A Glut of Peppers

The summer is drawing to a close here and the temperature at night has been steadily creeping down closer to freezing.  The garden is still producing well for me but the forecast is calling for a possible hard freeze in the next few days.  I decided that I needed to harvest all of my peppers while I had the time even if it meant that they wouldn't fully ripen.

The bell peppers were loaded.  Even after thinning them out to make salsa a few times I still managed to find plenty of large peppers everywhere.  The sweet banana and green chili peppers didn't have quite the amount that the bell peppers had, but they had also been more heavily harvested this summer because they seemed to grow faster and be more prolific.  I carried bowl after bowl of peppers into the house and unloaded them into a box that I had left over from bringing home fruit from the farmer's market.  I was amazed when I filled the box completely and still had more peppers to bring in.  I wound up using the box lid to hold the chili and banana peppers.

There were a few peppers that had slug holes in them and those will be going into the use first pile.  I do plan on making another batch of salsa with some of these peppers, but I don't need this many peppers for how much I want to make.  

I was planning on freezing my extra peppers to cook with for the next year, but I don't think I could possibly eat this many peppers by myself in a year.  I already have three gallon bags stuffed full of peppers in my freezer.  My only other options are to dehydrate some of them and can some of them.  I think I might try a few recipes for pepper jelly and cowboy candy just to use them up.  I would hate for them to go to waste after all the effort that I put into growing them.  If the canning experiments turn out well, then they might just become Christmas gifts for friends and family when the holidays roll around.