Today… here’s Puck:

Checking things out. He stays in the paths (mostly).

“Broccoli…. cauliflower… kohlrabi! My FAVORITE!!”

Enjoying his garden

We’re finally seeing spring days in the 60s and 70s, with beautiful sunshine. But the temperature at night is still dropping into the 30s, which means that our nightshade plants are still traveling between the deck and the kitchen every day.

Tomorrow I hope to put in a good chunk of tomatoes. I’ve had problems with transplants dying off the last few years – not sure if it’s due to planting before a big rain, cutworm, or something else – but recently about 1/3 of my tomatoes’ stems have broken off right above the soil line after planting. So I have a few extras, and will wait to plant a handful for a week to see if I need to replace them with others. I have some large pots that the extras can go into, and a bit of extra space in the garden.

If the forecast looks good on Thursday, hopefully the eggplant and peppers can go out then!

I finally started hardening off tomatoes and peppers this week. Last year I decided to start fewer plants inside, and purchase more at the local greenhouse… but I ended up buying seeds anyway. It is just so hard to resist starting plants inside! I already put in all of the cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and kohlrabi – and seeded radishes and carrots. The rest of the garden should be seeded within the week, so all that’s left will be tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.

They look pretty good; if the weather patterns hold most of these should be able to go into the ground next weekend. I do have a row cover and some fabric in case temperatures drop into the 30s later this May.

I am 90% certain that most of the peppers pictured above are Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying Pepper. If I’m wrong, someone please correct me!

I decided not to label my peppers this year because I figured by the looks of them, I’d know which was which when they were ready. Silly me. I know they aren’t Ancho, Czechoslovakian Black, Cayenne, Purira, Szegedi, Banana, or a bell variety. So that leaves the Nardello family heirloom.

Seedlings planted March 5th: Tomato, Jahrdale blue pumpkin, and Brussels Sprouts

It’s that time again! I’m excited about this year’s garden. We saved a lot of seeds from last year – various chili peppers, amana orange tomatoes, and jahrdale blue pumpkin seeds (from my uncle’s pumpkins). We also ordered some seeds from Amish Land Seeds, which arrived last week. We planted them yesterday: Great White Tomato, Pineapple Bi-Color Tomato, and Heirloom Eggplant Mix.

… Tomorrow afternoon Chris and I have a meeting which may lead to an incredible change in our gardening this summer. I am both excited and nervous, but will have to wait to post more details later.

Remember the giant amount of tomatoes that I picked the other day? Well, about half of them started to ripen already! So the counter was filled with red, orange, and green tomatoes; I decided to make some red, orange, and green salsas.

They are pretty simple; just tomatoes, onions, and chile peppers – also, I added xanthan gum which gave them a much better consistency than last year (this time they aren’t watery). I also made two green tomatoe pies for my dad, who was here today to install a new window in my house.

I drastically reduced the number of vegetables hanging out on the counter and in baskets in the basement by slicing them up and pickling them. I really, really hope that we like pickled green tomatoes! I found tons of recipes for them, so I know that someone likes them. Some of the pickles include cucumbers, carrots, onions, and hot peppers. I also made a few pints of sliced green tomato “chips,” which apparently are a delicious replacement for sliced pickled cucumbers.

I ditched the sugar in half of the things I canned this year and went with agave nectar instead. We’ll see how that turns out – most of the pickles aren’t ready to eat yet, but the agave-sweetened refrigerator pickles I made (more in the fridge from yesterday too!) turned out really well.

Of all the things we grew this year, the chile peppers were definitely the best producing, and the most exciting. Especially the purira peppers – we will be saving seeds from these for next year. The peppers start green, and then turn yellow, then purple, then orange, and then red. I think they get hotter as they mature. This time of year, it’s a real Christmas-light show.

Hopefully the manure will add a lot to the garden for next year! I’m not sure yet where our winter gardening plans sit…

We have a lot of cayenne peppers! We will probably dry most of them, and maybe pickle a few. Our Purira chiles are starting to turn rainbow colors (I would have posted a picture, but we picked all of the orange/red ones before I took pictures, and I’ve already put them in a spaghetti sauce!). Also, we learned that if the Czechoslovokian Black peppers just stay on the plant, they get red and spicier! I added a few of those to the sauce as well.

The chiles seem to have done fairly well this year, even planted so closely together. With our tendancy to eat spicy things (especially Chris), I think that next year we may need to add a couple more plants. Probably not the Czechs, but definitely the cayennes, puriras, and maybe some other neat varieties.

The tomatoes are starting to die off. We had a couple of cold nights, just under 40º F, which the tomatoes definitely did not like. We pulled off a bunch of yellowing leaves today, and some entire plants may need to go soon. I’m actually excited about making some fried green tomatoes with curry and possibly even a green tomato pie! (I’ve heard that my dad likes green tomato pies, so I better start looking for good recipes!)

Chris planted some kale in the front yard today. We have a lot of new little areas with seedlings – I hope they mature before it gets too cold! Chris said today that he is going to start building cold frames for this winter – maybe he will write about them soon!

Front Garden Cayenne Peppers

As you can see… we’re going to have some ripe tomatoes very, very soon! There are three fat amana orange tomatoes in the front, and lots of misshapen oxacan pink tomatoes. The romas are starting to ripen, so maybe we’ll be making tomato sauce soon!

The chile peppers are still doing well… the purira peppers are getting fairly large, though they are still yellow. They turn purple, then orange, then red! I think they get spicier the longer they stay on the plant – hopefully in a week or two I will have a rainbow photo to post. The cayenne plants are loaded, though none have turned red yet. Again, a few more weeks to wait.

The pumpkins continue to look very pretty, producing more and more male flowers every day. Unfortunately, there aren’t any fruits on the vines, which is why we planted them. Oh well… at least they add a bit of color to the garden in the back. One yellow crookneck squash finally decided to enter the garden. I still have no idea what that yellow and green squash is… the skin seems like it’s toughening up a bit, so it’s probably a randomly crossed winter squash after all.

Three flowering black eggplants in pots in the back yard.

It was pretty hot (above 90) yesterday, and the temperatures are predicted to rise for the next two days. I’ve been watering both the front and back garden every day for three days now, and Chris and I are just about to go water it again today. Things are really going to take off I think!

We have a yellow summer squash growing in the zucchini plants – the seeds must have been mixed up when they were packaged! The tomatoes are finally just starting to turn red – there is one Amana Orange that’s just about ripe with Blossom End Rot (boo-hiss), but here’s a rather large tomato that looks like it’s going to avoid the rot:

It’s one of the heirlooms – Amana Orange, Oxacan Pink, or Marvel Striped – but we won’t know which one until it ripens! Next year I plan to keep the tomatoes labeled better, and maybe even plant the varieties together so we can judge the plants for seed-saving purposes (what an idea!).

There’s also a large slicing-cucumber, and a few pickling ones. I hope the pickling cukes take off soon, because we haven’t really had enough to make a batch of pickles yet. Sure, I pull two or three every couple of days but it isn’t enough to fill up a pint jar!

The chile peppers are loaded this year – last year we didn’t have much luck with chiles, getting only one or two peppers from each plant. I’ve been using the czechoslovokian black peppers pretty regularly – each plant has at least 15 chiles on it! The cayennes are loaded with long green peppers – I can’t wait for them to ripen! We should be able to dry a bunch of peppers and also make some chile sauce.