The wind let up some later today, so I went out and started cleaning up some more things, and cleaned off a few more pepper plants. Then I noticed all that epazote that is still in the front bed, so I cut all of it out, and cut most of the flower heads from them, and put them in a bag, and took them up to the Mexican grocery in town. As usual, he was thrilled to get it. I gave him a few peppers, but mostly the epazote. The last of the Oaxacan Red Epazote, harvested for the guy at the Mexican grocery. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
I got my garlic planted today, in one of my raised beds, for the first time. 138 cloves in 6 rows, separated by some landscape fabric, which I cut into rolls, one 3 1/2" for the edges, and two 5 1/2" rolls (though only one of the 50 ft 5 1/2" rolls was needed). I "fluffed up" the soil, before putting the fabric in, then put the Music garlic in the 2 center rows, then the Metechi in one row, and 8 cloves in one outer row. Georgian Fire went in the row to the left of Music, and 15 in the other outer row. This left a total of 25 spaces for Estonian Red - my favorite, due to the huge cloves, often only 4 per head, and intense flavor. Unfortunately, not my best for storage, but I always use them first, saving the largest for planting, unless buying. Cutting 3 1/2 and 5 1/2 inch rolls of landscape fabric, to put in raised bed, with garlic. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
After this, I put a thick layer of ground up leaves on top, to mulch (still had them from last season). Tomorrow's rain will pack it down some, and I'll have more leaves soon, for sure!
Peppers, peppers, and more peppers! But then, I guess you knew that...
I harvested all the rest of my peppers today, since the temps are going down, and rain is coming tomorrow. I pulled all the greens, except for the smaller ones, and I'll have to sample them, to see if they are worth freezing or drying.
Those Death Spirals are definitely the most productive super-hot, or any habanero, that I have ever grown. If I was in an area with a longer season, I would have had even more of these green ones turning ripe! Not as hot as the Reaper - more like the Bhut Jalokia and Trinidad scorpions - but much more productive, and my friend's plant grew taller than me (78")! All these are just one plant. Overflowing 6 qt bowl, with the 185 Death Spirals from the last harvest. Didn't even pick the small ones! by pepperhead212, on Flickr
The Paper Lantern was also very productive, and the first habanero to ripen. Not as hot as described in the catalog, but around 200k, and the flavor wasn't as intensely habanero - that sweet, fruity/floral aroma the best of them have so much of. It tastes more like the Scotch Bonnet, the one time I grew it, which was also about this heat, and this is good in Caribbean dishes calling for that, where the hotter and stronger habaneros can overpower it. Final harvest from a Paper Lantern Habanero plant, just one branch, showing all of the peppers! by pepperhead212, on Flickr
The Thunder Mountain is just a weird, curly, decorative cayenne type pepper, only 20-30k, mostly decorative. But I got a lot of them, from 3 plants, by the end of the season.
How spicy hot are your The Meteors - Thai type peppers?
I grew habanero 2 years ago and was surprised it had the most amazing flavor I have ever tasted & not as hot as I expected. I wish plants at the garden store had heat rating on the tags.
I have very good luck covering plants with blue tarps from Harbor Freight it protects them from frost and also protects plants from freeze down to 30 degrees. There is enough heat in the soil to keep plants warm if tarps are large enough to touch the soil & hold in the heat.
These days I am too lazy to cover plants every night then uncover then every morning. I can often keep plants alive for 3 more weeks sometimes longer. Cold weather makes plants grow a lot more full size peppers as long at weather is warms every day near 55 degrees.
Gary, Those Meteors aren't as hot as the Thai Vesuvius or Jyoti - the two peppers of this type I use every year, for drying, and freezing red and green. Those two are around 60-70k. These meteors aren't as hot as Superchilis, which are about 40-50k, and the greens I just sampled are definitely not very hot - maybe like a serrano pepper. I get 2 full crops and a small third one from my favorite varieties, but I keep trying new ones, just to see! This is the latest I have ever seen one of this type produce, and the one plant a friend had did the same thing - he got an even larger plant, but same late peppers.
I have grown countless habaneros - back in the 80s and 90s, when the habaneros were the hottest, and Red Savina held the record for many years, before the superhots came around. A friend and I would sample them, and it always seemed that the hottest ones had the best flavor! Most were very late producers, September ripening, if we were lucky, though the red savina always started in very late July, or the first days of August. The Aji Dulce was the one chinense pepper I found that had the intense habanero flavor, yet almost no heat! But the first one in the 90s didn't ripen until late September, so not a keeper. A couple of years ago I tried it again, and it was much earlier - they have improved that with most chinense peppers, almost all of which used to be described in the catalogs as 120 day peppers!
Back in those early days, I would also cover some of those very late peppers, just to see what it was going to be, but too much trouble for me now, for something that I definitely won't be growing again! And I'm never going to be short on peppers, so I don't need them!
