Pepper Update

***two post today, please read Thursdays garden meal below***

The peppers have really started to grow now which is nice to see. We have had a hand full of hot days that they have had a noticeable response to. I keep hoping the hot weather will stick around but it doesn't seem to want to this year.

Here is the pepper bed that comprises of 90% of the peppers I am growing. From left to right is Jimmy Nardello, Big Chili II (Anaheim), Ancho & Purple Bell Peppers.

Here is the remain 10% of the peppers, so accurate right! These are sport peppers, these are pickled and put on Chicago style hot dogs. That is exactly what I am going to do with these if they every produce. Anyone have a good pickled pepper recipe???

Here is a close up of the Purple Pepper row. The seed for these peppers came from Annie's Kitchen Garden. They have recently started to really grow and have just about caught up to the other non-bell type peppers. I have grown bell peppers a few time and they always seem to lag other peppers but produce very well by August and into September. I have no idea how they get them to produce all winter in greenhouses.

Here is a shot of the biggest of many buds setting on the purple peppers.

Here is the biggest Jimmy Nardello pepper, these plants have been producing since June and are just about ready from harvesting. It produces a sweet Italian frying pepper, what every that means? I have yet to try one.

Here is a couple Big Chili II peppers which are an Anaheim type pepper. These plants have produced very well and have at least a couple large fruit per plant. They say they have heat but I have yet to taste one that is hot. I will be making green chili sauce with these (possible next Thursdays garden meal), putting them in canned salsa and possibly drying & grinding them for chili powder this fall.

Here is my lone Ancho pepper, the plants do have lots of blooms though. I don't think they are liking the cool season. These will be used for stuffing and some will be dried for later use this fall.

Thursdays Garden Meal(s)

The garden meal department has still been a little slow. I really want to start cooking meals that are almost completely from the garden but I just don't have enough things ready for harvest yet. I really need the beans, tomatoes, peppers and potatoes to get growing! Here are a few meals that have had a garden portion to them over the last week or two:

This meal was excellent! Beef tenderloin wrapped in good smoked bacon, lightly blanched sugar snap peas and potatoes cooked on the grill with olive oil & rosemary. The garden portion is the sugar snap peas & rosemary. I have been resisting the urge to steal potatoes from the ground so far. The beef tenderloin was purchased on sale as a whole piece. Once broke down into a roast, 6 steaks and an end piece for stroganoff it was basically the same price as hamburg. Good value there.

Here is a grilled pork chop with a mix of baby vegetables, beets, carrots, sugar snaps & broad beans. A very nice light meal.


Here is a strawberry rhubarb pie with a ginger strussel topping. This was made with rhubarb from the garden. If you are interested in the recipe it can be found on my Mom's baking blog.

Garden Blogger Bloom Day

Here goes July's GBBD. As many of you already know it is hosted by May Dreams Gardens on the 15th of each month to share what is blooming in your garden. I'll keep this short and sweet because I have a million pictures to upload! You may want to stretch out your scrolling finger before beginning :-)

To follow suit from last months GBBD, I will start with photos of the planters out front of the house:

Window Box

New hanging baskets (pair), seduced well passing them at the variety store.

Fancy Geranium Pot, one of a pair.

Urn out front, one of a pair

Now for veggie blooms:

Tomato, from flower to fruit

Male Zucchini Bloom

Potato Flower, finally some purple, it seems most are white this year

Cucumber flower

Red Kuri Squash Flower

Tomatillo bloom, this volunteered from my compost.
Funny thing is I wanted a tomatillo this year and now I have a free one.

Onion set that bolted, I left it in because it looks nice.

Dragon Tongue Bean bloom

Nasturtium

Borage

Now for perennials...:

Lily, in a beam of light.

California Poppy

Daylily

Daylily

'Big Smile' Daylily

Hydrangea. I wish it was Blue, I wonder if acidic soil gardeners wish for pink?

Alium

Weed, in dewy grass.

Hens & Chick bloom

Iris

'Fernleaf' Bleeding Heart, still blooming since early spring.
Great plant that does not go dormant like a typical bleeding heart.

Astilbe

Ligularia

Brugmansia

Compost Post

To start things off I have changed my method of composting egg shells. Previously I had stopped collecting them because I hated to look at chunks of egg all over the place. I then took some inspiration from Chiot's Run last spring. She collects them, drys them out and grinds them up. So I started dry them out, then I stored them in a glass jar(shaken to break them up) and once the jar was full I blitzed them up in the food processor. With this done I added them to the compost, you could also spread these under your tomatoes to help with blossom end rot.

