Now we hit a spot where the loss of the July, August and September pictures will have a major impact. I will try to be as descriptive as possible in my text. One general comment - the picture above shows the location of the Eggplants and Peppers. The sun exposure here is not as great as that where the tomatoes were grown. This had an impact on yield, and fruit quality, particularly with sweet peppers. I will likely move eggplants and sweet peppers into straw bales next year for maximum sun exposure. Hot peppers did just fine in the gravel driveway location, however, and they will remain there next year.

Eggplants

When deciding on which eggplants to grow, I’ve evolved over the years from growing lots of different varieties obtained from seed catalogs and seed savers to focusing on a set of selections from my work to stabilize selections out of saved seeds from the wonderful hybrid Orient Express - using dehybridization to create new, stable useful varieties. A few additional varieties are also the focus of my work, exploring a chance hybrid of Casper (thanks, bees!) and some interesting selections that emerged from that.

I grew the eggplants primarily in 5 gallon containers or larger self watering containers, with 2 plants per container.

I am just fine growing works in progress and keeping my eggplant work to research and development. My opinion is that eggplant tastes like eggplant, and I perceive no real flavor difference variety to variety. What does make a difference is freshness. Different shapes also lend themselves to different uses in the kitchen. We love to cut slabs from the more round or tear drop shaped types with larger diameters to bread and bake and freeze for all sorts of recipes. The slender types are great for grilling or roasting.

My first experience growing out seeds saved from the Orient Express hybrid was in the mid 2000s, and three distinct types emerged. The first was essentially an Orient Express lookalike, which I named Midnight Lightning - it has pale green flesh. Another slender selection had less purple in the foliage and the fruit color was pale lavender with lots of white - this was named Twilight Lightning, and has nearly white flesh. A third major type is a slender, long medium purple colored one I named Skinny Twilight, also with pale green flesh. All three are quite early and very productive.

I grew several plants of Midnight Lightning, and a second type of the same color has emerged - dark green foliage with lots of purple, dark purple flowers, and nearly black fruit. One is quite slender and fits my expectations for Midnight Lightning. A second has fatter, shorter eggplants and a less glossy skin. I think I will name this Midnight Oval. For the slender version - Midnight Lightning - I grew plants from seed saved in 2019 and in 2020. Both of these gave me the desired result, and I now consider this a stable, new open pollinated variety. The fatter selection, discovered in 2020, carried through this year and did very well. I am hoping to get seed companies to try out and, eventually, release both Midnight Lightning and Midnight Oval. I am also open to sharing samples with those interested in giving them a try.

I grew one plant of Twilight Lightning and it grew to my expectations - long pale lavender fruit with white patches.. Finally, Skinny Twilight grew out as hoped, with long, medium purple fruit. I consider these finished varieties as well and will be seeking a seed company to trial, then offer, them - as well as requests from those who with to give them a try.

There are two selections from the unexpected Casper cross - Mardi Gras, which is pale green with lavender streaks and light green flesh, and Green Ghost, a very pale green teardrop shaped fruit. I may have slight shape variations in Mardi Gras - the desired one is a bit more tear drop shaped/fatter, but this year I also found a more slender one - this will have to be explored from saved seed. Mardi Gras was grown from seed saved last year and I grew 2 plants, as one of the seedlings showed a slightly darker stem as a seedling. Seed from the fatter Mardi Gras was saved separately from the slender fruited one, which had the slightly more purple stem. Green Ghost was grown from 2020 saved seed, and did very well this year.

So - to summarize - I was very pleased with apparently stable selections of Midnight Lightning, Twilight Lightning, Skinny Twilight, Mardi Gras and Green Ghost. In addition, I may have a useful variation with fatter fruit, Midnight Oval, and a more slender fruited Mardi Gras. I think the saved seed from each should have reasonable germination except for Twilight Lightning, where the fruit used for seed saving may have not been ripe enough.

A different view of the gravel driveway with peppers and eggplants (and dwarf tomatoes)

Sweet Peppers

I really wish that the sweet peppers were in a better location. We had a decent yield, but far below what I had hoped. Still, it was fun and I advanced some nice works in progress, primarily from the Islander dehybridization project that has been going on for some years.

