REAL DATIL PEPPER CHAT,... NOT A RANT, ... A CHAT.

It's been a remarkably warm fall here at PFHQ. The official start of Winter is about 20 days away and I have Datil pepper plants blooming in the pepper patch!
In December ...
It is a fitting weird gardening end to 2018 since the Spring was remarkably cool here and it took forever for the Datils to grow and start blooming.

See? That was a chat, not a rant.

Blossoms and tiny pepperlings in North Florida on December 1, 2018.
I used to be happy to still have peppers hanging in October, but unprotected plants were almost always toast by November.

Hot Christmas Tree

I picked the fully ripe peppers below this morning.
They will provide the seeds for both my next planting and for the folks who buy real Datil pepper seeds from me.

 As I picked, a light rain was falling ahead of a cold front, but I think these plants will make it through the cold air to follow.
Forecast temps are in the 30's, but we've already had two nights of near 32 F and the plants were unphased by it.

Without consciously meaning to, my Grandfather, my Dad, and I may have slowly selected for cold tolerance over our 3 generations, as we saved seeds from surviving plants late in the season.
Couple that with a warming climate and ALL of this year's crop may overwinter for a second round.
Usually, I get one or two plants to overwinter for the second year of production, but in the past, that has involved running them in and out of the house as cold fronts slide over us.

I may not have to do that this year.

If you skipped the video, here's the Cliff Notes:

• I grow Datil Peppers handed down from my Grandfather to my Dad and now to me. 
• I grow them in isolation from any other type of pepper to avoid even a chance of hybridization.
• Datil Peppers are HOT, not "sweet" aka mild.
• Ripe Datil Peppers are orange not red when ripe.
• The 2 bullets above may have been a rant.
• You can buy REAL Datil Pepper seeds from me by clicking on the sidebar ad or the Datil Pepper seed page on this blog or you can zip over to eBAY and look for PURE FLORIDA DATIL PEPPER SEEDS.

Eat More Datils!

DASTARDLY DEER DATIL DEVASTATION !

Two weeks ago ... one of my 36 datil pepper babies that I nurtured on the porch for the last 2 months. Ready for transplanting outside.

Three days after moving the tray of datil starts to the garden bench area ... postdeerpocalypse.

They ate the already potted datils as well as this tray of seedlings that were waiting for school to be out and a little time.

Ungrateful Ungulates!!!
I took this shot of the perps from my dining room ... not sure if I like the smug look on that young buck's face.
Perhaps he is ignorant of the awesome barbeque sauce I make from my home grown datils ... or maybe he is ... was this perhaps a "preemptive strike"?

Only a setback ...
Like the tough Minorcan endentured servants who arrived here in the 1700's and claimed the datil pepper as their own, these little plants can overcome any obstacle.
Just look at the post-deerpocalypse new growth on this guy.

Protected by a dusting of ground cayenne and nurtured with MiracleGrow, these little guys are well on their way to providing me with datils in abundance ... we'll just be a few weeks off schedule.

Hey Pepperheads! Yo Capsicum Craniums! Datil Pepper Seeds For Sale!

Datil Pepper seeds for sale!
Don't delay!
These babies will produce all summer and into the fall down here in paradise, but my seeds are growing as far north as Alaska, so join the long list of satisfied customers and grow a rare heirloom pepper!

The details are in the Datil Pepper page tab above this post, but just to make it super easy to send me your hard earned dollars, here is the deal:

For $5.00 you will receive 20+ datil pepper seeds (I always count 20 and toss in a few more) PLUS a letter with 2 different datil pepper sauce recipes.

Payment through the mail:
Send $5 to:
FC
3150 NW 50th Avenue
Chiefland, Florida 32626

or
Send it via PayPal (faster delivery) using this email address:
natcoast@msn.com

I'm transplanting my first round of seedlings to larger
grow-out pots this weekend.
Can't wait to see those first promising blossoms!

This has been a reminder commercial on behalf of the most awesome pepper variety on the planet.

We now resume our regular Florida nature posting.

I'm thinking a minnow post ...

Baby Datil Pepper Plants! Super Germination



It's DATIL TIME !

