It's funny to hear that these peppers are fragile, from Texas, and very rare because we live in Northern VA (think Washington, VA) and last year a seed must have blown into a pot that only contained dirt. Last summer we found this little plant with 3 full grown peppers. We ate them (they are hot) and brought the plant in when it became cold. This spring we replanted it into a bigger pot and put it outside. The plant is now much larger and producing much more peppers than before. It even survived 2 storms that cracked other plants (a Festival hot pepper and a tomatillo). (Those plants are still alive, BTW.) I made salsa with 3 Festivals and a Peter (and fresh tomatoes) last night and it is good. BTW, we have a neighbor who grows Indonesian hot peppers...maybe he is growing Peters as well (and the seed blew over from there). I'm including a pic. Anyone know how to save seeds if we want to save some for next year? The plant is big to keep it inside this year. Thanks. -Jason Here is a link that might be useful: DCFUD (My food website)

Pam, The general rule of thumb is that boiling water bath canning is used for high-acid foods (including fruit, pickled vegetables in vinegar, tomatoes and sauerkraut (which you ferment first and then can). You use steam-pressure canning for low-acid food like meat, seafood, poultry, most vegetables and combination products that contain both high-acid and low-acid ingredients like chili, soups, stews, for example. An easy way to figure out if you would use a steam pressure canner enough to make buying one worthwhile or if a boiling water bath canner would be more useful to you, would be to buy the Ball Blue Book (or visit the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation) and check out the recipes. As you read through the recipes, observe whether the ones that appeal to you are preserved via pressure canning or BWB canning. Ironically, I dehydrate a lot more now that I have an oven that does it than I did when I had a dehydrator that sits on the counter. Of course, my oven is bigger than the dehydrator, so I can dehydrate a lot more at once. If you don't dehydrate a lot, you might not want to buy a dehydrator. I generally use my BWB canner for everything that can be safely preserved using the BWB method, and freeze or dehydrate everything else. I know how to pressure can and I have done it, but it generally is a longer process (the processing time for some pressure canned items is over an hour) and I don't do it very often any more. I have 4 stock pots in sizes we refer to as big, bigger, biggest and gigantic. I like my Ball Elite more than I like all 4 of them together because its bottom is much heavier and thicker and heats so evenly and does not scorch quickly. However, the set of stock pots that I have were not really high-quality but they've done the job for many years. You can use any stockpot as a boiling water bath canner and you can purchase canning jar racks in several different sizes so I would think it would be possible to find a canning rack that would fit in a stock pot. You can find a standard sized canning rack on the canning aisle at Wal-Mart, but for other sizes you'd likely have to look at Lee Valley Tools, Canning Pantry, or someplace else similar online that offers more sizes. How you choose to preserve food usually depends on your family's preferences. My family prefers frozen green beans to canned ones, so I freeze all the ones we can't eat fresh instead of canning them. I have a friend whose family prefers the texture of canned green beans, so she pressure cans hers. Different strokes for different folks and all that. You also have to consider your weather and its effect on your electrical power. We rarely have power outages here, being just far enough south to generally escape the ice storms that cause severe and long-lasting power outages across many parts of OK some years. Thus, I fill my freezers with food and know the risk of a power outage that lasts long enough for the food to spoil is incredibly low here. Since you're in hurricane country, you might be better off preserving more food by canning than by freezing unless you have a generator that would allow you to keep the freezer running. For years and years I searched for a salsa recipe that was not as vinegary (or hot!) as my dad's and never really found one we loved (although we ate them all), until I found the Annie's Salsa recipe at the Harvest Forum. It is just ridiculous how much we love Annie's Salsa, particularly when I use Realemon and ReaLime as an approved sub for some of the vinegar. By varying the type of hot peppers I use, I make it with different levels of heat and indicate the extra heat by putting 3, 4 or 5 stars on the jar label. I have found food preservation to be just as much of a fascinating journey as gardening has been. You just don't know where the food preservation activities will lead you. I used to be happy if I made a batch or two of peach and plum jelly, a couple of batches of salsa, a few batches of pickles and some canned tomatoes. Now I can endlessly all summer long until I've completely exhausted myself. When you have technical questions, the experts over at the Harvest Forum can answer any question you can come up with. It sort of amuses me that canning and other forms of food preservation have become so popular again. In the 1980s and 1990s I often felt like I was the only person my age who was canning. If I needed to ask a question, I was calling someone who was old enough to be my grandmother. Nowadays, everyone is canning. While I think that is great, it also means that the stores run out of canning supplies more than they used to. For much of my adult life, people my age thought that I was weird because I preferred to grow our own veggies and fruit and to preserve as many of them as I could. Now, after being "out of style" for so long, I suddenly find that I am right back in style again. Tim and I get a big laugh out of that! Dawn

Well, I think they call hot tomatoes, "salsa", and you can make peach, mango and strawberry salsa also. The fruit salsa's taste great with some balsamic vinegar along with the peppers for that kick! All you need is a bowl, a knife, and a spoon to mix it all up! Have fun! Suzi

Hello chervil2 search for Peppers and herbs from your country or typical Plant. what are you looking for? I've already done, seed exchanges with a friend this site. what kind of plants do you have? hug