NOT the pepper starts. Hopefully next year none of the starts will be lacking in labels... however: for fear of cold nights and early rains, I decided (upon reading I could) pulled all my green chiles off of their plants and decided to ripen them inside. Not a good idea. Mainly because I didn't know what kinds of chiles I had, and apparently there are different ways of ripening them, depending on the variety.

I assumed (not sure why I'm assuming anything as a novice vegetable gardener, but it is my style) that there was a sort of standard way of ripening chiles/peppers, as there is with tomatoes, etc. Apparently not. Some like to be in a bag, under the counter, dark. Others you can put in direct sunlight. I read a "how to" on the latter, and so put mine on the windowsill. After the smell of hot chile was too strong in the house I thought why not put them outside in the sun - same thing.

I think I've killed them all. They are white! Well, blotchy. And flabby. It's very sad. They were such an accomplishment! I grew two handfuls of chile peppers west of the cascades! The black pots worked! And then I put them out to die before I could even try one!

Well, people lost entire food supplies during the depression; people are starving all over the world, so I suppose I should look on the bright side of things. I did have successful pepper plants! I did grow chiles! Some of the plants are still producing! Next year do not lose the labels, do not let your child mix up the plants, and do a little more research before pulling all your peppers off ahead of time because you think what you are doing must be right!