End of season evaluation - peppers

My plan, way back in the spring, was to have peppers to make salsa with, and to try out some ‘cool weather’ varieties, because the nights here in high desert Utah can be cool in May, June, and September, which slows down pepper production. So I bought seeds for Gypsy Hybrid and Giant Marconi, which are both supposed to be good varieties for cooler weather. Of course we had one of the hottest summers on record! I ended up with eleven pepper plants, and expected many more peppers than I got from these plants.
I planted a variety of types, hoping for sweet peppers in a variety of colors, and a few hot ones, as well: In addition to the two cool weather types, I planted Jalapeno, Poblano, Super Shepherd, Sweet Red, and Sweet banana. (This last one usually produces tons of peppers for me. I haven’t seen a poblano, yet either. The Pimento pepper plant that I bought has probably done the best, producing 5 spicy peppers for me.
It is my own fault, however that I didn’t get more peppers from my plants. I am having trouble remembering details, but I do know the pepper plants I started from seed were not wonderful starts. I don’t remember what I did wrong. No help there!
Then I was a little too carried away with the beauty of the volunteer flowers in the veggie garden. I have some volunteer sunflowers that I had to prune heavily, because they were blocking the peppers from the sun. I let some cosmos grow too close to my pepper plants, too, and so my puny pepper plants had to compete for sun and root space. I like having flowers in the veggie garden, but I have to be a lot more selective about that. The plants never got very big, and thus never produced much fruit.

I know there is a jalapeno plant somewhere, but I never got any jalapenos, and all I endeup up with was only 2 or 3 peppers from each plant, all very undersized (as you can see from the photo). The lovely big pepper on the left is from the store. :(

So, next year I'll try to be more diligent with my seed starting. I won't let the garden volunteers take away from what I really am trying to grow. More evaluations to come!