That is a whole lot of peppers.
Wow.
Bruce

This will only last us til next season as it is on the table along with the salt & pepper every day/every meal! Is grown x seed in our 'incubators' in late January & set out about 100 plants (get about 2 lbs. chile per plant grown) in the garden in May. A lot of the chile is given away too when neighbors hear the roaster going in the back yard & smell the chilies being roasted & come to 'watch'! The various chile we grow x seed purchased from NMSU Chile Institute in Las Cruces, NM. The Bhut we grow x seed only as a novelty .. way too hot for this family! Didn't make any chile ristras this Fall but see ads now for the ristras selling now $10 per foot... very labor intensive! The plants not putting on any more chile & what is already on the plants is maturing at a smaller size now with cooler temps. & are beginning to look the 'worse for wear'! Winter rest from gardening around the corner!

You have some very lucky neighbors!! I'm with Bruce - That's a LOT of chilis!!!

A LOT? Not really, as we have a freezer just for the frozen chile & many people here freeze a lot more than we do. Because of the drought here this year, a lot of the land to grow chile I understand was used instead to grow cotton which uses less irrigation... so the prices still were not bad on those 30 lb. bags. But still cheaper to grow our own x seed every year & use the home-made hand cranked roaster cage on a stand using propane fired flames. We freeze the roasted chili in baggies - skin & all- & find the skin comes off easier after thawing. Which do you find peels better? Here some feel leaving the skins on takes up too much space in the freezer!

Wow, vieja, I'd love to see pix of your roasting setup! DH is from Vega TX, he just said to me tonight (after it took 8 hrs in dehydrator for banana chips) "Isn't there some place we can just string up the chiles to dry?" I replied "Not in this climate, esp. not this year!" (we've had what I think is *the* wettest year on record, if not it's just b/c July was drier than normal).

The cage set up was invented (& should have been patented!) by someone who sure took a lot of the labor out of roasting chili! We found the cage built & sold by a NM company & bought one. Hubby mounted it on a metal cart with a shelf below (for the propane bottle) from Harbor Freight & attached a sloping metal tray under the cage door to catch the roasted chile when the door was opened & drop it into plastic bag to steam for an hour. Instead of the motor driven cages seen roasting at Walmart, etc. in the Fall, ours is hand driven using the handle that came with the cage. A couple years ago someone on the Chile Forum wanted a photo of the set up & I sent one on the chile site (maybe still there?)but now have forgotten now how to send photos! You probably know that the oldtimers in NM had to roast the chile on the top of the woodburning cookstove & hang the roasted & peeled chile on the clothesline to dry (no freezers back then!) & kept in flour sacks to rehydrate the chile as needed later! Could you use those dehydrators with multiple trays? We use lots of them in the garage to dry chile to grind in blenders for powder. Relatives x Austin, Texas (like New Mexico!) have had one of the dries years ever compared I guess to Vega, Texas?!

Vieja, you are just the expert I am looking for. I tried roasted Hatch chiles for the first time last year and am hooked! Unfortunately,this year the roasters in my part of So. CA were either too far away this time or I was gone when they did come near.I resolved never to be miss eating them again, so I am planning to grow and roast my own next season.
Which variety do you think I should buy--Joe E Parker, Big Jim or the Heritage Big Jims? Have you grown the Heritage ones, and if you have, was there a big difference? Or is there another variety you recommend?
Thanks for any advice.

My husband is a 7th generation New Mexican & since retiring, the self-taught family 'expert/guru' on growing chile so I will get him to answer any specific ?'s

He grew these this year that I know: Joe T. Parker, Heritage Big Jim, Biker Billy Jalapenos (HOT!!),New Mexico 6, Bhut (to challenge his friends who claim to be able to eat the 'hottest of hot'!)& one he grows x seed he saves every Fall that has that never had a name so I call it John's 'Sin Nombre' chile (also very hot!). Our New Mexico State University Chile Institute in Las Cruces, NM has developed most of the chile strains being planted today & I think this year they have even a newer variety. We live near the County Extension Office where they are so helpful with our questions too! Our seed all comes from NMSU every year except for our 'Sin Nombre' for which we keep some chile pods to dry & save seed for the next season year after year. The different varieties in the garden are somewhat separated & bloom at varying times so any seed we save from year to year like the 'Sin Nombe' is pretty pure & hasn't changed from what we can tell over the years. Our chile & other gardens are on soaker hoses on auto timers so watering is automatic all season & hubby does use Miracle Gro fertilizer: higher nitrogen in the beginning weeks to get good growth of plants & then switching to higher ? P (middle number!)for bloom & fruit later during the season.

Not all areas of New Mexico can grow chile well either but the soil, climate & ? seem to be the best in the Hatch & Las Cruces, NM areas. Area around Albuquerque/South Valley does very well also.

What was the variety of chile you tasted x Hatch? So many people think there is a specific variety called 'Hatch chile' but there isn't... instead Hatch is only the town/area in SW New Mexico where the many different varieties are grown. Two of the farms that sell in local stores here are Young Guns & Gillis Farms in Hatch & Sickler's here south of Albuquerque & they have specific varieties that they each grow to sell too I believe. We haven't been to NMSU to visit the Chile Institute & the trial plots ... must be SO interesting & would love to go visit!

Isn't this chile forum interesting & so informitive? I didn't realize how many are growing chile in pots & keeping them year to year successfully! Tried it once but had no success at all so gave up!

Thanks for the info Vieja. Yes, I knew that there is no such thing as a Hatch chile, but I think the ones we get here once a year, in So CA, are actually brought in from Hatch, hence they call them that. I was told any of the numex varieties would work, so that is why I am going to try growing them. I've grown Anaheims before, but want to try the Joe Parker and Big Jim, which I have seeds of now thanks to Smokemaster. Just curious if the Heritage BJs are really "new & improved" compared to regular BJs.

Thanks again!

i'm from the south valley originally to and like vieja we grew up growing out own chile we only grew 2 kinds though big jim and wenk yellow hots we grew about 200 pound a year or so and still had to by about 2 sacks the hatch chile isn't what it used to be the best chile is coming from los lunas now as hatch growers have turned down the heat and become more comercialized. now i live in phoenix az and we never have to replant my big jims are 3 years old and produce reliably twice a year june and november and btw i use miracle grow too all purpose in the spring and tomatoe formila once they start to flower every 2 weeks like clockwork