A rock solid, healthy, baby datil pepper seedling.
Planted on February 18, 2013.
Sprouted on February 27, 2013.

Right now,(March 4th), it's far too cold for datil pepper planting outside in North Florida. Temperatures were near freezing last night and the Florida winter is not over yet.

This little guy and lots of siblings will grow inside under lights for a few more weeks until I have at least two sets of "true leaves" and seedlings strong enough to transplant.

By that time, mid-March, we should be past a killing frost.




As an experiment, I opened one of the datil pepper seed packets that I sell and planted the contents.
I got almost 100% germination!

I still have plenty of seeds Chili Heads so check out the datil pepper seed tab at the top of this post or the ad to the right if you need some authentic  Datil Pepper seeds.

As for me, I may try my hand at a larger planting this year and spend a few Saturdays at our local Farmer's Markets.



Datil Pepper Seeds For You!

UPDATE: AUGUST 19, 2012

THE DATIL PEPPER HARVEST HERE AT PURE FLORIDA IS COMING ON STRONG AND I ALREADY HAVE HUNDREDS OF SEEDS CLEANED, DRIED, AND READY TO GO, WITH PLENTY MORE TO COME.

THE PRICE AND ORDERING INFORMATION BELOW REMAINS THE SAME.

TIME TO GET YOUR DATIL ON!

(Note: The post below was originally published in March of 2012, but the info is good!)

Yes, I still have them.

My plants are up and sporting their second set of true leaves. Soon, I will take them from the starting flat and pot them individually. In another week, the chance of a frost becomes almost nil here in North Florida, so this first batch can move completely outside around March 15th.

I will probably start a second round of seeds as insurance ... 'cause you never know.

If you found this site looking for heirloom datil pepper seeds, you came to the right place.

If you are a regular PF reader, please bear with me while I go all capitalist on ya.

Seed searchers, the seeds you see are what I have left. It is March 10, 2012, so time to start those seeds for those of you stuck north of the Saint Marys River.

$5.00 gets you two recipes and I toss in 20+ datil pepper seeds so you can grow your own.

You can mail your hard earned cash to:

FC

3150 NW 50th Ave

Chiefland, FL 32626

Or, if you want to skip snail mail all together, you can use PayPal.

My email address, natcoast@msn.com is my PayPal account also.

Shoot me an email if you use PayPal so I know where to send the datil seeds.

Thank you for your interest in a true Pure Florida pepper, the datil.

True Grits :30,375 Comments

 In my world, grits are never wet enough that a spoon is required and I never clutter them with shrimp, cheese, or any other Food Networkian hoopla.
Give me real butter, salt, black pepper, a crumbled strip of center cut bacon , a fork and a place to stand, and I can move the world.

So, I took a walk this morning in the drippy, dim light of an overcast sky. A cold front is moving through and it is delivering light rains and grey skies. The cool dim morning just called out for a walk, a photo walk sans le chien "Bear".

I took way too many photos of wild flowers and fall leaves, but they will have to wait for another post.

 Out in the weed choked hell garden, the rootbound, two foot tall Meyer lemon in the tiny pot has produced quite a pair. The poor thing deserves a better container and some actual soil. I don't know how the little impulse buy has survived the hot summer, let alone produce children.

The potted datils are still going strong even as November peers coldly over the calendar wall. Look at that plant! These datils are not only holding fruit, but they are  still blooming!
I have a huge batch still to pick plus a good store of 2011 datil seeds for the 2012 season, so check out the datil page above this post or the datil ad off to the right if you want some seeds.

The pepper in the picture is demonstrating one of the traits of datils ... a purple blush. Generally, the peppers go from green to green with purple blush to orange, but they don't always get the blush.

Again, I have the wilder morning dew walk photos in reserve for a post this week.

Now about those comments ...

First, imagine how dull blogging would be without the comment feature.
Ack!
Would we still do it?
To me, the back and forth aspect is about 60% of the blogging fun.
That's why I always feel guilty when life keeps me from commenting back on the two current posts that show each day on Pure Florida.

One thing I almost never do, however,  is go back to previous posts to read comments.  I just don't have time.
I long ago dropped the email comment notification feature since it was clogging my email and most were current comments I would see anyway.

