Tag: peppers

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Even wilder Saturday

Okra flower keeping its banker’s hours.
Taco week leftovers include garden potatoes and garden sweet peppers (a few mini bells and one Jimmy Nardallo sweet pepper) and tomatoes in cheese sauce.
Wet dog helping me water.
A kind friend who was moving gave me a string of solar lights which I put in the trellises today.  They have a switch, so I can have them on only as needed, so we don’t distract the night bugs from their business.
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Friday dinner of mostly garden tacos

Thursday evening, the Chef began preparing spices for meat in slow cooker. Two jalapeños, one chimayó (top).
Mmm tacos. Everything except meat, tortillas, cheese, and spices are from garden. Beans are the last of last year’s California black-eyed peas. Potatoes are this year’s kennebec white.
After dinner, Paula and I did some garden harvesting. New for the season are Alabama black-eyed butter beans.
Also new for the season are slippery silks pole beans.
While we picked, the ice cream maker machine worked hard.
Vanilla with blackberries from home. Thanks Mom for sending some home with us!
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Sprouting and preserving

The sterile wheatgrass cover crop is sprouting!
You can see the slower germinating buffalograss seed hanging out.
I have especially put a lot in the narrow places where the water runs off from the raised beds.
The grass with the red zinnias.
Both chimayó and jalapeño peppers. Neither super hot.
Everything from the garden except for garlic!
Yum! Salsa verde complete!
Picked green beans for dinner while waiting for salsa to finish simmering down.
The Chef takes over for canning, my department is just vegetables, thank goodness.
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Harvest and pruning

Surprise! A loofah gourd I didn’t plant has already reached the top of the trellis.
Chard, mini bell peppers, and Chimayó peppers.
The Chef found a cutworm in the chard.
I found a big beautiful banana spider (Argiope) in the tomatoes while I harvested! I made sure not to bother her more.
I finally determined the zucchini plant was a total loss to squash vine borers. I also made an executive decision to not let the very thriving white currant tomato plant shade out the moon and stars watermelon or the salvia or the rosemary. There’s only one plant and it’s a monster! I got over 900 g this evening alone.
All tidy now. I hope the watermelon will do better now.
I came inside to find this beautiful meal prepared by the Chef. Greens are chard from the garden and the bell pepper topping is mini bell peppers sliced. Yum. Nice and cool after working in the heat and humidity.
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The tomatoening

UF ‘W’ hybrid tomato
Purple Cherokee tomato
The ever fruitful black vernissage tomato
Not tomatoes: Peruvian ground cherry!!!
Chimayó pepper ripening, thanks for the seeds Judy!
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Wednesday harvest and other friends

A lot of blue lake green beans.
Several tomato varieties are ripening.
UF garden gem was fine but all of the UF “W” at a similar color rotted and molded. Perhaps they don’t like the endless rain? I will watch more closely for ripening now too.
The Chef tied all the onions up for storage.
The mini bell peppers are more mini than I expected.
Corbaci peppers. I think the three little ones aren’t ready, but their plant died.
A mini bell pepper plant died too, in the same way, a rotting brown at the base.
This mushroom looks like it should be named lemon chiffon something.
Weighing the dried garlic.
Pseudothyris sp. moth resting on strawberry leaf.
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Happenings!

Yellow granex onions (white granex flowers appear same as far as I can tell).
Garlic flowers with cilantro/coriander flowers in background.
Mini bell pepper begins!
Another sweet pepper, this one called corbaci!
Moon and stars watermelon leaf. The fruit is speckled and honestly I think the leaf is that way too? I searched for online images yesterday and few showed the leaves well but I think it’s not a disease.
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Evening things in the Pacific rainforest that is Norman

Cowpeas coming up among corn, beets, and peppers. Coreopsis in background.
Black coat runner bean flowers.
Mini bell pepper flowering.
Rouge Vif d’Etampes squash has big leaves!
Inca pea bean leaves.
Golden jenny melon needs more sun I think. Its seedling seems stuck.
Madhu ras melon is in a better spot.
This beetle eats solanaceous plants. It is sitting on my Peruvian ground cherry. This beetle is now gone.
Presumed beetle eggs. They are gone now. A mysterious giant finger squished them.
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How can things grow this much in a week?? Sprouting trays edition

The Chef took very good care of the garden while I was on vacation and we got very, very, very, very lucky to get rain and no hail in our part of town.  I’m poking at my potted plants right now.  I’ll do another post later with the ground plants and raised beds and permanent planters.

Echineacea pallida left out all winter sprouted well (seeds from prairie moon nursery) a while back. I put some of the seedlings in the ground when I left and I’ll plant these last ones soon.
The Chimayó peppers from Judy grew almost all these adult leaves.  When I left each had one small adult leaf.
Hungarian heart tomatoes to replace the one that got killed by the late frost.  The seedlings emerged in the plant window so I put them outside yesterday when I got back.
I repotted this eggplant right before I left. It has grown a lot.  The other one I repotted hasn’t grown as much.
Finally the culinary sage is starting to sprout!  The only one that was up before now has an adult leaf.
These passionvines are the ones where I just smooshed the fruit into a pot and left them out all winter.
Liatris mucronata has a hilarious long leaf. I had another one in a bigger pot but it seems to be dying.
This yucca now has three leaves!  I also planted one in the ground when I left, because it was in the relatively shallow sprouting tray, and it is still alive in the ground.
Planted the other tray of green milkweed (Asclepias virida) before I left and will plant these ones soon.
Volunteer redbud dug from front raised beds. Eventually I’ll put it in the ground here in backyard. I don’t think it grew any taller, so hopefully it’s working on roots.
I now have at least three baby columbines in the sprouting tray and one out in the yard. The package said direct seeding in fall was best, even over stratifying manually, so that’s what I did even for the trays. These babies look a lot like clover, especially when smaller, so I’ve had to be careful.
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Suspense

Did the tender plants (tomatoes, peppers, ground cherries, potatoes, and runner beans) make it yesterday??? Tuesday night into Wednesday morning it got down to 29F in Norman, apparently a new record low (the previous being 30F in 1918. SEE WHO WEATHERED THE WEATHER!!

Tommy toe tomato did not make it. Note how the leaves are a darker, mushy/soft green and drooping. Goner.
Both of my new tomato varieties, supposed to be better for canning, died. One was the Amish paste (not pictured), which I have more of in pots. The other was Hungarian heart tomato (pictured). I have planted some more seeds and put them in the warm plant window to sprout. The culprit is pictured on the left… oatmeal container cardboard does not insulate enough. I thought it would be nicer since they’re tall and big, but apparently you need more, like the air trapped in corrugated cardboard. All the survivors were under towels, glass jars, plastic jars, plastic pots with newspapers, cardboard boxes, or even leaves-as-mulch (one Peruvian ground cherry in the backyard). A few branches got frosted but they can be trimmed off.
One branch of this potato died when the box top fell in (I had set another bag of potatoes on top). But the rest of the plants were fine. An example of corrugated cardboard doing its insulation job. I was surprised that an uncovered potato in a raised bed did not completely die of frost. Only a branch or two was dead.

Three casualties of a late frost, and all due to poor choices of insulation (which I now know to avoid), are really not bad. I’m pretty pleased.