Garden Preparation: January - February

This blog  now starts its third year... and after two full years it's clear that the  posting of engaging monthly gardening reminders proves to be most taxing the imagination. In spite of the challenge, however,  and in hope that gardeners will be motivated to put aside their 2020 seed catalogs and/or stop watching the NFL Playoffs for a while, here come a few nags to start the New Year:

•  Remember your pruning - Relish the cold air and the absence of mosquitoes. Go out and prune those shrubs and fruit trees while the ground is frozen. And, if you haven't already done it, you can also  cut off the now frozen kale and Brussel sprout stalks in your veggie garden.

•  Start some lettuces in those empty planter trays now sitting idle under the grow lights. You will enjoy a harvest in about 55 - 60 days and still be able to use the trays to start your garden's seedlings in March and April.  

• Go outside again and lightly spread some wood ashes and coffee grounds  over your garden plots. Wood ash can add slight amounts of lime and potassium to your soil, and hardwood ash can add other trace nutrients. Caution: too much wood ash can increase the soil's pH value -- lowering its acidity which is okay for most vegetables. Coffee grounds, in small amounts, however, can counter the neutralizing effect of ashes as well as add organic material to soil.  Both coffee grounds and wood ash are okay in small amounts sprinkled over the garden; or, if you fear overdoing it,   just take a longer walk to your compost pile with those  ashes and coffee grounds.

• If you really prefer the warm indoors, build that cold frame that you have always secretly wanted. Nothing is simpler to construct.  Cold frames are  bottomless boxes with hinged covers that admit light. They  can be either  set into or set on the top of the soil to  extend a growing season.  The soil and air inside cold frames can be 10 - 20°F warmer than outside temperatures. Another potential benefit is that they will reduce the size of that unnatural lawn that you are getting tired of mowing. If you think about it a little more, maybe you'll want to  build  TWO OR MORE COLD FRAMES!

Veggie History:  Bell Peppers

Bell (and sweet peppers), Capsicum annum, belong to the Solanaceae family of plants along with tomatoes and eggplants. They are another staple of our modern diets originating from the New World.  They were first introduced to Europe by Columbus via  plants he found growing in Haiti and described as  a type of  "pepper." Portuguese traders soon took  the misidentified plants  to the  Far East while  the New World's peppers  spread from Spain into Western Europe during the 16th century and finally to  Eastern Europe during the 17th century. European colonists subsequently brought  cultivars with them across the Atlantic again to North America, and by the end of the 18th century peppers had become a common sight on Thomas Jefferson's table at Monticello.

The "peppers"  that  Columbus   first  introduced to Europe belonged to a single species of  Capsicum, annum, but the genus, Capsicum is  botanically unrelated to the familiar spice known as  black pepper (Piper nigrum).   Other New World adventurers after Columbus  soon also brought back the other four Capsicum species that contained even higher levels of capsaicin, and these too  soon spread around the globe. Although Capsicum's pungency reminded Europeans of  peppercorns,  they also liked the occasional plants  that happened to have low levels of capsaicin, the secret ingredient  providing  the kick to the taste buds. Low capsaicin levels are a genetically recessive trait; but because peppers are self-pollinating, cultivars  were soon bred and these "sweeter" peppers  also became kitchen garden favorites.

In Europe Columbus' misnamed peppers that possessed full doses of  capsaicin  quickly became  the popular  economic alternative to  peppercorns that derive from the viny  plant,  Piper nigrum. The vine  grows extensively in the Orient and had been distributed in Europe for generations by the Venetians who enjoyed a monopolistic hold on the European spice trade. Columbus' botanical discovery soon had economic and political ramifications. Venetian dominance quickly  faded as 1) New World peppers  spread into Western Europe, 2)  the Portuguese  traded their New World peppers for  peppercorns and other spices in Far Eastern markets by sailing around the Horn of Africa, and 3)  the Ottoman Turks started to  exercise a  strangle hold on the overland trade routes to the Mediterranean from the  Indian Ocean while expanding their control in parts of Eastern Europe. So goes history...

Peperine, the compound responsible for black pepper's pungency, and capsaicin found in New World peppers are both neurotoxins; but the two compounds produce their effects somewhat differently. Peperine  triggers  pain sensing neuron receptors while  capsaicin triggers  heat sensing neuron receptors. Because capsaicin   can also activate neuron receptors near the skin's surface, it is used in some  topical ointments, for example, to relieve (or mask)  symptoms of joint pain.   Capsaicin production in peppers evolved as a deterrence against both fungi (like fusarium that quickly afflicts bell peppers in cool weather) and hungry mammals  (albeit maybe not  so effectively deterring some humans) from eating them.

 FWIW: If you would  like to get more into the chemistry of peppers, checkout this link to an article in  Chemistry Views Magazine and go from there.

Finally, sweet peppers are just cultivars of bell peppers with  typically  thinner walls than the familiar chunky bell varieties. This lack of volume is the major reason why sweet peppers, when green, taste less bitter.  Green peppers, by-the-way, of all types are simply unripe peppers.  Although a common ripening sequence in peppers is green to yellow to red  reflecting changes in the type of chlorophyll being produced in the fruit, some varieties do not have a ripe red phase but their mature fruit stage  may be just white, chocolate, orange, yellow and all the many shades in-between. Cornell University has compiled a  list of the  popular pepper varieties that includes many of these colors that home gardeners can grow. 

And remember...

"[Black] Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue." - Plato