Recently I was deep in Blogger and hit the comment tab. This of course shows all 30,375 comments here at Pure Florida.

While 99.9% of those comments are wise, funny, critical in an adult manner, narrative, encouraging, or empathetic, ... some just cry out for the be-yatch slap or at least a satisfying DELETE.

For instance ... way back in the archives there is a video of me moving a fat girly moccasin out of the road. Some of you expressed concern about my proximity. Fine. No problem with that.
One person shrilly called me names and said they would never want me teaching their children ... as if the post was a how to do moccasin removal for kiddies.

Another commenter freaked out when I pointed my finger at Bear and yelled, "BAD DOG!", as Bear made a lunge for an endangered gopher tortoise.  I had some fun with that as Bear is no where near the wuss that commenter appears to be.

Finally, a commenter just lost it over a post in which I surgically (with a razor cutter) removed just the stinging tip segment of one of our native brown scorpions so I could hold it and show it to my students.  The commenter called me a JERK and lamented how I had taken the scorpions ONLY way of getting food. Why I should have just squished it if I was going to do such a thing.
Now, once you get mean and call me a JERK on MY blog, you get deleted.
Had it been a civil comment that disagreed with what I did, I would have explained that scorpions and all their arthropod cousins regenerate lost body parts after a few molts. And with two chelipeds still intact, that scorpion could get by just fine until the new stinger came in.
At least bother to google your subject if you plan to chew me out about it.

I hope the scorpion commenter doesn't eat stone crabs ... only the claw is removed and the crab goes free to grow new ones. 
The horror!

I am sure, that in those 30,375 comments there are some other "PLEASE DELETE ME" whiners, but I am not going hunting for them.

Are these people irritating?
Yes.
Am I irritating sometimes.
Yes.
Do I mind debate or being corrected here at PF?
Not a bit.
Do I demand civility?
You're damn right I do.

PiRknotSquare and ShrimpRknot Either

Last week, I had to be away for two days of training and some of my fellow teachers covered all my classes. They did this because the school budgets are so slim, it's hard to afford a substitute teacher these days.
And ... they don't make much, these brave substitute teachers, so that tells you something about the budget.

I wanted to thank the regular teachers who lost a planning period or doubled up, so I made a blueberry pie.

Not an extraordinary thing, but it was my first real, gotta crust, not a key lime ... PIE.

I found a recipe online,  pulled a bag of my own home grown blueberries out of the freezer, and got started.

My version of "dot with butter".

My version of a shark, made from the trimmings and leftover bits of crust.
The shark is our school mascot.

The thing about giving a pie to someone as a gift is ... you can't really taste it to see if it came out alright.
Nobody gives a pie missing a test slice, as a gift.
It just isn't done.

I left it in the conference room with a note thanking the teachers who covered for me.
In the afternoon, I had a washed and empty pie plate, so I guess it was okay.

In the foreground, a plate of salad and some of the shrimp that I caught back in August.

That was supper Saturday night. You can mess shrimp up in a million spiced, breaded, bacon-wrapped ways, but there is something to be said for minimalism with such a delicately flavored beast.

These were cooked by dropping them into hot water and almost immediately removing them.

Well, yes, I confess to dipping them in our homemade datil pepper relish. We made a big batch Saturday (background) and the whole house smelled AWESOME all day.

No way I was passing that up with a plate full of shrimp at the ready.

I may be a shrimp minimalist, but I'm not crazy.

Triple D: Dad's Datil Doom

Last November, I wrote this ...

"In my refrigerator is a datil experiment that is meant to mimic a Tabasco type sauce using datils.

I took bright orange, ripe datils and chopped them in a food processor.

Then, I combined the caustic orange goo with a little vinegar and salt.


I don't have oak barrels, so it's aging in a glass jar, but it smells wonderful when I pop the top to check it.
Months from now, I will process it again and then strain it for an orange liquid that I hope will be amazing.
I will let you know."

Well, it's time to let you know.

The fresh peppers on the right were just picked. THEY were off my best, most vigorous datil plants and they are the source of the seeds for the upcoming 2012 gardening season.

