This page is the home of my Garden Salsa pepper plants.

All of the pictures were taken at 1600x1200 and 16bit color. The pictures on the page have been reduced to 1/8 and linked to the full sized picture which is a much bigger download (~400KB). I've provided them for people with faster connections or those that are trying to help me identify things of note.

	DATE: June 13th, 2003. This is one of my 3 "Salsa Chilli Hybrid" plants with its little chillies starting to hang off. There anywhere from 1-2.5" long and producing new flowers everyday.
	DATE: June 25th, 2003. I'm getting near to being able to pick my garden salsa chillis and one of the plants seems to have developed what looks like BER. I've lost 3 peppers to it so far and one of my other plants might lose one to it tomorrow.
	DATE: June 25th, 2003. Here is another shot.
	DATE: June 25th, 2003. And another.
	DATE: Jul 10th, 2003 One of the garden salsa peppers on my one plant was starting to look brown and I feared that BER was coming back but on the second day I realized that it wasn't the brown of BER, but the chocolate of early maturation. When I took the picture with the flash the brown looked much more red.
	DATE: Jul 10th, 2003 Another angle of the same pepper shown above. You can see in this picture and the one above that something is chewing half circles on the edges of my leaves. I suspected a caterpillar of some sort but haven't seen a darn thing. Good news is whatever it was seems to have stopped and the plants seem to be no worse for wear even though some leaves have been completely scalloped all the way round.
	DATE: Jul 10th, 2003 Another shot from the same plant showing another pod on the left that is also maturing. You can also see that the pod on the left had some BER that stopped advancing so I left it on the plant. As you can see the pepper pods start to mature at the same point where BER starts. I've got several pods on each of my plants that had BER which eventually stopped spreading and although the leision eventually dried out and turned brown, the rest of the pod stayed healthy and continues to grow and mature. Keep in mind I did prune off at least a dozen BER pods before I decided to see what would happen if I left them alone. One plant bore the worst of the brunt and was left with only 3 pods. Interestingly its the plant in the middle and subsequently the one that gets the most light because its not shaded at the beginning or end of the day. (They're arranged East to West on a South facing balcony).
	DATE: July 15th, 2003. This pepper is on a different plant than the above.
	DATE: July 15th, 2003. Different side of the pepper directly above.
	DATE: July 15th, 2003. Another pepper maturing.
	DATE: July 15th, 2003. Different framing of the above.
	DATE: July 15th, 2003. These two peppers are the ones pictured in the first three pictures of maturing peppers only 5 days later.
	DATE: July 15th, 2003. Another framing of the above.
	DATE: July 15th, 2003. Yet another pod on another plant.
	DATE: July 17th, 2003. The first mature Garden Salsa that I have harvested. Its got BER but it didn't ruin the whole pod so I left it. I cut out the BER section and ate a piece. It was pretty hot (I stressed the plants every day for the past few weeks/months) but the taste was still very green. I probably should have left it on the plant for a few days more but I was impatient. I'm wondering if these will get a sweeter taste.
	DATE: July 17th, 2003. Another side of the above. So much for 8-9" long pods.
	DATE: July 29th, 2003. I decided not to let all those BER pods go to waste so I threaded them all together to get an early attempt at drying in before my good peppers are all harvested. It appears that you can't dry green peppers because they start to turn red as they dry.
	DATE: July 29th, 2003. Here are my three Garden Salsa plants after I took my first big harvest. This is also the first pic I took of them after the move to the new house.
	DATE: July 29th, 2003. Here are the first real fruits of my labor besides the zuks I've already eaten. These are all Garden Salsa except the little one being spooned by the curved pepper. That little one is a serrano.
	DATE: July 29th, 2003. Another angle of the above. The thin dark pods are actually the ones that matured the longest ago and are either overripe or just sunburned.
	DATE: Sept 20th, 2003. This is the bunker that I put my Garden Salsa, Wonder Bells, and extra pots/dirt in for the passing of Hurricane Isabel.
	DATE: Sept 20th, 2003. Here are the two Salsas (smaller dark leaves) tucked in with the bells (bigger lighter leaves). They survived just fine (including an extra day in the bunker) and even ripened a few pods while they were in there. The third salsa got to go in the garage with the cayennes and Habs.
	DATE: Sept 20th, 2003. Even though its the end of the season the salsas are still trying to put out a few more pods by sprouting a few scattered blossoms.