Greetings fellow gardener(s) from Jimmy’s Chiles! I hope your harvest was good to you this year and hope you’ll have an even better one next year. My report is somewhat mixed regarding success and failures in the garden this year. All of my hot Caribbean varieties  or the Chinense family varieties didn’t do well at all. Coming in strong this year though were the Aci Sivri, Count Piagos, Criolla Sella, Bolivian Tepin (all chile pepper varieties). Less successful but not shabby were the Uvilla Grande, Rocoto, Louisiana Hot Chile, and Laotian chile pepper varieties. In addition, I also had a decent showing of various sweet pepper varieties:

I didn’t get a great quantity of seeds of these sweet peppers, however, so they are definitely available on a very limited basis. I hope to offer them in greater quantity next year. I also have oodles of yellow cherry tomato seeds.

I have always believed that the planning phase of gardening is one of the most enjoyable of the gardening phases. No one has ever hurt his or her back envisioning next year’s garden. I aspire next year to not get such a late start on the Caribbean varieties. Other varieties I don’t know if I can figure out. A sweet pepper I’ve been trying to have a good degree of success with has been the Corno Di Torno Giallo pepper. This pepper grew to be over 4 feet tall and produced many peppers but just didn’t want to ripen. Next year will be different. Next year will be better. . . . NEXT year.

I also had some success with growing out some onion seeds and gathering some basil and catnip seeds but don’t know if I’m ready to offer these yet. And last but not least I gathered some Cocoa Mint seeds this year that I hope to grow out in larger quantities next year. . .

I had plenty of fun this year at the Garfield Farm Heirloom Garden Show and the Garfield Farm Harvest Days event. Hope to see you there next year.

Feel free to send me an e-mail at JimmysChiles@aol.com.

Take Care! Hope to hear about your 1999 Harvest report soon.

Jimmy

Pictured below: Some Bolivian Tepin chile peppers next to some Flames of the Holy Spirit Hot Sauce in an Onda bottle—"Onda" is "wave" in Italian.