Full Belly Files: My Hot Pepper Habit

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Eight years ago, when we bought a suburban home out toward Goleta that had, among other backyard perks, a raised garden bed, I tried to relocate a green thumb that had mostly faded during a few years of living in a downtown condo while wading through the early days of parenthood. 

Various crops went in — lettuces, squash, tomatoes, beans, broccoli, cabbage, etc. — and most did somewhere between okay and total failure. Only one survived and thrived with any sort of reliability — chili peppers, and I’ve since grown them every year, sampling new varieties and colors and origins, from Latin America to Asia to Hungary. I’ve dabbled in so many different types — a few of which don’t actually bear peppers until the following summer — that I often forget what was actually planted by the time my mouth is on fire.