Counting Your Peppers Before They’re Picked

The brand new raised bed garden that Camera Guy built for our family has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations.  Tomatoes tower over our heads, cucumbers climb trellises growing up instead of out and, we’ve learned about a whole new palate of Asian vegetables thanks to our friends at Whole Earth Acre.  Whitney and Sui Linn Robinson  were kind enough to donate seedling six and eight packs for this Spring’s Kickstarter campaign.   Our college-aged daughter pledged and kindly gave her reward package to Mom and Dad.  It consisted of Japanese Momotaro tomatoes, Japanese eggplant and cucumbers, and Japanese Shoshito peppers.  It’s the peppers that immediately captured my imagination and have held on ever since.I attended a farm-to-table dinner in late June where shoshito peppers were on the menu.  Sauteed in olive oil, roasted on a gas grill, then dusted with Panko bread crumbs and a sprinkle of togarashi, this delicate flavored pepper has surprising little heat, (they say only 1 in 10 are hot).  I must have eaten a dozen of those scrumptious little treats before I looked down at the pile of stems on my plate.  I suffered a moment of regret, thinking of the gastric price I might pay.  But to my surprise, there were no ill effects.  Just a wonderful memory of a delicious new taste.  So imagine my delight when I saw that I had these wonderful little gems growing in my own garden bed!I harvested a crop of these little guys, sauteed them in olive oil on the grill and sprinkled them with kosher salt and pepper, then took them to pool party.  They were a hit!   So it was with anticipation that I awaited my next crop, which looked to be just a few days away.   Then came the next day.  I went out the garden to find one of my pepper plants completely stripped!  Every leaf, every flower, every fruit large and small…gone!  All that was left were the branches.  We determined it was a grasshopper who did so much damage in so little time.  A second pepper plant was fortunately left untouched.  It meant  small batches for me rather than big batches to share.
But lo and behold, just this past week I noticed new leaves emerging.  The pepper is doing its best to sprout leaves and new flowers which I hope brings new fruit!  It was a lesson that more seasoned farmers know…not to count your peppers before they’re picked.