A Christmas Tree In the Garden

I was standing out in the garden admiring the Christmas tree.  Well, not really.  It is really a tabasco pepper plant.  The peppers on it the run from bright red to atomic orange, to bright yellow to neon green makes it pretty close to what a string of lights on a Christmas tree looks like.  I think the plant is beautiful.  The three tabasco pepper plants I have growing grew up volunteer from the seeds of some plants that were given to us last year by the proprietors of the local feed store that we patronize. Who knows?  Maybe if these plants freeze and die over the winter, some of the seeds from these peppers will spring up from the soil, giving us yet another year of peppers without having to plant them.

I like to go out and pick the brilliant red-colored ones, snapping the peppers off of the green stems and leaving the orange, yellow and green ones to ripen for a while.

Once I get a nice bunch of them, I'll bring them inside and make homemade tabasco pepper sauce.  We posted about how we make it in THIS POST and others in previous years as well.  We really like the way the pepper sauce tastes and how it flavors beans and rice and other dishes.  It is so easy to make and absolutely delicious.

Right south of the row of tabasco peppers is a big trellis of various varieties of lima beans. We've harvested them throughout the year and it is time to harvest the last of them.  The freeze that we had the other day burned the leaves and knocked the plants back a bit, and I don't think they are going to make it much longer.  We picked a bucket of lima bean pods and shelled them, putting the assorted shelled lima beans in a bowl.  We threw the vines over the fence for the cows to eat and once they ate everything they wanted, I composted the remaining vines.  I think the variety of lima beans is beautiful.  Check out the bowl of limas in the photo below.  Like the tabasco peppers have different colors, the different varieties of limas make a nice collection of assorted sizes and shapes of beans. They taste great, too!

Some of the pods were green and thus weren't dried yet, so we shelled those and left them on the window sill to dry.  When these dry fully, we'll cook them up.

We enjoy growing and eating things from the garden that are not only pretty to look at but great to eat, too!