let's see your veggie garden {pics}

[OldDinosaurWesH]

Very nice looking pepper.

The key to pepper success: is the meat nice and thick and sweet? Let us know.

Wes H.

 

[deluxestogie]

The meat is nice and thick. Beats me whether or not it is sweet.

Bob

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

I used to do business with a commercial pepper grower in the lower Yakima valley. He grew wonderful peppers. Much nicer than anything I could ever grow. His were thick meated and sweet. Peppers like hot weather and a long season. Something they have in the lower Yakima Valley, and that we don't have around here. He grew Habanero's (ideally, a 180 day crop) that were 2 1/2 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and had 200 pods on them. Amazing! I can barely grow any around here. Our weather is too cool.

Which is a roundabout way of saying you must have had really good growing conditions this year. Congratulations on your success.

You should give them the taste test. I bet they are sweet and tasty. If you carefully trim the gills and seeds out of a Habanero the flesh is sweet. I've done it with the Red Savina Habanero's and they were good.

Wes H.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I can't grow large peppers, but I also can't buy fresh peppers, so I don't care if the ones I grow are small, they smell and taste so much better than anything I could buy. California Wonder does better than others I have tried, like the purple ones and some heart shaped variety.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I found this website, https://growagoodlife.com/growing-peppers/ which says:

For sweet bell peppers, try growing Ace, Lady Bell, or King of the North. For hot peppers, choose Early Jalapeno, Hungarian Hot Wax, or Anaheim.

Have you tried any of these varieties, Wes? I haven't even heard of the sweet bell pepper varieties.

 

[skychaser]

Wes, how was that squash?

I have 21 varieties of peppers growing this year, both in and out of my greenhouse. All have done well this year. The Bells all seem to take the longest to ripen of any of the types I have grown. I love them stuffed and baked. I grew Charleston Bells last year for Baker Creek Seeds, but I ended up with a lot of green ones at the end of the season with that variety. Great eating peppers though, with lots of medium sized fruit. This year I am growing Golden Cayenne for them. Very pretty and very hot! They will be harvested this coming week. https://www.rareseeds.com/golden-cayenne-pepper/

The best tasting peppers I have ever tasted when baked are Giant Aconguaga's. They are a sweet pepper. I have 3 baking right now. The sweetest pepper I have ever grown is Jimmy Nardello. Super sweet with no hot at all and a wonderful crunchy flesh.

They only Habanero I have grown is Fatali. They are a small yellow pepper that is insanely hot! The plants get quite large and produce a lots of fruit. I've never counted but they probably produce over 100 per plant They require a very long growing season as they grow very slowly in the first couple months. They are supposed to be the 3rd hottest pepper in the world behind Ghost Peppers and Carolina Reapers. They are dangerously hot! You must wear gloves when handling them. I learned that the hard way. And you don't want kids around them. :/

I'll get some picts of all my peppers and post them.

 

[skychaser]

I found this website, https://growagoodlife.com/growing-peppers/ which says:


Have you tried any of these varieties, Wes? I haven't even heard of the sweet bell pepper varieties.

All Bells are considered sweet peppers but there isn't really much "sweet" to them in my opinion. They get a much better flavor and slight sweetness when fully ripe. The green peppers in the store are just unripe yellow. orange or reds varieties.

Hungarian Wax is one of my favorites. Very early, very productive and hot. But no so hot you can't eat them. They are great for salsa. You can pick them yellow, orange or red when fully ripe and they are just as good at any stage. Traveler Jalapeno do really well for me. I grew them once for Sustainable Seed Co a few years and and have grown them ever since. Purple Jalapeno does really well here too

 

[deluxestogie]

Curiously, if you allow jalapeño peppers to ripen fully to red, they loose a lot of their heat, and take on a bit of sweetness. So you get jalapeño flavor with a somewhat sweeter and milder taste.

Bob

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

I haven't grown any peppers for many years. Peppers just don't grow very well around here. We don't get the heat and our spring season tends to be cool and wet. Peppers when exposed to temperatures below 50 degrees get stunted, and never fully recover. Fortunately, tobacco doesn't seem to have that problem.

The last peppers I grew were Purira's (capsicum frutescens) and those are extreme hot peppers (400,000 heat units) that I was producing for commercial purposes. I was growing those for seed to provide to my grower in the Lower Yakima Valley. The main reason I was growing the seed here, is that I don't have to worry about cross-pollination. The grower I was dealing with grew 35 - 50 different varieties each year (about 35 acres) and cross-pollination was significant problem. One of the tastier peppers I have had were called "Hot Apples" which I got from the grower in the Lower Yakima Valley. The Hot Apple variety was about 2 to 2 1/2 " in diameter, thick meated, and sweet with just a bit of heat. Very tasty and really good for cooking and adding to a dish. Interestingly, the Hot Apple when mature looked a lot like a tomato. The grower I'm referring to operates a U-pick every year in August and September, and you can go pick all the different kinds of peppers and tomatoes you want. He charged by the pound, and the prices were pretty reasonable.

My squash was good, although not as sweet as I had hoped. The meat was thick and dense, and It looks like I will have lots of squash to eat. I will only have 6 squash in total, but they are fairly large. That will add up to quite a few pounds.

I think I will go pick my one decent sized watermelon today and give it a try. I picked one of the smaller melons about a week ago and it was sweet and good-tasting. Said melon just wasn't very big, so there weren't that many bites.

Wes H.

