Lots of Peppers

Tonight went out and picked a ton of peppers and a few tomatoes as well.  The peppers are all starting to ripen at once.  In the picture below you can see the jimmy nardallo peppers.  There are 34 peppers in that picture.  I also had a few chocolate ones and some sweet Hungarian ones. 

 

The tomato experiment worked!  A little over a week ago, tore out about half of the plants I had planted in the garden and then proceeded to cut back hard the one I did leave.  I figured that there was too much foliage and not enough tomatoes.  By cutting back the plant I hoped that it would trigger the tomatoes to ripen because the plant was “dying”, and it worked.  I picked about a dozen and there are more ripening.
Below are the chocolate peppers.

 

 

 

Preserving Peppers

So on the weekend I was down in Hamilton and they happened to have bushels of peppers on sale.  Because I can't resist I ended up buying a bushel of red Sheppard’s for $20 and a half bushel of green bell for $10.  I kept about a 1/3 of a bushel for fresh eating and to go in the tomato sauce my family was making and the rest I am preserving.  I have started to cut some up and freeze them raw, the majority of them are going to end up this way.  But I am also going to dehydrate some of the red Sheppard's and am currently roasting some of them.  I have them on the bbq to blister the skin and then I am going to peel them, place them in a Ziploc bags with olive oil and freeze them. There will be an ton of peppers but they are expensive in the winter and this way I will already have a bunch.

Tomato Pruning

My tomatoes plants are doing better now that we have finally had some rain, but I still only have green tomatoes.  None of them have changed color and getting slightly concerned that it’s going to be a repeat of a couple years ago where I ended up with only green tomatoes.  So I have decided to cut back my plants to force them to ripen.  I ended up taking out about 10 of my 30 plants entirely and cut the sucker and tops off the rest of them.  It might sound a little extreme but they weren’t trellised properly or even maintained like I wanted to, even after I looked into better methods in the spring.  Hopefully this will result in some nice juicy ripe tomatoes.

Fall Planting

This morning I replanted the boxes with more carrots.  I replanted the same varieties as I harvested except for the white satin, instead I went with scarlet Nantes.  I have more seeds than I will ever use of the scarlet, so if my planting is a failure, it’s not the worst thing ever.  The peas that I planted are looking great.  They all germinated and are just starting to cling to the string I strung for them.

More Carrots

Tonight I picked half of the deep purple carrots.  They are very dark, almost black carrots with an imperator shape.  Below is a picture of the carrots right after they were picked.    

 

The yield was along the same lines as the Atomic Red, but with fewer carrots.  These were a little heavier and denser than the other varieties. Weighted in at 2lb 5oz

 

I cut up and froze approximately half of the carrots and dehydrated the rest of them.  The ones that were dehydrated were cut into ¼ pcs and will be left overnight for around 10 hours.  Really interested to see how they turn out.

Onions Harvested

I had some ambitious plans for tonight and managed to taken care of most of them.  On the way home from work I harvested all of the onions from the barnyard field.  I ended up with around a bushel, from 400 onions.   It was less than I was hoping for, but with the weather and the fact that they were planted late, it could have been worse.  They will be spread out in the blacksmith shop on Saturday to dry out before I clean them up. 

While I was there I also picked my first good purple peppers of the year.  They are very purple, a decent size and I am quite pleased with how they have turned out. As you can see some of them went to seed.
 

After that picked all the white carrots and cut the tops off of them for the horses.  There was also a generous chunk of carrot on most of those tops as well.  The white carrots although sticking out of the ground weren’t as big as I thought they might be.  For the entire box I ended up with about the same amount as I had for the Atomic Red carrots but with twice the space used.  Below is a picture of what they look like.  Weighted in at 2lb 4oz for the entire box.

 

They defiantly don’t have the sweetness that you get with orange carrots, but still taste like a carrot.  I’m not sure if I would buy seeds for these again or not.

 

Then proceeded to stop at the field to get rid of the carrot tops and dig some baby potatoes.  All the potatoes coming out of the field will end up being small and for some reason slightly bitter.  I think it’s because of the soil and lack of water but was still worth a shot to grow them this year.

After that went to get a best man for my wedding and then home to clean and freeze the carrots.