In the early 90s was the only time I ever brought a pepper inside, just to get the peppers to ripen. It was an African pepper, called Musaka, by the store I got it in, which was a spice shop in the Italian market, and they had musaka powder, which was 5-6 times as hot as cayenne. That one time they had the whole peppers, I got them, and started the seeds! Problem was, they were the latest pepper I ever grew, and were just getting the green peppers on them in October! Still, we had to sample them, and I brought them inside, under lights (no other plants inside, back then, so no problems with bugs), and in early January the first ripe ones appeared. That's 6½ months, plus a little, from transplant! Not something I was going to grow again! lol However, that was the hottest non-chinense pepper I have ever grown, close to those 300k habaneros. It was definitely a frutescens pepper, with that unique flavor. I found a similar pepper, years later, only 100 days, but only about 150k, which is still quite hot! lol
40 years ago someone gave me seeds for Korean hot peppers. Plants never grow taller than Knee high they look like a small round bush. Small peppers the size of raisins are, green, yellow, orange, red, purple, color. Very colorful beautiful plants. Plants start producing peppers in about 65 days & make 100s of peppers until frost kills them. First week of July plants were so colorful they looked like small Christmas Trees in the garden. I put a red color pepper in a pot of soup it was plenty hot & good flavor too. I have never seen those peppers again & people I ask say they never saw them either. I would like to grow them again.
The greens are starting to grow quickly in the hydro - I might start planting some bok choy every 2 or 3 weeks, like a succession planting. They are sort of "cut-and-come-again", but not for as long as the leaf lettuce and mizuna. Bok choy, 11-5, about 4 weeks after planting seeds. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
Last night I went through those peppers my friend and I harvested when our first frost was eminent, and all those Death Spirals were the majority of them. I put all of the just starting to ripen ones in a bowl,
- about 2 quarts - with a couple of apples, and some have ripened more already, in just a couple of hours! The 32 ripe ones are on one tray, and the 112 green ones are on 3 trays in the dehydrator, plus a few gold bullets and chocolate habaneros on the fifth tray. A few gold bullets and chocolate habs, 32 ripe and 112 green Death Spirals, 11-10 by pepperhead212, on Flickr
Those Thai type peppers dry pretty well on the countertops, so I put them on plates on my griddle - warm with the pilot lights under it, about 98° on the surface. This way, the peppers won't be infused with that habanero aroma, which is in the dehydrator, from those 5 trays of peppers. The end of the Thai type peppers, mostly Meteor, the latest one of the season. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
That lettuce in the hydro is growing incredibly fast! I'll have to harvest some tomorrow, just to make room! That new one is growing even faster than the reddish saved variety. If it also has a resistance to bolting, I'll have to save it, as well.
Do you think the hydro lettuce tastes different from what is grown in the ground? I found that hydro lettuce does mature faster, but does not have as much taste as lettuce or any other produce that is grown in the ground.
I don't find much difference between the ground lettuce and the hydro. I find more differences between the varieties. Plus, I usually add some more flavorful items from the ground or hydro when making salads, such as that mizuna, and some herbs, and the flavor of the lettuce still shines through.
On the subject of varieties, I have grown many varieties of leaf lettuce, mainly looking for heat resistance - I'm sure you have this problem, too, with heat induced bolting! The traditional "heat resistant" variety - Black Seeded Simpson - was never a favorite of mine for flavor, and many varieties touted as heat resistant didn't make it for me. Those occasional 90+ days I'd get in May, usually, would trigger most of them. That "unknown" red streaked variety I save seeds from once again, this season, grew way past when Grand Rapids bolted, but even that took a couple of heat waves, to trigger it. The red lettuce looks similar to many in catalogs, the the quatre saisons variety, but none that I tried lasted as long. It has also lasted longer than grand rapids in the hydro, though both grow a few months, as long as I keep harvesting those outer leaves!
I still have a lot of greens out there, as well as inside! The cabbage is largest because the others were attacked by some varmints, shortly after planting the seedlings in early September, and they all had to grow back! (From now on, they will all be covered!) I wasn't even sure they would do it, but almost all of them did. I've actually harvested a generous number of leaves of the two komatsuna and the misome. One of the komatsuna is Summer Fest, the most heat resistant I have found, and the other is Pinetree Gardens generic komatsuna, so I figured I'd compare them for cold resistance, and compare them to the hybrids, as well. Red Dragon Cabbage in SIP, needed watering on 11-27 by pepperhead212, on Flickr
Looking good! Do you have those under cold protection now or are they exposed?
My Red Dragon is still looking like the one at lower left in your photo — not sure if it will be able to head up but according to a youtube video by Japanese community garden guides, covering with fleece AND vented plastic would raise temp during the day to forestall them from going dormant/stop developing. He said if they don’t make it to heading stage, one way to enjoy is to keep alive until spring and let them bolt because Chinese cabbage flowerbuds are the sweetest of them all… but they are approx Zone 8 — I think it will get too cold around here, and these would freeze? When do you “call it” and harvest them all for just the leaves … or give up?
Komatsuna and Tatsoi are the winter hardiest I think? I think you’ve posted them under low tunnel fleece in winter before.
