Even with the abysmal summer, one of the experimental successes this year was with moving beyond carnivorous plants and into Capsicum peppers as container plants. Specifically, thanks to the wonderful folks at the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University, I had a lot of experimental material. The heat and savage dryness managed to kill off some of the more promising plants early on, but you should see them exploding now that the heat has let off.
Now, I could tell you that the expansion includes crashing the 21st International Pepper Conference, scheduled for a year from this weekend. This depends upon how well I recuperate from the International Carnivorous Plant Conference next August. Instead, I’ll just relate that next spring, it’s time to try some more of the Institute’s specialty peppers under Texas conditions. As it is, I can’t recommend the NuMex “Halloween” cultivar highly enough, even if my plants never had the chance to bear fruit this year. The innumerable violet blooms were worth it.