Truly, Hound is a noble beast.
Kevin’s friend Ana is a Thai chef, and she grows her own peppers in pots for the sauce she makes. When she found out that Kevin’s new wife was a gardener, she brought me one dried pepper. I split it open and started the seeds, since you’re supposed to start peppers and tomatoes indoors and planted them out, and they did terribly and I was convinced I’d killed them all.
I don’t mind killing plants for the most part–gardeners slaughter plants right and left, it’s part of the process–but these were special. She’d brought them from Thailand decades ago, and you can’t exactly go out to the nursery and buy a beloved variety given as a gift to an old friend’s wife. So I was sad. I also hadn’t started any other peppers this year, because I didn’t want them to cross-pollinate.
And then Kevin looked in exactly the right spot and there it was. One of the ones I’d planted out and which had turned to a tiny, dying nubbin, and I had given up. But I hadn’t planted anything else in that planter, in case the planter was the problem, and apparently it pulled through and has been quietly growing all this time.
Kevin ate one and turned colors and assured me that yes, it was one of the Thai peppers. If I dry all these, I might get enough seeds to grow them with slightly less panic next year.
I usually have great luck with hot peppers--bell peppers defeat me every time, though.
Going to have to try peppers again next year. I had a half dozen of them, and those that weren't eaten by the slugs turned yellow and shrivelled up before they got beyond the dozen or so leaves stage. I think we're maybe a bit far north though for them... [up round York, in England.]
Personally, I'm always mildly surprised when I plant something and it grows, because usually they don't. Although, the garden is full of plants that mysteriously arrived somehow...and not all weeds. Lots of Mysterium Dandyfinio too...
*Minneapolis is at the same latitude as Nice.
seed guilt
They won't produce peppers in the winter unless you manually pollinate or also overwinter a bee hive indoors, both of which seem about equally too much trouble for anyone in their right mind; but they will have a major head start in the spring, allowing a significantly larger crop than otherwise.
I love the imagery of an indoor beehive!
I accidentally let my basil go to seed as well. I now have three "volunteers" in the next pot over. They're at transplant size, so I'll put one in the garden along with some cherry tomatoes to see if I can get a start on next year's garden. (where a petunia got volunteered/voluntold, probably by a bird.
This. I have the worst time with this. And also with letting go of plants that just aren't making it, which I really need to do, as most of the time once I've tossed them on the compost/in the woods, they do quite well.
Oh it is a delight to find something you thought dead survived.