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

Also as a sidebar comment on peppers, one of the reasons that Jalapeno (Capsicum annuum) peppers are so common and readily available is that the growers get a lot of tonnage off of an acre. For the same reason, you won't see a lot of Habanero's (Capsicum chinense) in the store, because the growers don't get the tonnage. I have seen the orange Habanero's in the store, but I have never seen a Red savina Habanero in the store, only in the field. When I was in that business, I experimented with drying and grinding the Red savina Habanero, but the yield just wasn't there.

Also, the picking is about 50% of the cost of growing a pepper crop. If the yields aren't there, as my grower said "I'll just plow them down."

I know a lot about peppers if anyone is interested. For now I will stop typing.

Wes H.

 

[skychaser]

Curiously, if you allow jalapeño peppers to ripen fully to red, they loose a lot of their heat, and take on a bit of sweetness. So you get jalapeño flavor with a somewhat sweeter and milder taste.

Bob

I have never experienced that with mine. I can eat Travelers like an apple when green. I dare you to eat a red one like that. I diced up two small and very ripe Bulgarian Carrot peppers and added to my 3 very large baked Aconguaga's last night. I should have only used one. I'm still sweating a little. lol

Wes is right about the production cost of most peppers varieties. Bulgarian Carrots are great little peppers and look just like small shiny carrots. But the production per foot of row is so low I would have to get $25 a lb to make it a profitable crop. Fortunately, seed production pays better or I wouldn't even bother with most varieties except for the ones I want to eat.

It's the same with selling the plants in spring. People ask me why we sell tomatoes for $1 and why our peppers are $2 each. That's because peppers need 12 weeks to get to a saleable size when tomatoes (and tobacco) need only 8 weeks. And some, like Fatali, need 16 weeks to reach any size. And peppers can be difficult to start too. They need warmer conditions than most plants to germinate and some take 3-4 weeks to sprout. Also, they have a much lower than average germ rate than most plants. Even with A grade seed, the federal minimum standard for seed sellers is only 70%, which is much lower than most other seed.

Wes is right about the temps they need too. If you let the temp fall to 40f for even a short time, seedlings keel over and half never recover. So I have to keep the greenhouse much warmer at night than with tomatoes or tobacco., thus adding to the cost. And... I have to hold them inside longer if the weather is still cool before planting them outside. Cool temps definitely stunt them. So my rows end up covered with Agribon cloth at both ends of the season to keep them warmer. More work and more cost.

 

[deluxestogie]

October Tomatoes and More

This Big Beef tomato is planted in the ground at the corner of my porch. The porch ceiling is 8 feet. The porch floor is 2 feet above the ground. While all the tomato varieties out in the garden bed are now toast, due to innumerable challenges, this one at the porch continues to produce lovely, fat tomatoes. And it has received only about 1/2 day of sun each day, all summer long. It was later in starting to produce, but has just kept on growing.

About 5 days ago, as I sat on my porch, a huge, brown and yellow hornet hovered motionless about 12" from my face. I shooed it away with my hand. It immediately returned, staring directly at my eyes while it hovered, like a discount store security guard following me down the aisles, to make sure I don't steal anything.

I took my handy fly swatter, slowly lifted it, and whacked the hornet. The hornet fell to the ground, and after a moment, stretched its wings, flexed its muscles, and flew away. Impressive. The next day, it returned. It hovered at the level of my face, but at a somewhat greater (safer?) distance than before. I reached for my fly swatter, and lifted it slowly. Being far more intelligent than I would have assumed, the hornet departed without further violence.

Yesterday, I noticed, for the first time, an odd shaped opacity dangling from a small branch in the trees of the fence line--about 25 yards from the porch. I walked over there to get a closer look.

Yes indeed. It is a large, light gray paper, inverted teardrop shape, with a 1" portal near the bottom, through which flying insects enter and exit. It's a little larger than a soccer ball. I casually retreated, finally understanding why a stubborn hornet would repeatedly check out the temperamental dude on the porch. They're neighbors.

I rarely go anywhere near the nest. Since hornets prey on assorted insects, I will just let them do their thing--unless they hover in my face.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

I've always had a good eyeball for how much to cook for the desired end result. Always cook a little extra so you don't end up short, and pitch the rest. After all...they're just spuds.

Wes H.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

... pitch the rest. After all...they're just spuds.

Wes H.

We obviously had different parents.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

If that's the craziest thing I hear today, I'll consider it a good day.

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

Well...My mom fed us spuds nearly every day when I was growing up. So my appetite for spuds is pretty limited. Also, in my part of the world where we grow spuds in great abundance, same said spuds are very cheap. I can get spuds for as little as 5 cents a pound, making spuds probably the lowest cost food source there is.

I recently purchased some absolutely beautiful red potatoes averaging 1/2 a pound each for 25 cents a pound. Said spuds were grown near Reardan Washington, and the guy selling them had purchased a whole apple bin full of them. About 1,100 pounds. If he was selling them for $.25 per pound, how much did he pay for them at the farm? Probably no more that $.15 per pound. And at that price, the farmer was doing well.

I'm pretty merciless when it comes to a dollar, but 5 or 10 cents worth of spuds just aren't worth worrying about. In economics they call that "Economies of Scale". In Auditing, they call that "Materiality".

Wes H.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I think if it weren't for their superiority of flavor, I would probably stop growing potatoes because it's not necessarily worth the square footage.

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

No doubt about that. Especially when you could be growing more and different tobaccos.

Wes H.

 

[OldDinosaurWesH]

Squash harvest. It was 32 degrees last night.



7 squash = 64.075 pounds total. Biggest was 15.875 #'s. Plus one puny 6.75 # watermelon

Wes H.