Pickled Jalapeno Peppers
Back in the spring I had a nice little business going, starting garden seeds and then selling the plants in 3″ pots, ready to go into someone’s garden or container. At the end of the sale season, I had some partial flats of plants left over.
I just can’t bear to toss a plant, no matter what it is, and so I ended up with a dozen jalapeno pepper plants.
I don’t eat the things, except on very rare occasions when I feel a bit masochistic. However, my sister claims to love the hot peppers so I figured they wouldn’t go to waste. I decided to devote an entire raised bed to my dozen jalapeno pepper plants. Okay, it isn’t a very big raised bed, but still…
I pampered them, kept them watered and weeded and did all the necessary things to make them happy. Somehow, the bugs managed to harvest the peppers before I ever got to them. At least I’m assuming it was bugs, although I never actually saw any.
Then in July, the heavens opened up and dumped nearly six inches of rain on us in a very short time. I haven’t seen the ground since, for more than a day or two, before we get more rain and it all just stays flooded in my garden area. The raised beds are protecting the plants well enough, but I sure can’t get out there to do any kind of work.
Yesterday I put on my boots and waded out to look at the remnants of my garden. I pushed aside some of the tall weeds… and discovered my jalapenos, loaded with nice fat peppers!
I immediately set to work, pulling out the weeds and picking the peppers as I went along. Well, until I got into a nest of fire ants. By then I had a bushel basket filled with weeds and a small oblong basket that was about a quarter of the way filled with peppers. I left the bed to the ants for the time being.
The weeds were quickly disposed of by just dumping them onto the compost pile. The peppers were another story. Just how do you preserve jalapeno peppers?
I ended up using the recipe I had found in an old canning book a few days ago. In fact, that particular recipe had caught my eye and I published it here on the blog, never thinking I’d actually have enough peppers to use it myself.
Well, as I said earlier, I don’t know how many peppers it takes to make a peck of them but I ended up with 7 wide-mouth pint jars full. And they are now pickled. Woo-hoo!