Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?

So what if it's been 3 weeks since my last post? I do what I want!

Remember the whole "bringing peppers inside for the winter" business? Yeah, didn't think so.

The kitchen jungle.

So here they are. In total I have seven plants gracing any window where they can find a couple hours of sun and escape the cold. The idea was that many of these would be adopted by friends, but I keep delaying the hand-off with the excuse that they aren't well enough established yet for new parents. The longer I wait, the more attached I get, so I'd better hurry up and get them out of here.

Doe Hill Golden bell? Hard to tell once you've removed all the fruit.

The process of uprooting and pruning them back was pretty traumatizing for all but the smallest plants. Conventional wisdom says you prune the plants back by about 30%, so that the root system can re-establish itself without having to support as many branches and fruit. A couple of mine were still looking pretty pathetic after a week or so, so I cut all the peppers off of them and they perked back up. 

Cayenne

The varieties I have are (as best as I can remember): 1 cayenne, 1 sweet chocolate bell, 2 doe hill golden bells, 2 mystery bells that start lime green and turn orange, and 1 mystery hot pepper that is probably a serrano but looks more like a cayenne.

Mystery lime green bell.

Yesterday I noticed a pretty high concentration of aphids on a couple of the plants (you can actually see them on the stems of the leaves in the above picture), so I moved the worst offenders onto the porch in hopes that some natural predators like ladybugs would take care of the problem for me. The other plants received a visual scan and finger-squishing treatment, so hopefully that will keep the bugs at bay for awhile longer. One thing about having them indoors is that you have to hand-pollinate the flowers if you want them to develop into fruit, but I haven't been doing that yet since they're still pretty scraggly-looking for the most part.

An intrepid mystery sprout making its way for the window. Photo-tropism is neat.

 I've avoided naming any of the plants yet, but once I know who's headed to a new home and who's staying you can be sure they'll all gain distinct personalities and back-stories.

I've come to realize that this exercise is probably a symptom of my pack-rat nature, seeing as I'm not even overly-fond of most peppers, I just can't bear to see a season's worth of effort uprooted and thrown out!