Here’s what the 2019 Charapita looked like around mid September, when they loaded up with peppers.
I found this here; “Aji Charapita Guide: Heat, Flavor, Uses” on Pepper Scale
"How does aji charapita compare to chiltepin?
Aji charapita are sometimes called “tepin-like” and for good reason. Both it and chiltepin are wild chilies that only recently have been cultivated for commercial purposes. Where aji charapita are Peruvian, chiltepin are North American – the only chili native to that region. They share a similar lilliputian size and grow by the hundreds on bushy plants. There are some many similarities, but two distinct differences: Chiltepin are roughly double the heat (50,000 to 100,000 SHU) and nowhere near as fruity."
thanks for this- I knew chiltpins were native to around here, and you confirmed what I thught, which is that chiltepins are mostly just hot with not a lot of other flavor that I’ve found.
Makes me sad that we drew the short straw here for flavor in two similar chiles. Now I need to see if anybody here has Charapitas for sale.
I just looked them up- they’re beautiful!
If you’re looking for Aji Charapita seeds, drop me an email!
chilled cucumber yogurt soup with garden ingredients: basil, lemon verbena, and oregano.
That looks amazing !
Nice! What will you do with them?
I found this one hiding after I posted the last picture.
Crimson Sockeye…I think.
it IS good. i improvised it. i wish i had only used one clove of garlic though.
I went back to my currant bushes, to pick some more, and the birds had devoured 95 percent. I found one tiny volunteer shaded by a blackberry bush the birds missed, that gave me another half cup of currants.
I stopped covering my currants with netting 2 summers ago, after a small bird got caught under the net, and didn’t survive. Previous to that summer, we occasionally helped a bird get out from under the netting, but none had been hurt the previous10-15 years. I’ve often been able to pick currants from June 25th- Aug 1.
I used the quart I already had in the fridge, and the new half cup to wing a 1 egg clafoutis, and a compote.
I hate even the thought of that!
We luckily have a ton of birds and nests this summer. One perfect little nest in my pear tree.
I’ve only been harvesting around one or 2 strawberries a week 
(the ones with a mouse or vole bite taken out of them get tossed into the field.)
When I first moved here I used to use nets in my fig tree. They blew off and in two days I caught a series of scary snakes ( gopher snakes that were two feet long and rattled!)…
I called animal control and they patiently spent hours freeing and relocating them. At one point one might have said “lose the nets”.
Years passed, and after frustrating years of barely getting to taste the fruits of my labor, I thought of trying nets again. Then I read about the trapped birds. I almost planned for nets again this year. Thanks for your story. There is still plenty.
Latest tomatoes and peppers!
I have gated gardens to keep deer and raccoons out. I started using tomato cages and floating row cover to keep insects and some critters off some plants.
With the currants, I could have picked more of them when they were a little underripe, but I was a little lazy this year.
Luckily, we don’t have any poisonous or dangerous snakes here, and the snakes we have stay out of the veg garden. One garter snake likes sunning itself near my roses.
I was feeling out of the game so I’m sharing pix of my garden stuff. You’ll see a few perspectives on a small new fruit orchard, fenced raised beds for veg, an herb garden, and our grape arbor. Handy husband built the fenced beds and the arbor. Most are distance shots to capture more of the image.
Beautiful! So green! Do you need to irrigate all of that?
We used to have some sprinkler heads in the beds but over the years they’ve gotten mangled. So I’ve been hose-watering the intentional plants every couple days in the dry season (like 3 weeks now 
) and letting the grass be. It will be yellow/brown in a month. And then bright green again in April.
He does good work! Looks like most of the critters, like rabbits can’t get to the vegetables and herbs. What kind of grapes are those?
Thanks. The herbs aren’t protected. They’re not in the raised beds but rather in a row. The 2 pix start with sage looking up the row and parsley down the row. Included are also mint and thyme. We used to have a huge rosemary that last winter killed so now I have an itty bitty rosemary. I’ve tried and tried and cannot grow dill to save my life though I love to eat it. The only fenced herb is the basil which is an annual so sometimes I plant it and sometimes not. The others are all yearly repeaters.
The grape variety is canadice. It’s small purple table grapes, sweet tart and floral. We have to fight with the birds and squirrels for those. Last year was the first to try putting mesh bags over the clusters after they were mostly ripened. I think that was too late already, because the critters had gotten a taste. So the squirrels in particular would climb the arbor, gnaw the cluster off at the stem, drop it to the ground, and then chew through the bags. Left a lot of skins and drank all the juice. We have all of the forest critters here…if it’s not owls sitting on the fence or jays burying peanuts, then the rabbits are mating in the yard and the raccoons are daytime promenading while the balds sit up high in the doug firs eating their prey while the feather float down. At least the dozens of daily deer are outside the fence now eating other people’s gardens!
Funny thing is, we are in a small city. 70K pop in town, 100K surrounding areas. Streets and houses everywhere. Just that this used to be a forest, and my neighborhood has pretty big forest pockets between most of the houses. You can see some of that from the images.