A video was posted yesterday by same group that komatsuna can be started now as seeds to harvest in mid to late January if grown under “triple protection” — black plastic mulch on raised rows (7 seeds in each hole 1 ft apart, thinned later to 4 per hole), fleece laid directly over the mulch (allow seedlings to grow to about 4 inches beneath), then low tunnel hoops with fleece AND vented plastic as upper layer…. I think that might mean similar method might work in late Feb-March around first thaw?
I still have a lot of greens out there, as well as inside! The cabbage is largest because the others were attacked by some varmints, shortly after planting the seedlings in early September, and they all had to grow back! (From now on, they will all be covered!) I wasn't even sure they would do it, but almost all of them did. I've actually harvested a generous number of leaves of the two komatsuna and the misome. One of the komatsuna is Summer Fest, the most heat resistant I have found, and the other is Pinetree Gardens generic komatsuna, so I figured I'd compare them for cold resistance, and compare them to the hybrids, as well. Red Dragon Cabbage in SIP, needed watering on 11-27 by pepperhead212, on Flickr
I can can only grow lettuce in the cooler months. It bolts too fast in summer and it is bitter. The other good thing about winter lettuce is that it can last a little longer before it gets bitter. Right now, my best heat resistant lettuce is Salad Bowl. I like it better than the local favorite Manoa lettuce (green mignonette). I tried black seeded simpson and it was not my favorite lettuce either. I can grow some romaine now while the temperatures are still below 80 degrees for most days. I am bad at harvesting, so even if I manage to only grow a few heads of lettuce, I still end up giving a lot of it to the worms. How does the red merlot taste?
I can can only grow lettuce in the cooler months. It bolts too fast in summer and it is bitter. The other good thing about winter lettuce is that it can last a little longer before it gets bitter. Right now, my best heat resistant lettuce is Salad Bowl. I like it better than the local favorite Manoa lettuce (green mignonette). I tried black seeded simpson and it was not my favorite lettuce either. I can grow some romaine now while the temperatures are still below 80 degrees for most days. I am bad at harvesting, so even if I manage to only grow a few heads of lettuce, I still end up giving a lot of it to the worms. How does the red merlot taste?
My Romain lettuce is like eating sheets of very dry green paper. I was dissapointed several times now I don't even want to eat this lettuce but maybe I should test it again.
Windows 11 has no spell check so all the miss spelled words & typos you have to figure them out. LOL
Windows 11 is designed to have lots of pop up advertisements. They come up on the bottom 1/3 & 1/2 of the page, on both sides, on the top 1/4 of the page. Click ADs away they leave in slow motion then it wants to know WHY I don't want to see this junk.
Today I did a lot of leaf cleanup - 3 bags of them ground up with the blower. And I cleaned out another one of my deck boxes - the one with the chives in it. I figured out why those things probably got those aphids - stress! The 1 cu ft Jr Earthbox was totally root bound from about a 5" diameter cluster of chives, that were planted last season. Three lettuce planted in the box in late summer really didn't grow well, and now I know why! The chives had taken over. Solid roots, from about a 5 inch diameter cluster of chives, from 2 seasons. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
Alliums are sneaky like that. The roots are fibrous but they go deep. I usually don't plant perennials and annuals in the same container. Chives live a long time and has an expanding clump. I usually plant them alone in a container or in a perennial section of the garden and I still have to divide them about every 3 years.
I also found out the hard way not to plant turmeric with ginger. The ginger only grows laterally and does not need a really deep pot unless you grow it in hills to make it grow more vertically. I planted left over turmeric with ginger one year and the turmeric grew under the ginger but also competed for the ginger in the top of the pot.
I have a few pots of green onions, chives, and leeks (growing separately) in gallon pots. Most of them are over two years old and they are full of roots. I just repotted them recently and cut most of the roots off because there was hardly any media left in the pots, it was all roots. I used to throw the green onions away after they bloomed because the leaves get very fat and tough. I don't do that much anyway. I do grow new ones, mostly Koba, to get the thinner leaves, but I can treat the older onions like leeks and cut them off above the base and they still grow back. The fatter leaves can still be eaten but they are better in omelettes than in ramen or garnishes.
I only grow mostly the Paris Cos Romaine. I can only grow it in temperatures less than 75 degrees or it becomes very tough and bitter.
I have been trying to use up my outside Asian greens, but they have been growing back, given the warm weather! And I had been neglecting my indoor plants, due to the holidays and using those outside, so 2 days ago I trimmed those again, and got a bunch of mizuna, and one of the last 3 bok choys, and planted a couple more bok choys (which popped up in just 2 days!). Hydroponics bok choy, just starting to flower. 12-31 by pepperhead212, on Flickr
The last of the Oaxacan Red Epazote, harvested for the guy at the Mexican grocery. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
Oaxacan Red Epazote, in the hydroponics, 10-27. Will probably keep the top plant, which looks best. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
Bok choy, 2 types of dill, basil, and seed spearmint, in hydroponics, 10-27 by pepperhead212, on Flickr
2 lettuces, 3 basils, and mizuna in hydroponics, 10-27 by pepperhead212, on Flickr
