Growing Peppers

I recently planted and began growing my own herb garden to try and generate the same herbs I now use in powdered form and to grow my own onion, garlic, and peppers used mostly in the dishes I cook. One of my goals is to try and see if I can, eventually, create my own powdered ginger, turmeric, and cinnamon. I’m not growing the cinnamon but I do intend to try grinding up some cinnamon bark from the raw cinnamon I usually have access to when cooking and baking.

Starting my little herb garden was actually easier than I thought it would be, I decided not to go with planting a plot of land (cause I really don’t have that much land available for planting). Instead, I decided to grow all my herbs in flower pots, outside. I started by picking up some seeds and plant starter trays that look like and egg carton without the top on it. I planted the seeds for peppers, and eggplant and waited a few weeks for them to sprout. 

After that, I nourished the sprouts until the tiny plants outgrew their miniature confines before moving them into fresh potting soil inside large plastic drinking cups. Next stop, for the baby plants, is into their perspective flower pots. I'm still at this point not sure how many plants to have in one pot. Where my growing experiment stands now is I have several large flower pots with healthy looking pepper, and eggplants growing in them and getting bigger each day. The peppers I am growing are more for cooking with and not the very hot kind of peppers, not yet anyway, that will be my next planting experiment.

Peppers contain a chemical called capsaicin and the more of that chemical there is the hotter the pepper. Right now I am operating near the bottom of the capsaicin scale for safety purposes. Another reason for my growing peppers is that I read about the healing properties of peppers when it comes to the stomach. Something I would not have considered since my thinking would have been if you're having stomach problems avoid hot peppers, especially cayenne peppers.

If you're not already aware of the fantastic healing powers of peppers take a look at the cayenne pepper link just above, you'll be amazed, I know I was. Tomorrow when the sun comes up I'll take some picture of my small tabletop farm to share.