I didn't waste the fruits of course, they will be used to make some of our traditional tomato based datil pepper relish.

This post is really about the jar to the left.

It contains ripe datils from last year that were chopped in a food processor before being placed in that crock with vinegar and salt.

It's been curing in the fridge since November, and with a new crop of peppers pouring in, I chose yesterday to finish it off.

The photo above shows half of the aged pepper mix already reprocessed into a smooth sauce. On the right you can see the remaining half awaiting  a turn in the food whacker.

I had thought I would strain it through cheese cloth, but cancelled that idea in favor of just giving it a heck of a puree ride in the processor.

I'm not afraid of the extra heat those seed will provide.

This sauce is going to stay in the fridge, hence the lack of canning equipment and boiling water.

I have a long list of things to add it to ... seriously considering wings as my first experiment.

Don't let the "DOOM" part scare ya'.

I dipped out a spoonful to taste test it and it was pretty damn wonderful.

Certainly good enough that the Pure Florida Crock Of Datil Fermentation will soon be curing a new batch in the fridge.

I have peppers coming out of my ears.

Not really.

That would be weird.

Datil Pepper Seed Starting Time

Here I am again. Patiently counting seeds out into tiny packages like some kind of drug dealer.
At least, that's what Mrs. FC says I resemble as I hunch over a bit of wax paper covered in precious datil pepper seeds from last summers crop.

I use a tooth pick to count and scooch the seeds into the tiny envelopes, but I still manage to get a few zillion Scoville units of datil essence on my fingers ... and last night on my eyelids.

That'll wake you up, let me tell ya.

When he did this, my Dad would have planted his a month ago in his greenhouse, but a lot of things got put on hold when Mom injured herself, so here I am, not too late, but later than normal.

Tomorrow I will plant a bunch of these seeds in a seed flat.

If you want some seeds, just send a "let's get FC's kids through college" donation in the form of $5 cash.
No checks please. FC is a pseudonym ... duh, and I really can't sign checks that way.

For your donation, you will receive a note with two datil recipes and at least 20 seeds. I try to count out 20 and then scooch in a couple extra.

They probably won't all sprout, but enough will. One or two bushes can keep you flooded in datils. After all, it doesn't take but two or three to put the ZING in a pot of chowder or pilau.

There is an ad at the top of the page to the left, but just for the sake of saturation ... the seed address is:

FC
POB 205
Otter Creek, FL 32683

Isn't Otter Creek just the prettiest name? There really is an Otter Creek that flows through the tiny settlement of the same name.

It's not one of those#$#%$@# developer created gated community marketing names that have no connection to anything real.

There are even otters in Otter Creek.
I occasionally see them lope across the road on the way to work.

Speaking of hot stuff ...have you ever tried Peri-Peri sauce? The chicken in the picture was browned in olive oil and then simmered in Peri-Peri.

The label says it is a product of Portuguese/African colonialism.
It had nice heat, nothing ferocious, just nice. The taste was vaguely familiar and it was my son who solved the mystery.

"It really reminds me of Taco Bell taco sauce."
He should know, he is a fan of the Bell.

Actually, he's right.

Dat Will Do It For Now

This extremely cold winter had me running my datil pepper seedlings in and out of the house back in January and February.

OUT for sun - IF it was warm enough - IN for warmth at night and many days too - then OUT for sun - In for ... well, you get the idea.

It all paid off though. Even though the cold and my own bumbling cost me some baby datils, the plants who survived are thriving.

The proof is in the photo above.

We made a triple-size batch of datil pepper relish a few days ago.

I seeded 55 datil peppers to get 2.5 cups of whole peppers ... and yes, I wore gloves for that job!

Once bitten, twice shy ... if you know what I mean.

I saved the seeds by the way and will offer them again this winter when it's closer to seed starting time.

In other news ...

Junior has an apartment and a job! It all fell together for him in the last week so we are moving things from here to there and are in an even bigger state of disarray around here than normal.

I have to go back to work Monday. Nuff said.

Bear went to St. Augustine yesterday and thrilled his grandparents to no end. He is like a magic happy drug ... without any bad effects ... except for the whole addiction thing.

My college roomie, Dave, and his wife, Tami, have been down for a few days overseeing the construction start of their log home.