The sweet peppers were grown in either 5 gallon grow bags, or larger self watering containers, with 2 plants per container.

I grew one each of the following sweet bell peppers - Carolina Amethyst, Royal Purple, White Gold, 2 different Fire Opal (these four are selections from Islander), as well as an Orange Bell selection and another of my dehybridization selections, Chocolate Blocky Bell. One other non-bell sweet is a selection from what I think is a fairly recent hybrid called Candy Cane - a pretty unique pepper with white/green variegated foliage, white/green striped unripe long frying shape peppers that turn red.

Carolina Amethyst is already being sold by several seed companies. The color changes of this bell pepper are from cream to lavender to orange to red. Results this year were in line with expectations. Royal Purple starts out chartreuse, then colors up quickly to a very dark black purple, finally turning deep red. White Gold is quite unique, and goes from cream to gold, the only sweet pepper I know of that has that coloring. The Fire Opal from 2020 seed looked just like Carolina Amethyst, but, fortunately, the plant from 2019 saved seed performed as I hoped, going from cream to lavender to gold.

The Orange Bell selection goes from medium pale green to a lovely deep orange, and Chocolate Blocky Bell, which began life long ago as seed saved from the Stokes hybrid Chocolate Bell, was the best sweet bell of this season. The medium dark green peppers have nice thick walls and end up a rich chocolate brown. The flesh when cut shows deep red coloring - very sweet, and very different.

The suspected selection from the hybrid Candy Cane started as seed saved from a fruit growing in a Raulston Arboretum test garden a few years ago. I’ve worked with it for a few years, had both orange and red selections. This year I grew out the red one - the peppers are 1-2 inches by 3-4 inches, are thin walled, grow on nicely variegated plants. The green peppers do indeed have white stripes, but ripen a solid red and are very sweet.

Hot Peppers

I always play around with different hot pepper projects. It isn’t so much for eating (I can’t handle the super hots at all; Jalapeno types are pretty much my limit) but for beauty. There are so many gorgeous hot peppers, with different foliage and fruit colors, sizes and shapes. They grow great in small containers and are far less fussy than sweet peppers.

My hot peppers were in an array of container sizes, from 1 to 5 gallon, depending in the type of pepper (smaller containers for the small fruited ornamentals, larger for a few interesting Habanero types sent to me to try).

For over a decade I’ve been taking selections from a small colorful pepper “borrowed” from a display at a State Fair in Raleigh. The plants are very diverse, all are quite compact, with small colorful fruit. Heat is on a par with smaller thin walled Thai type peppers, making them useful for drying (when red and ripe), then grinding for home made red pepper flakes.

One type seemed easier to stabilize - black purple leaves, dark purple flowers, and small cone shaped peppers that evolve from cream to lavender to yellow to orange to red - I named it Gemstone, and it is just a beautiful plant. Another variation has dark green foliage (a faint purplish cast), white flowers with violet edges, and slender fruit that go through a similar color range, with the purple a bit darker. I named this selection Bouquet, and it is still a work in progress. I grew about a dozen of these sorts of plants and have seeds saved from each. I will probably continue to grow and select from this fun little mini project.

I had one plant of Jalapeno that did well. Unfortunately, my attempts at growing Pinata (an unusual Japaleno type whose color evolves from cream to orange to red) all showed signs of crossing, with incorrect fruit color or fruit size. In two of the plants, the bees clearly delivered some pollen from the purple leaf hot peppers to Pinata. It’s back to the drawing board (or a repurchase of authentic Pinata - it really is a great pepper that I want in my rotation of varieties).

Last but not least - and how I wish I had my mid summer pictures) are a set of Habanero relatives of unique colors sent to me by a gardening friend (via an Instagram post). The names are interesting in and of themselves - Pockmark Peach, Pink Tiger X Pink Bhut Jokolia F2, Purple Orange Ghostly Cross and Count Dracula. The plants were very tall and slender, black purple foliage, with fruits that just looked incendiary - wrinkled, bumpy, and black purple when unripe going to unusual colors such as olive or peach. Seed saving was done very carefully - the aroma of habanero types make me sneeze instantly. I’ve got plenty of seeds saved, but don’t know when I will return to them.