First Carrot Harvest

Went out and started to harvest the carrots.  I have been picking and eating carrots but this is the first time I'm actually stripping rows for storage.  I am pulling up (no digging because the soil is so loose) half of all my carrots to put in the freezer and then replanting the rows for a fall/winter carrot crop.  I'm also leaving half of what I have in the ground so that I can have some really big ones for fall.  This is also kind of an experiment will I yield more from 2 plantings or from one planting of large carrots?

 

Tonight half of the Atomic Red, Purple Rain and all of the St. Valery’s were pulled.  I took multiple pictures of all of them and weighted them.  Below is the picture of the Atomic Red just as they were pulled.  They are defiantly reddish tinged with an imperator shape.  The weighted in at 2lb 6 oz for half of the box. 

This is after they were washed. I found them easy to wash and required very little scrubbing.

 

Below is a comparison between the Atomic Red and St. Valery’s.  As you can see there is a massive size and color difference between the 2 varieties.

This is a picture of the Purple Rain.  When I bought them the description said that she hadn’t seen them in any seed savers list, and they might be a hybrid.  As you can see in the picture they are multiple shades of purple and even an orange one in the pile.  They are also mostly imperator shaped with similar size to the Atomic Red.  Weighted in at 3 lb 4 oz

This is after they have been washed.  I picked the 3 most common colors between the carrots for this picture. 

Below is after I cut them open.  As you can see between the 2 sets of halves you see they are both different.  When looking at them about half of them look exactly like purple haze carrots, with the lighter shade of purple, small orange markings and an orange core.  A few seemed to lose their purple color when I scrubbed them and contained a slightly yellowish core, reminiscent of the purple dragons.  And then I had a bunch that were either fully purple or almost fully purple just like the deep purple that will be pulled later this week.  I think someone tried to cross breed various purple varieties and renamed them. 

Lastly are the St. Valery’s carrots.  They were not what I hoped for, but not entirely unexpected.  The description said they were supposed to be imperator, but grew really small.  Well my carrots are much more of a small Chantenay than anything else.  weighted in at 1lb 5oz.

This is after being cleaned.  They had a light orange color with some having almost whitish parts.  Not a bad carrot but much smaller then I prefer to grow.

Of the 3 varieties so far I would defiantly grow the Atomic Red again with the Purple rain being a maybe and St. Valery’s most likely being a no.  Just nothing about the carrot impressed me, and my soil is specifically designed for long carrots. 

Dead Potatoes

So checked out the barnyard garden earlier and my plot is looking good. The peppers are doing much better after that rain.  I actually have about 5 pretty big purple peppers growing.  I was kind of surprised because at home I have nothing, and they were supposed to be the better plants.

The peas are officially done.  The plants are dying off and the squirrels beat me to all of the purple peas before I could pick the dried pods.  To be honest they weren’t very good as snow peas unless you picked them very young, and that was my hope to have purple snow peas.

After checking on my plot I decided to check on the potatoes…..to find them completely devastated.  There aren’t any potato plants in the field living at all.  I'm not sure if the bugs multiplied and killed them off or if the sun finished them before it could rain.  Either way they are dead so now just waiting to hear back as to when we will be digging them up.

Tomatoes

I haven’t mentioned much about the tomatoes this year yet.  The tomato plants are big and bushy but there aren’t a ton of tomatoes on them.  I missed my chance while I was out in Calgary to tie the plants up before they fell over.  Once they hit the ground and started to grow up wards again my 4 foot row spacing became zero.  The only plants that are actually growing up instead of out are the cherry tomatoes in the trellis.  Now it is my own fault for not properly tying them or pinching off the suckers, but I do not want a repeat of 2 years ago.  A couple years ago when my tomatoes went nuts I had a bushel from 2 plants and they were all green.  They were all covered my leaves and never ripened up.

I'm going to give them until next week and then start to cut the plants back hard to hopefully force them to ripen up.  will have to take a look to see what the proper way to do this is, but green tomatoes are not what I envisioned in March when I was planning my garden.

First Beans

Tonight I picked another basket of peas.  The plants are starting to look a little rough but on the whole not too bad.  I'm hoping for another few weeks out of them before they are pulled up.

Checked out the beans, and they are huge.  Just like the package said 8 inches long, wide and flat.  I managed to get a couple pounds picked and they are growing in the shade.  Going to have to go back in a couple days to pick more as the hot weather we are going to experience should keep them going.