A Good Year for Peppers

Bell Pepper

I have had a really good season for peppers. I normally try planting a couple of bell pepper plants every year, but I'm lucky to see one or two fruits. We have actually had so many peppers that I had to chop them up and freeze them.

Bell Peppers

My husband has suggested making stuffed peppers when these get big enough.

Cubanelle Peppers

I planted one Cubanelle pepper plant, and it has been even more productive than the Bell peppers! I am not as impressed with the flavor of these peppers though. They are a little bitter.

Cubanelle Pepper

Mini harvest

Yesterday I noticed that some of my yard-long beans were getting pretty long. They were dangling on the ground, in fact. I was not sure if they were ready for picking or not as I've never grown them or even seen them before. My son-in-law figured that they should grow to be a yard-long as the name advertises.

Today I harvested a modest 1 ounce of the yard-long beans, and 4.5 ounces of the bush beans. There are a couple of different varieties of those that are just all hodge-podged together. As you can see, the yard-long beans seem to be very slender compared to the bush beans. A Vietnamese friend of mine told me that she likes to cut the long beans into small pieces and cook them with scrambled eggs. She said that they have a slightly chewy texture. I may give that a try tomorrow. Have you grown this variety of bean before? 

Babies in the Garden

   I sowed some brassica seeds today in the garden: Long Island Brussels sprouts, Calabrese broccoli, early purple broccoli, two colors of Vienna kohlrabi (purple and white), bok choy, savoy perfection cabbage, and golden acre cabbage. I am new to Fall gardening, so we shall see how it goes with planting at this time of the year. I am thinking of doing some successive plantings to see when is the best time to plant in future years. 

Baby Cucumber

   

   There are a few baby plants around the garden already. I have four baby cucumber bush type plants. I am hopeful that I get some fruits from these as the pickle worms wreaked havoc on my Spring planting.

Baby Sugar Pumpkin

   I have three baby Sugar Pumpkin plants sprouted. These are my second attempt. My first planting were attacked by squash vine borers and seemed to be dying off from a disease of some kind.

Baby Peanut

   There is one unexpected baby in the garden bed, a peanut plant. At least I'm 95% sure it is a peanut plant. I had planted peanuts two years ago in this bed. I had some pop up last year, but I was surprised to see this little one growing. I have not decided if I will let it continue to grow or not.
 

Anxiously awaiting sweet potatoes

I planted 18 sweet potato slips "Beauregard" in April. I had to net them after the deer ate the tender young leaves to the ground. Amazingly, most of the plants came back! The bed is full of running vines now. This is my first year growing them, so I am not entirely sure how to know when they are ready to dig. I think waiting until the vines die back may be a good plan, but I wanted to check and see. Are there any sweet potatoes in there? I gently probed around a bit around one of the plants that is beginning to yellow. I did find a nice tuber growing! I carefully covered it back up and watered it. They aren't quite ready yet.

Beans Update

Pole beans

I tried planting pole beans on trellises elsewhere in the garden earlier this Spring. The deer ate them, and then the cucumber plants took over the trellis. I underestimated how much room they would need! I decided to make a tee pee trellis to see how that would work out. There are two kinds of pole beans planted around this one: asparagus yard-long and Kentucky wonder.

The plants are climbing the trellis quickly, and started putting out lovely large flowers. I even spotted a couple of tiny beans near one flower. This is my first experience with pole beans (not counting the failed first attempt), so I'm pretty excited about them.

Tiny little beans are emerging

The bush beans have been under netting since the deer mowed down the first planting. There are a few different varieties under there, successively sown: provider, blue bush lake, and golden wax. I had tried an Italian flat green bean variety too, but they were a part of the casualties, and I didn't have any more seeds for them. Two small plants survived and gave me a little nibble, but that was all.

Bush beans 

 The most mature row of the beans are starting to put out beans. I picked a handful yesterday and today. I'm really hoping for a nice crop of beans so that I can store some for winter. As it is, I have enough beans for a couple of servings, so they are on the menu for tonight's dinner.

Starting to produce

Spring garden 2015: looking back

I have had a lot of good luck with my garden this Spring. I have harvested zucchini, yellow squash, Japanese eggplant, cubanelle peppers, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, a smattering of cucumbers, and tons of basil. The summer squash plants have all been pulled to make way for the late summer/fall planting. This year I tried using hay to heavily mulch the beds to keep the weeds at bay. It was really successful, and I definitely intend to keep using it! I live in a very hot and humid climate (temperatures as much as 113 degrees Fahrenheit lately!) and the weeds can overwhelm the garden in no time. I still have to pull a few here and there, but it's no where near the battle it was.  

Lots of beautiful basil went into pesto, which I froze in ice cube trays and then popped into freezer bags for use this winter in minestrone and Italian dishes. I also invested in a dehydrator this year to dry the plentiful herbs from the garden: rosemary, oregano, basil, and sage. I did not dry the thyme, cilantro, or parsley.

I tried trellising my cucumbers this year. I think it was a marvelous idea! I had the most lush cucumber plants. I planted "burpless" and "straight 8". Unfortunately my gorgeous plants were attacked by pickle worms and I barely got any of the fruits. I have replanted a different bush variety to see if I might get a few more cucumbers in the next couple of months.

I erected hoops over the back bed and half of the center bed to install netting a couple of months ago. The deer were mowing down my green beans and sweet potato plants. After the netting was installed they found someone else's garden to enjoy. I have just ordered some lightweight fabric to go over the hoops for when I plant the brassicas. I have not had a Fall garden before, but I will this year. I have read in other blogs about some of the pests that attack the brassicas, and I am going to use their strategy of covering them to prevent the infestations. The heat might make growing them impossible, but hopefully the bugs won't be as much of a problem. I am planning to install hoops over most of the left bed and the other half of the center bed within the next couple of weeks.

My two year old granddaughter enjoys helping me in the garden. She especially loves to help pick the cherry tomatoes as they ripen. This picture reminds me of Holly Hobby dolls that I had growing up.