There is a time for every purpose under heaven. A time for planting chili pepper seeds. A time to for harvesting chili peppers. Or so I vaguely remember from The Byrd’s adaptation of Ecclesiastes. 

According the tables in the David Crosby Almanac, today was either a time to cast away stones or a time to plant chilis. I opted for the latter if only for the sake of improving relations with the neighbors.

When we bought this old house almost 7 years ago, one of the things I was excited about the was the little greenhouse out back. Oh, the grand horticultural ambitions I had. “If I ever had a greenhouse,” I’d told myself for years, “I would have a dwarf lemon tree, save tons of money by growing my own Annual flowers from seeds, and be lousy with tomatoes for big chunks of the year.

The reality has been. . .um, different.

My hot house flower plants have the tendency to grow vigorously without ever producing any actual, you know, flowers. In five years my lemon tree has produced precisely two small lemons. And my annual efforts with tomato plants and other veggies, whether in beds or in pots, have consistently yielded enough food to constitute a small salad—one time.

The one exception to this sad legacy of agronomic failure are the chili peppers I grew last year. In fact, the plants continued to yield all winter and are still going strong.

 

So I’m “all in” on peppers this year. I just planted a whole seed packet each of Serranos, Jalapenos, and Cayenne.

If we finally have that complete collapse of Western Civilization and general breakdown of social order that some have been predicting for decades, my family won’t be self-sufficient, food-wise. But we will have one heck of a post-apocalyptic salsa with which we can barter for potatoes, Spam, flour and bullets.

Lemons. . .? Well, hope springs eternal, and Spring is eternally filled with hope.