please help !!!!!don't know what to do with peppers

[tedln]

No, My garden is quite different. I grow only in raised beds to simplify the care required. We (I) grow mostly tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, yellow squash, peppers (different varieties), and pole beans with a few herbs mixed in. We have very hot summer temps. We were up to 108 recently. My garden has to be able to live through such high temps. Many of the veggies you mentioned would grow well here as a winter garden, but not a summer garden. I've never grown potatoes or melons because of the room required. I have enough room, but I simply choose to grow in raised beds. Many gardeners in the U.S. grow zucchini (courgettes to you), but I don't. I prefer the yellow squash over the courgettes.

Keep us posted on how your garden grows.

Ted

[jem218]

hi there again, we only grow a handful of potatoes in 2 large pots, that makes digging them up much easier as we just tip them out! it doesnt keep us in potatoes are we are a large family! (5 daughters and a hungry hubby lol) but they are fun to grow and the kids love helping! i got garlic growing too, how do you know when they are ready? any tips? also and lastly whats a squash? lol

[tedln]

Wow, Five daughters! I bet that is a lot of fun when everyone is trying to get presentable in the morning. We only have one daughter and two sons, all grown. The daughter was the greatest pleasure to raise. We did it the same way I grow my garden, lots of TLC for all of them.

The yellow things on the left in the photo are yellow squash. They grow on plants almost identical to courgette plants. We cook them in manners similar to courgette. My favorite is steamed with a little butter and salt & pepper.

Ted

[tedln]

Jane, I forgot to address your question about garlic.

This is my first year to grow garlic so I am not really knowledgeable. It is my understanding that garlic varieties need to be selected for the geographic area they are to be grown in. In the states, we typically plant the individual garlic cloves in the fall. They grow and produce foliage through the winter. In the spring, the cloves begin multiplying and forming bulbs. Midway through the summer, the foliage begins turning brown and drying. The garlic should be harvested and dried at this time.

I am a rebel gardener. I rarely do things the way the experts tell me. I simply purchased a few garlic bulbs of the "White Elephant Garlic" variety at the grocery store. I broke the bulbs into cloves and planted each clove, root side down; about one inch (I don't know how many centimeters that is) deep this past spring. I dug one the other day to look at it. It looks like a small onion. I will leave them through the winter and see what I have next summer. I hope to have large bulbs of garlic.

Hopefully, some garlic experts will speak up and tell you everything I am doing wrong. Maybe they will tell both of us the difference between the hard neck and soft neck varieties.

Ted

[Diane]

Nice harvest Tedln. As a rebel you may find new ways to do things.

[tedln]

Hi Diane, Thank you!

I have found a few things over the years that work best for me. I don't recommend them for others though. I always figure the experts must know what they are talking about or they wouldn't be the experts.

Ted

[starflare]

I have alot of vegeis growing from potatos and yams to tomato, raddishes , lettuce, spinch, cucumbers squish , zunccine, fruits bushes and fruit trees in the NE and the area i live it has a high water table.

[jal_ut]

Keep those peppers watered well. Peppers are self polinated and are not really very attractive to bees. Pepper blossoms do not always develop into a fruit. If the temperature is too warm they may not. Don't worry, when the conditions are right, they will set fruit and you will have a bumper crop. There is some sross pollination with pepper plants done by insects, even ants, though it is not vital to have insect polinators.

I keep bees so there is lots of bees in my garden, but I seldom see the bees working the peppers. The bees will be all over the squash, cucumbers, raspberries and strawberries. The bees also like to gather pollen from the corn, but the corn is wind pollinated.

[Diane]

Keep those peppers watered well. Peppers are self polinated and are not really very attractive to bees. Pepper blossoms do not always develop into a fruit. If the temperature is too warm they may not. Don't worry, when the conditions are right, they will set fruit and you will have a bumper crop. There is some sross pollination with pepper plants done by insects, even ants, though it is not vital to have insect polinators.

I keep bees so there is lots of bees in my garden, but I seldom see the bees working the peppers. The bees will be all over the squash, cucumbers, raspberries and strawberries. The bees also like to gather pollen from the corn, but the corn is wind pollinated.

You're so right about the bees. Maybe because the pepper flowers are white and kind of hidden. I put flowers near my potted peppers trying to attract bees. They are doing great.
I usually have no luck with them.

[tedln]

I've had a good crop of peppers this year. I have lost a lot to sun scald. I also had a good supply of bees of different varieties pollinating my garden. They all seemed to avoid the pepper flowers. I did notice one variety of wasp which only seemed to be attracted to the pepper plants and the blossoms. They were getting pollinated and we haven't had much wind.

Ted

[jem218]

hi there and thanks to everyone for replies, firstly
wow Ted all your veggies look great! cant wait to be able to harvest some of mine!
nextly (lol) the bees- i cant say i've seen any around my peppers, i was advised to pollinate myself but the flowers are dying off now and I'm sure i've got little peppers emerging! hopefully must mean i am doing ok, so I'm gonna leave them to their own devices,. i found it very easy to break the flowers off when i was looking in the foliage so that re-affirms my lasy comment! there are 100's flowers on the plants, will they all be peppers in the end?
kind regards
jane

[tedln]

That was the harvest for one day. Most days, they simply go into the plastic grocery bags for distribution to neighbors, friends, and family. Now my garden has stopped producing abundantly and only gives reluctantly due to the heat. It will become abundant again with cool weather. Attached are a few more photos taken on harvest days. Since the subject of this thread is peppers, I have included a few photos of my pepper plants.

Ted

[jem218]

thanks for the pics Ted! they are awesome! i hope i'll be able to take some tasty looking pics like urs soon! the pics of the pepper plants were very helpful! i can see now the comparison between ours and what the fruit will look like when a little more developed! i am a little worried though, ur plants look much bigger than mine have grown! mine are about 18 inches tall!???? will that affect the fruit? will i have to support the fruits as they grow ot will they not outgrow the plant as such?
jane

[jem218]

hi ted, I was just thinking about your pics again (i am way impressed!) i wondered though what sort of scale you grow veggies on? do you grow loads of each of the veg that are pictured? what sort of scale should i grow on to expect the same sort of reward?
jane

[tedln]

Jane,

It's hard for me to describe the scale I plant on. I can only say that I believe in growing very, very crowded (against experts advice). In the photo attached you can see that I only have four, 4' X 8' beds. The actual total growing space is only about 100 square feet or a small garden measuring 10' X 10'. ( I apologize for not giving you the metric conversions, but I've never been good with metric measurements) In the climate in which I live, my method works well. It tends to provide shade for many plants. It may not work well in other climates. The photo provided shows my garden in a very early state. You will have to imagine it fully grown and looking like an orderly jungle.

The pepper plants in the previous photos were only about 18" tall. They look larger because I took the photos very close. If you look closely, you can see some of the plastic coated gardening wire supporting the plants. Without the wire, the plants would have been bent to the ground. The peppers were very large. I planted a total of about ten bell pepper plants in odd little spaces where it seemed I could see bare dirt going to waste. Normally they were planted at the ends of beds where I found the little spaces.

Ted



Maybe the next two photos will give you an idea of what an orderly jungle looks like.