The little pepper that could

Sometimes your garden will surprise you. Last fall we trimmed our bell peppers down to stumps to plant a very quick green bean crop before winter frosts arrived. Rather than pull them out, we decided to cut them to stumps to let the roots break down in the raised bed rather than the compost pile; you know, lazy gardeners, less to carry around. Well we weren't all that surprised to see them leaf back out after the severe pruning. This development was shrugged off as we were sure the winter would do them in. Weeks later we also shrugged off the flowering and later the setting of fruit thinking that winter would end the charade. So off we go, wandering around Europe for a few winter weeks and we return to some decent looking bell peppers. Winter bell peppers?

We routinely had temperatures drop several degrees below freezing during this time. The freezes wiped out the green beans, wiped out most everything else that shouldn't survive freezing temperatures. Yet this guy kept chuggin' along, looking absolutely ragged, but still doing his business. I should add it got no direct sun. I know that peppers can be kept as a 2 year plant that won't do all that much its second year, but even now I marvel at its fruit production. I've decided this dude is officially "out to pasture". I am not going to pull it up until the very end. It's earned its last happy days and can let me know when it's ready for the great compost pile in the sky.

So here we are, it's February, and we are about to harvest some bell peppers from a tiny stump of a plant that is now almost a year in the ground. Ain't life grand? Now we can have summer salad, in February.