2023 gardens

Sorry for the double pic.

Today I facilitated a few beaners and we put them through the mill.

looks good Denny…..thats alot of beans. i’ve been blanching mine, freezing them on cookie sheets then bagging them up in the freezer. turns out pretty good that way.

last night i decided my trees in the yard need a drink of water, so put the hose by the trunk, and let the water trickle out for a 12 hour shift.

That’ll run up the water bill! I made a root feeder out of 1/2″ copper with a tee handle. smashed the end and bent the flat edges back at an angle then drilled 3 holes clear through to get 6 directional shoots in the bottom end at a few varied inches upward. On the handle I solder a cap on one side and a garden hose fitting on the other.

Thanks for the Vinegar clarification Pickle –
On my shopping list!

First zucchini. “It’s a beaut Clark!”
Will need to blanch/freeze many since they’ll be coming out my wazoo in a week.

Found this website that has blanch times for many veggies. The last time I tried on the zucchini they were mushy.

https://extension.umn.edu/preserving-and-preparing/vegetable-blanching-directions-and-times-home-freezer-storage

This is a handy website for presevation. I actually have the book but same info.
https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html#gsc.tab=0

Anybody know what happened to my jalapeño pepper plants? Look closely at the pictures, especially the first one. You can see one pepper that clearly looks like a jalapeño, while the others look banana type. Did they cross pollinate? I only have what I thought were jalapeño plants and bell peppers. Anyone? Weird.

I imagine with the heat coming this week that I’ll be buried in tomatoes and peppers soon. We ate the first three Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes last night. I have four of them planted and there are hundreds of green ones each plant. Each one is over 6′ tall. Two Thai chilis are bright red today. Those bushy little plants are loaded with green ones. Two Amish paste tomatoes will probably be ready to pick in a few days, so hopefully the first BLT by the weekend. And since only a real weirdo would prefer Miracle Whip, we’ll be using Hellman’s.

That is weird. Did you buy the seeds or save them from last year? The flowers on a pepper plant are whatever the plant is. If pollen from a different type of pepper pollinates that flower, the seeds inside that pepper could take after the pollinator species when planted next year but the pepper will still be whatever variety the plant itself is. In other words, if a bell pepper were pollinated by a jalapeno it may produce spicy bell peppers if the seeds were saved and grown next year. This year’s bell pepper wouldn’t be different.

I’ve never seen the same plant with two different peppers on it. They all look like jalapenos to me but that color difference isn’t something I’ve seen before. I’ll have to do some digging.

picklerick wrote:

That is weird. Did you buy the seeds or save them from last year? The flowers on a pepper plant are whatever the plant is. If pollen from a different type of pepper pollinates that flower, the seeds inside that pepper could take after the pollinator species when planted next year but the pepper will still be whatever variety the plant itself is. In other words, if a bell pepper were pollinated by a jalapeno it may produce spicy bell peppers if the seeds were saved and grown next year. This year’s bell pepper wouldn’t be different.

I’ve never seen the same plant with two different peppers on it. They all look like jalapenos to me but that color difference isn’t something I’ve seen before. I’ll have to do some digging.

I bought them as plants. I have no clue what’s going on.

Bingo, I think you have lemon spice jalapenos and they look pretty ripe.

#9 on this list:

Hmmm. They are more of a light green color, and definitely not yellow. To the best of my knowledge, the Green jalapeño pepper that you see on the plant has always been green and hasn’t changed color at all. Same with the maybe lemon spice pepper. They have maintained the same color throughout their growing cycle. At least I think they have.

Do you still think they might be lemon spicy pepper?

Edit: they are kinda yellow. But not a bright yellow. Yellowish green??

That’s the only one that I saw that changes from green to yellowish. Maybe they’ll go full yellow when they’re ripe. The ones that start out yellow or pale green (jaloro variety) will ripen to orange or red. I’d mark that dark green one and see if it starts getting lighter. If so, it’s probably the lemon spice. I’ll keep looking, too.

I bought planta a few years ago and ended up with long skinny banana looking things. Those look like jalapenos. Look up Jaloro pepper.

dirk-w. wrote:

Hmmm. They are more of a light green color, and definitely not yellow. To the best of my knowledge, the Green jalapeño pepper that you see on the plant has always been green and hasn’t changed color at all. Same with the maybe lemon spice pepper. They have maintained the same color throughout their growing cycle. At least I think they have.

Do you still think they might be lemon spicy pepper?

Edit: they are kinda yellow. But not a bright yellow. Yellowish green??

You aren’t the only one

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.koco.com/amp/article/oklahoma-gardeners-jalapeno-pepper/44121503

Finally getting my first cherry tomatoes ripe, going to be watering regularly these next couple days, but the heat/sun should ripen up a bunch more!

Couldn’t wait two weeks and popped open my first canned banana pepper.
They are excellent. Cant wait for Tomatoes.

dirk-w. wrote:

Edit: they are kinda yellow. But not a bright yellow. Yellowish green??

Have you tried one? How’s the heat level?

