This past summer was our second time growing peppers in our sub-irrigated raised beds. This method of growing peppers isn’t awesome. It isn’t magnificent. It is an ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE way of growing delicious capsaicin filled peppers as well as bells and pimentos. Our first year we tried to mix peppers and tomatoes in a 12x4 sub-irrigated bed:
That was a mistake. Tomatoes need a lot of space and even with constant pruning the tomatoes eventually started shading out the peppers. So this year we devoted an entire bed to peppers and boy was it worth it. We were hauling in bowl after bowl of bell, pimento and jalapeno peppers and we had little to no pest issues. Look at these bad boys!:
We used Jalapenos in numerous recipes and were able to put back a ton of poppers, hot sauce and jelly. We turned our bells into delicious stuffed peppers, used them in fajitas and still had plenty to freeze for winter. Our Pimentos made some of the best pimento cheese on earth (a favorite Southern tradition)! I’m looking at the various seed catalogs now to see what I want to plant in the pepper bed next year. I’m thinking about adding Thai chili, Hungarian Wax and Santa Fe peppers to the mix. Um, um good!