I've been harvesting a few bell peppers and several jalapeno. A couple hot banana and a few Anaheim My pablano peppers are going to be a while yet, they take longer. I always plant peppers on a tarped area, just cutting a whole large enough to plant them. They seem to like the warm ground and usually thrive. I don't know if that would work well in an extremely hot area, but does fine here. I never have to weed them. I just put down some composed horse manure (I have lots of that
) in the fall and cover it with the tarp. By spring the worms have worked the compost into the soil. I just cut the hole and plant the pepper plants in the spring. I do the same with eggplant and tomatoes. I've done it with melons and squash too with great success.
This is a picture from last year, early in the summer. I am not using this space at all this year, as I'm solarizing it with tarps, hoping to get rid of some tomato blight that I had last year. This year I have a very small garden in another area while this space is solarizing.
I'm thinking in the future that most of my garden will be tarped areas like this. I have no weeding to do at all! The tarp keeps the moisture from escaping and keeps the soil warm. I don't think I can plant potatoes this way though...I'm getting to be a lazy gardener for sure.