They are as excited as two kids on Christmas Eve, so it was fun to hang with them yesterday evening and today.

... which explains the lateness of this Friday post.

Datil Update and Playing Hooky

This week was FCAT week at school.

The FCAT is Florida's high stakes test involving about 3 days of testing in which the kids dutifully fill in little bubbles with their number two pencils.



Fail the reading, math, or language arts portions ... and you are going to be in a double period remediation (as in teach directly to the test) class next year in that topic.



or





If you are a tenth grader ... your graduation is now in jeopardy, no matter how good your GPA is. You will be retaking it next fall ... and you'd better pass.



Science is the odd child out here. Unlike the three R's FCAT tests which the kids take from every year starting as an in utero fetus, the science FCAT is only taken in 5th, 8th, and 11th grades.



And it only counts as part of the overall school grade per the state, or "Adequate Yearly Progress" under NCLB madness.



And



The kids know the science FCAT doesn't count for them individually. That means that for many of them, it's a Christmas Tree experience.



And it is the last test they take in a week of grueling tests. Guess what their motivation level is...



Yet, their science teacher's evaluation will be partially based on their performance.



It doesn't matter that you are teaching biology and the science FCAT will test them on all the other and very different fields of science, along with biology.



Picture these two high school teachers ...
It doesn't matter that the classes Jane Earth Science Teacher has are composed mostly of kids who read at a 4th grade level, while all the college bound whiz kids took Joe Physics Teacher's class.



Jane and Joe are going to be rated on how their students do.



Sound fair to you?



It's good to be Joe in that situation.



This is just one thing that makes teacher accountability and performance pay such a challenging quest. It's needed, but how do you make the playing field level so it's fair?

Teaching is too often compared to the business model and it just ain't so. It's a whole 'nother beast and it's frustrating to be held accountable for the progress of kids, whose "parents" didn't nurture them in those crucial first 5 years.
It's hard to fix that deficit.



I don't have the answer, by the way.



Ignore the teacher's unions, because they are practically communist in their quest for mediocrity and uniform treatment across the board.

Oh, and here's something you may not know ... it's incorrect to call them teacher's unions, because they are education unions with lots of non teaching members.



I once had a fun verbal battle with a union guy at our school. The "discussion" was over merit pay and increased pay for teachers who go out and hustle to get special endorsements. The union was against "some " teachers getting more pay than others ... even if they had made themselves more qualified.



I am of the "more skills, more pay" school of thought so we clashed.



He had only taught for 8 years and hadn't been in a classroom for the past 10.



Wuss.



Anyway ... sorry for the mini-rant. The point is ...it's a high stakes week in Florida schools.

By Friday, the kids are spent.

Me too.

So, I chose this Friday to use an extra day of leave I earned ... which means ... I'M OFF DUDES AND DUDETTES!




Let us talk of other things ...

The picture above shows a datil pepper just getting it's TRUE leaves. This was taken a week ago, so they are a little bigger now.



Thank you to everyone who requested datil seeds. My goal of spreading the good datil news across the world is on track. I am getting about 60% germination from the same seed mix so I hope you all get at least that. I'm going to start another round of seeds soon.



The little plant above was started back in the first week of February. They grow pretty slow until things warm up and we have been so consistently cold that these little guys haven't had much outside time.

Those of you with greenhouses or growlight setups will have faster growth.



I have some grape tomatoes, variety "Juliette Hybrid" started too. This also is a photo from last week, so they are looking friskier too.



A few weeks ago, while looking up one plant, I came across info on another ... as is the internet way.

I knew of azolla, but did not realize that it is a nitrogen fixing little wonder plant. It's being promoted across rural areas world wide as a fast growing source of nitrogen fertilizer and even animal fodder ... poultry mostly.

After I read that, I scooped up a bit, just a few plants really, and tossed them into some of my ponds. A week later they had covered the surface of the partly shady ponds.



Here's a close up of our native azolla and a single non-native cousin, salvinia ...

... the green sheep of the family.

It's been raining here for two days and it has warmed up a bit, so if y'all will excuse me now, I'm going outside to play with Bear in the puddles.