2023 gardens

Minnetonka has a lawn and garden waste drop off. That’s where I take my garden waste. I mulch my leaves.

Scored 3 types of apples at a local apple orchard north of town. Harland, Macintosh and Lakeland. Harland was the best. Also a jar of black cherry preserves and wild blueberry preserves.

Stick a fork in it, 2023 garden is done for me now. Pulled the last habaneros and a few tomatoes that had some color.

Nice mix of greens and orange habaneros. What do you do with your end of season peppers picklerick?

My two habanero plants are loaded even after fresh eating, and using 60 for pepper jelly, which made 13 pints.

I will be picking the rest and drying them in the dehydrator for winter shakers for use in cooking and seasoning.

We love them. I have tried other super hot peppers, but habanero are by far our favorite.

glenn57 wrote:

Scored 3 types of apples at a local apple orchard north of town. Harland, Macintosh and Lakeland. Harland was the best. Also a jar of black cherry preserves and wild blueberry preserves.

I used to work at Collegeville Orchards (well their landscaping business) and in the fall it was all hands on deck and pick those apples Glenn. Cool place, and good people!

Bigwerm, Yea I was impressed with the place. Way better selection then that hidden orchard by big fish lake and more friendly people.

I’ll be going back!!

I’ve got about 20 orange ones in the freezer, too. I’m going to add those to the fresh orange ones and make hot sauce. Got some 8oz bottles delivering today with the swing top lids. I’ll be halving and dehydrating the green ones and powdering some of it. I’m with you on the habanero. Anything hotter is just too much for my palate. Ghost peppers actually taste good, but are too spicy to get enough into a sauce or dish before it’s heat level overtakes the flavor. Next year I plan on growing several different types of habanero and scotch bonnet.

We pulled hundreds and hundreds of Thai chilis off of six plants this year. I halved and dried half of them, then ground up the rest and put them into these silicon ice cube trays for portioning later. The peppers were all pretty tiny but pack a wallop. Most were about the size of a medicine capsule. Flavor is fruity and similar to habanero.

A neighbor is Asian and has his garden of 5 gallon pails placed all over his property. He has some peppers that I tried this fall and I’d eat a habenjero before I’s put another of those in my mouth. He’s leaving a mess of the ripe ones on the bushes and he picks than when they’ve turned brown to harvest the seed for the next year. I have some of the seed in an envelope he brought over yesterday. e says he starts his seed in mid-February to be able to plant 6″ plants in late May. The plants are relatively compact but absolutely full of 2″ peppers that are the hottest I’ve ever tried, including the Habs and Scotsh Bonnets.

My carrots are still growing so they’ll stay until after the first frost. My squash still has some heads that need more time too. The sweet potatoes I’ll dig after frost knocks the vines down. I’m still nursing a couple of tomato plants and the Super 100’s are still kicking out an ice cream pail full every three days. BUT….I am ready to see the garden stop soon so I can get the fall tilling done and the tiller put away for winter.

looking at the forecast, looks like my 7 mater plants are gonna be yanked on sunday………then garden done!!!!!

Ended up with about 20oz of habanero hot sauce from the last of the orange ones. I forgot to grab the bag of them from the freezer, so I’ll be making more when this runs out. I based it on a simple recipe by Rick Bayless with some of my own modifications. I didn’t roast the garlic, but I did slightly caramelize it in some avocado oil with the onion. I also used 50/50 cider vinegar and white vinegar instead of just cider.

Just search Rick Bayless habanero sauce. The link wouldn’t post.

That’ll make the back end pucker up!!

I use it sparingly. It does taste awesome. The wife can eat it like it’s medium salsa. Our neighbor’s 10yo kid always wants to try spicy stuff we grow or cook. I warned her but she insisted, so I dipped about half a toothpick and it almost made her cry.

Still picking 1/2 of a gallon of raspberry’s every other day, picked what I think is the last of my Cucs. Then tilling in some compost and fish guts for next year.

For giggles I dug a hill of our sweet potatoes to see if they did anything this season. One hill here. 9 to go. If the other do this well we’ll be eating a lot of baked, chips and fries.

That hot sauce looks awesome. My garden is all but done. My banana peppers insisted on putting out one last gasp so I put up another jar of those last night since the others have turned out so well and Im eating them too fast.
I put all my habs on a screen in the basement to dry. Im just waiting for cold weather to shrink everything up so I can remove before snow. My wife hates it when I leave it all until spring and I dont blame her. It looks like crap.

Instead of dehydrating the green habaneros I made some more hot sauce loosely based on the same recipe. I added mango and a bit of sugar to this batch. The first batch of sauce is about half gone already.

Refrigerate or not on the habanero sauce? Seems to be a lot of opinions on this!

-J.

There’s quite a bit of vinegar in them, so it’s not likely to grow any critters, but I refrigerate mine. I do have some ghost pepper, serrano, jalapeno sauce that I pressure canned because I used very little vinegar. A 1/4pt jar of that stuff will last a few weeks in our house once opened. If I leave my wife alone with the habanero sauce, she’ll down a bag of chips and a whole bottle if I don’t give her crap about it. I think you have to have a quality ph tester to be sure they are shelf stable if you’re not going to pressure can.

Edit: I bought the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving a couple years ago. I think it’s safe to water bath can if you follow their recipes but I don’t see any for hot sauce, just salsas.

bigcrappie wrote:

Still picking 1/2 of a gallon of raspberry’s every other day.

Our Raspberries have been terrible this year. Its been so dry and I was basically gone 2 weeks during the driest spell so they never got watered so they havent kicked out much. I hope they come back next year. THey are pretty resilient though.

Well finally made salsa, and free’d up my freezer space. 7 gallons of frozen tomatoes resulted in this much salsa.

Looks good B-Dub. The color looks like it will have a deep and rich flavor.

picklerick wrote:

Looks good B-Dub. The color looks like it will have a deep and rich flavor.

I’ve tried a few different recipes and this is my favorite. I more than doubled it.

Bugsey Salsa:
8-10 cups quartered blanched tomatoes (skin/stem removed)
1 bunch cilantro
2-3 onions
8-10 jalapenos
3-4 green peppers
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon salt
2 Ghost peppers (optional and can be swapped out for another pepper of your choice)
2 Tablespoons minced garlic

Simmer without a cover until tomatoes are broke down and consistency looks good. Makes about 4-5 quarts. I also run everything thru the food processor, which makes it a lot easier than chopping for days and it has better consistency.

bigwerm…….that salsa looks great! i like my salsa chunky so yea i hand chop most my stuff. i’m retired i got time!!!!!!

My carrots are last to come out of the dirt. Maybe tomorrow or Thursday. I pulled and ate one the other day and they’re crisp and sweet this year.

Well….I finally dug the carrots this morning, A 12 foot row that was left yet in the ground produced about 15 pounds. My plan was to dig them a month ago but the weather was nice so I mulched them a bit and nothing major for cold had been around or predicted since so I left them in the ground. I noticed the tops were finally drooping yesterday so I got a spud fork and tipped them. Raelly, really nice carrots. Glad I left them. They are very sweet.