I have done some compost overhauling so I thought I would do an update on it. Here is a shot of the bin when I started. It was recently full to the top and has shrunk down by a third. It was mainly full of grass clippings & weeds so it was in need of some major turning.

Here is a shot of the material I have removed from the veggie garden recently. On the ground is the broccoli plants that I harvested a few weeks ago and have left laying on the back driveway. In the wheel barrow is all the peas vines, broad bean plants, veggie thinnings & weeds that came out of the garden this weekend.

When I have a lot of material to add to the compost and when it is in need of major turning I find it easiest to put all the material on the driveway, mix and then add back to the bin. It is next to impossible to properly turn these black bins.

With the material mostly mixed on the driveway I added it all back to the bin well trying to have a nice mix of half composted material and green material. I also added the ground egg shells in thin layers.

Now for the money shot, here it is all filled up and topped with kitchen scraps and coffee grounds. Some may find this beautiful, Some may find it gross. I'm in the gross category but I do enjoy the finished product and that it reduces our household waste.

To ends things off Miss M has just done a post on making fertilizer out of many common plants & weeds that accumulate high amounts of nutrients. If you check out Her blog, The Informal Gardener you will find a chart that shows which plants have what nutrients and how to go about making the tea. A very informative read.

*for the next couple post I will continue updating on the crops I missed last week. I think all that is left is peppers, squash, cucumbers, root crops & onions

A Saturday in the Garden

Today was predominately spent in the garden. I have had a few tasks that have turned into many task so I decided to complete them all today. It felt great to great everything done and then be able to rap things up with veggies from the garden for dinner.

The first things completed was harvesting & removing the shelling peas, sugar snap peas & broad beans. Unfortunately I had left the third picking of shell peas on to long and they had gone starchy, they will be composted. I had a few sugar snaps left and ended up with a pound of broad beans. I also left a couple broad bean plants standing to be used for seed saving purposes.

Here are the broad beans I harvested. The seed for these came from
a trade with Down on the Allotment and this photo will be entered into
her "Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009" on July 14th

Once that was done I planted the leeks I started in May in front of the melons. These will be a fall crop and I am hoping there is enough time for them to size up. They take 90 days to harvest so they should have just enough time to grow before the weather turns in October. Here are some photos of how I planted them:

Here are the starts that are a little over a month old now. These are 'Large Musselburg' Leeks.


I remember seeing leeks planted in trenches well watching Victory Gardener, many many years ago. Funny how you can remember obscure things when you're so young. Anyway, so I dug trenches about 5 inches deep and then planted the leeks about an inch below the trench. The soil is being stored in a bin behind the shed and will be added back as they grow. This method should grow some nice, long, white leeks.

Here they are all planted. Now they just need to get growing!

Today I also decided to harvest all the garlic. They probably could have stayed in a little longer but I needed the space. I have not weighed them yet but ended up with 8 nice size heads and 4 small heads.

I have the garlic drying on the patio table with the umbrella up. I am going to try and rope
my Mom into braiding the eight large heads together. We shall see if I am successful.

On the planting front I planted another row of parsnips in place of the garlic also well as a row of carrots & beets. The carrots and beets will be another fall crop and the parsnips I am going to leave in over the winter. I have read they produce a very sweet taste once they freeze in the ground. They will make for a nice harvest during a winter thaw or in March when the snow goes away. The last things I planted was white cucumber in the pot the sugar snap peas were growing in and I planted the red celery I started in May.

The last task of the day was thinning the carrots & beets that are currently growing. A few of the thinnings were big enough for dinner but most went into the compost. Beets and carrots seem to be growing very slow for me this year.

Melon Update

Here are the melons that I have growing on a trellis that is five feet wide and eight feet high. The varieties are Charentais Savor F1 and Petite Gris, both are a small french melon. I have them growing with black plastic that seems to be working pretty well with the cool season we have had thus far. You may notice the size difference, this is because I lost two plants early on to cold weather and had to reseed. It does show that it is a good idea to start melons 3o days early in peat pots, I just need to start a few extra encase of casualties next time.

The empty spot in front used to be lettuce that all bolted. I will be replanting with leeks tomorrow. Along the far side is 'Bright Lights' Chard that has been having a tough time with leaf miner. The leaf miners seem to have slowed down so I am hoping to harvest some of the greens shortly. The seed for the chard came from a trade with Daphne's Dandelions.

The melons have just started to bloom in the last few days. I was happy to seem them.

This may be one of the first fruits although it is hard to tell this early on. It does look very much like a little melon forming. I really can't wait to eat a sun warm melon right in the garden :-)