@caseydog We eat a lot (HUGE AMOUNT) of red and yellow and orange peppers, so we always grow them (dehydrate or freeze) but the serranos and hatch we only grow every other year or so. Last year I grew the serranos and now I have dried serranos for making hot sauce or whatever we need hot. Thanks for reminding me, I do need to start fermenting some hot sauce for myself. Mr bliss doesn't care for hot.
Reminds me, @pepperhead212 there's a 'not hot' pepper that you grow, that you've talked about. You've said how much you like it and it has a 'good flavor'. Any chance we could do a trade of seeds (just 12 seeds would do) or I can send you $2/for the trouble. I have many types of tomatoes or bell peppers (red yellow orange), or parsley? PM me if you feel like it.
@rodentraiser We have deer here but so many homes and landscaping they mostly have eaten the apples. We run them off if we see them. The garlic and onions seem to repel them, they don't care for either one. We plant them in rows where we want to interrupt the deer from going into the more juicy plants. If they always come to the garden from one direction, then plant onions there. Even if you just plant flowers, the onions are hardly noticeable.
One year we trapped 13 raccoons, that was worse!
We have also had skunks, possums, and fox. Of course, there are the bunnies and squirrels too!
I mostly grew jalapeños, cayenne peppers and sometimes poblanos. I never grew bell peppers because they are so cheap to buy in the grocery stores, and the store bought ones were fine.
Here in Texas, I can buy good chili peppers for cheap, so I have to have a good reason to go to the trouble of growing my own.
Fresh herbs are a different thing. I can't get decent fresh herbs at any store. By "decent," I mean anything close to herbs I snip from my garden just minutes before I use them. That is worth my time and efforts to grow.
As for critters, that's not an issue on my suburban property. When I had a lake house in the Davy Crocket National Forrest, deer were a big problem for gardeners. I didn't grow much there, since I didn't live there full time. I did have a fantastic fig tree that none of the wildlife messed with, for some reason. I had a peach tree at my last house up here in North Texas, and my only enemy was birds. I had to wrap my tree with bird netting. That, and I had about 300 peaches get ripe within three weeks, and had to find something to do with them all.
CD