I have a pepper plant that was supposed to be a globe shaped sweet/hot pepper. As the fruits begin to get a bit older they are wrinkling now and really resemble a Habanero. And they’re a bright orange. Grandson tried one the other day and said they definitely have heat. He didn’t finish it. I cut the pepper in half with my pocket knife and licked the blade to get the juice off it and needed a bottle of water.

I long ago learned that those cute little sticks stuck in potted greenhouse veggie plants are not always accurate with regard to what’s growing in said pot. Your jalapeño might reflect that, Dirk

I’ve even bought seed packets that had more than one variety or were something other than what they were labelled. Last year I had a pack of tomato seeds from MIGardener that had three different types in it. It’s no big deal but if they had done really well in my garden I’d be bummed not knowing what they were.

I am growing 4 kinds of peppers this year. Only one doesn’t have heat. Anaheim.

My Bananas are hot eaten raw, especially if you eat the seeds and veins. Not overly hot but they will get your attention. None of that transferred into canning. The vinegar wiped it out. Its always hard for me to get the right heat when canning with vinegar or tomato. That’s why I have one ultra hot pepper plant to overcome that barrier and even then its difficult. They just aren’t ready yet so I cant add them to my canned bananas.

The longer you cook fresh peppers during the canning process the milder they get. Conversely, the longer you cook dried peppers the hotter they get. When making salsa I add dried red pepper to boost heat in the batch for my son and me, leave it out of the smaller batch for my wife (pretty much chunky ketchup).

Ok, peppergate has been solved. I think they are the yellow jalapeños that were not labeled correctly. Some heat but not as much as the green ones.

The yellows and the greens on the same plant is what really threw me. But, when I looked closely, I think there are two separate plants that looked like a single stalk. I didn’t look closely the first time.

Whew! I thought it was an End Times thing. You know, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

If you folks want a jalapeno that’s extra spicy try jalafuego. There’s no hit and miss spice level when I’ve grown them. They were all as hot as a serrano and good sized, which is my only complaint about serrano.

In spite of the hot, dry weather I have been keeping the garden and Ma’s potted flowers wet and the rewards of doing so are apparent. Today the onions began to droop, which is just about on target for the time of year. About 50% of them are baseball sized, the rest about tennis ball size. The way they started off with the cold and wet I figured I’d lose most of them but as it is I lost maybe 40% to this year’s crap spring.

Tomatoes, cukes, peppers, hot peppers and the green beans are keeping us in fresh veggies now. Always one of my favorite times of the summer. I’ll be pulkling the onions by this time next week.

How often do you water your tomatoes?

I don’t think there’s one answer other than when they need water. I water mine about every other morning when it’s in the 80’s. Every 2-3 days in the 70’s. I use a watering wand and hold a medium spray at the base of each plant for ten seconds then wet the surrounding 1-2′ for about five seconds. I have two 20′ rows of determinates, 18 in each row, and a dozen indeterminates throughout my garden. My ground is pretty sandy and only the top few inches have a richer soil. Leaf and pine straw mulch helps but if it’s over 90 it can’t go more than a day without watering. Takes me about 1/2hr to water everything but it gives me time to notice bugs and diseases before they can get out of hand.

Had hail combined with 50 mph wind last Saturday. It sucks spending time and money just to watch your hard work ruined in 10 minutes. Lost multiple tomatoe plants. My cucumbers really dropped off now that all their leaves are full of holes. My pepper plants themselves look good still but all the peppers are are bruised and I don’t think they will ripen before they rot. Potatoes plants are now dying an early death. Corn was blown over with some broken, but the wife and I straightened it out as best we could. They seem to be recovering. The leaves on the top half of them look like this and had not started producing silks at the time it happened. How much will hail damage reduce my sweet corn harvest?

Onthewater wrote:

Had hail combined with 50 mph wind last Saturday. It sucks spending time and money just to watch your hard work ruined in 10 minutes. Lost multiple tomatoe plants. My cucumbers really dropped off now that all their leaves are full of holes. My pepper plants themselves look good still but all the peppers are are bruised and I don’t think they will ripen before they rot. Potatoes plants are now dying an early death. Corn was blown over with some broken, but the wife and I straightened it out as best we could. They seem to be recovering. The leaves on the top half of them look like this and had not started producing silks at the time it happened. How much will hail damage reduce my sweet corn harvest?

Just be happy we live in the period we do at least you can go to the grocery store and not starve. But yes it sucks when you put the effort in. If you lived closer I would be more then happy to share mine already calling other people to pick peppers, beans, cauliflower, cucs, zuchinni and tomatoes.

I have to pick my cukes and beans every day now. Can’t eat this stuff fast enough but the kids have a use for it most of the time. Or the grandkids. Tomatoes are beginning to produce in quantity now and I am making Breuschetta for dinner tonight..

That bites. I don’t know anything about growing corn but I think all peppers can be eaten at any stage of development. I would pull any of the ones you think won’t make it to full maturity. Throw ’em in the blender and make some salsa. Picking peppers should trigger the plant to push out another flush of flowers.