It’s over! Garden Conclusions

The garden is officially over, so we conclude:

WORSE CROP AWARD GOES TO: TOMATOES

A big disappointment this year, It is important to use the crop when ready, and it’s difficult to keep up with maintenance when you don’t actually live with them. However, there is always next year. If the tomatoes did ripen they usually rotted immediately (I believe this was from the over showering), or most did not ripen at all.

BEST CROP AWARD GOES TO: HABANEROS

Interestingly enough the most prosperous crop was the one we can’t eat a lot of! All of us endured burning eyes, hands, other limbs and wonderful spicy food for the entire summer. We also got to surprise neighbours and friends with their overwhelming hotness, which is always a treat. We harvested two plants before the first frost and ended up with hundreds of them, all different colours. We are now waiting for them to ripen a little more to make a hot sauce to last a life time. I will probably never plant them again, but it was fun while it lasted

MOST DELICIOUS CROP AWARD GOES TO: JALAPENOS

These were wonderful and will definitely grow them again. They required little maintenance and flourished all season, excellent topping for all foods.

MOST ATTRACTIVE CROP TO BUGS: BANANA PEPPERS

Not sure how this happened, but these leaves got eaten alive! I guess next year I will have to spray the plants with a homemade pesticide, such as the tiniest splash of soap and water in a spray bottle.

MOST QUESTIONABLE CROP: GREEN PEPPERS

We did get to eat some delicious, gigantic peppers, but something did seem a little off this summer. The first row (of two) shriveled completely, meaning it grew but did not flower, and leaves were flooded with bug bites. This could have been due to either one or both of the following problems: firstly, it did not receive as much sun as the others due to be overshadowed by the house. Secondly, the soil looked uneven before planting, and drainage would have been an issue. This concluded in late and abnormal flowering.

Tips for next season: Not so many hot peppers, but having the crimson red (which did extremely well but lacked flavour), the banana peppers, and jalapeños were an incredible treat…put ten plants of them were too much. Maybe have fewer tomato plants with more research on their maintenance (another view at that book Connie gave us).

Tomatoes: Picking the disease to relieve

It’s amazing what can happen in a week…

7 days ago the tomato patch was flooded with diseased tomatoes, showing splitting skin, like this:

I was extremely disappointed, blaming the fluctuating hot/cold weather to ruining my entire tomato harvest…but! After picking all the diseased tomatoes off, this week there is NO disease and the tomatoes are bigger, thicker, and the healthiest they ever looked.  So, no need to get down, just pick off the yucking ones.

Question, though, is it alright to put ruined/diseased tomatoes (or any infested produce) in the compost?

I’ll check with connie…

Experimental Garlic

Midsummer, when the radishes/spinach grew out, I planted garlic (breaking up cloves and having their tip point up toward the sun) and a few grew! I couldn’t believe, out of nowhere!

These long leaves taste and smell like garlic and can be used as chives, not sure what’s happening underneath the soil, however…but, whatever! it worked!

Dried Herbs

After hanging all the herb trimmings from a window in the kitchen (London, not my humid apartment) for about two weeks, I was able to make two things:

First: MINT TEA

You must strip the leaves from the stems by squeezing them gently off. Then, I used a mortar and pestle to pummel the dried leaves (although unnecessary, dried leaves as a whole are fine to use) and put them in empty tea bags – you need a lot of mint to make an abundance of tea, however, I was only able to get three bags full, but it’s so delicious and medicating.

Second: SEASONING

Using the Mortar and Pestle, I stripped all other herbs from their stems and pummeled them into one concoction: sage, parsley, oregano, and thyme. It’s great for seasoning everything from garlic toast to potatoes.

Hot Pepper Recipes

The neatest people on the planet, Kelly and Eric from Los Angeles, the Urban Homesteaders, were kind enough to answer my pepper question with a delicious recipe!

http://www.homegrownevolution.com/2008/08/what-to-do-with-all-those-hot-peppers.html

The comments following really helped as well, a big thanks to them (their book The Urban Homestead is perfect, everyone with the slightest interest in urban sustainability should own it)

We tried making a few different sauces this weekend, no pictures, but all burned for hours/days after.

Recipe:

All our peppers – rid the seeds (I put them on a plate covered with aluminum foil to put in the sun, hopefully to make chili peppers with), and dice

vinegar

salt

garlic

mint

Throw all of these things in a blender to make a nice orangey paste. After this, throw mixture into a wok and bring to a slow boil. Next, put the sauce through a sifter, ridding the thickness of paste to make a nice thin spicy sauce. We put these in little jars, (we boiled first as to rid the bacteria), to refrigerate them for two weeks – apparently this makes it hotter. Immediately the sediment in the sauce has separated from the liquid, not sure what this means. But I will let you know how it turns out!

after blending/boiling the peppers, we put the paste in a jug for easy pouring

shake out the juice for a finer sauce with a sifter! (TIP- use a holder/clothes pin when handling sauce, ow ow)

After boiling these adorable air-tight jars we got for FREE at an after party garage sale, (let them sit in pot of boiling water for ten minutes), and refrigerate for two weeks

Tomatoes; I baby them

There has been a wonderful success with our tomatoes this season, much thanks to Connie’s package contribution. She sent us the perfect tomato info book (SOURCE SOON) which really digs into what people do not know for successful, big, juicy tomatoes. The main tip was to strip the branches that are NOT flowering, these branches are monster absorbers of light/water/nutrients from the flowering fruits. Stripping them, as fast as possible, is done by breaking the branch at it’s attachment by bending up sharply by hand – this allows the wounds to heal faster, so there is less susceptibility to disease, etc. Pulling them off by bending down, will strip the skin. The tomato fruits started blossoming by the hundreds within days, everyone should read this book.

Here is the growing process of our eight tomato plants:

(this pic was taken after a week of not snipping, you have to keep up or they grow out fast, clippings go in the compost

I was very fortunate to have very few tomatoes that had some disease, I think this was due to the crazy snipping maintenance

I believe this had something to do with all the rain…but if anyone knows about these deep stab like wounds please let me know so I can avoid it next year

the Peppers; my tries with the inevitable errors

I guess we didn’t realize the consequence of having SO many hot peppers. YES, the entire household loves hot, fortunately, so do some neighbours/bosses/and whoever else will take them. But, to my wonderful surprise, we are still harvesting a bucket full each week. Look how absolutely scrumptious they all look!

They sure are delicious, but I am having a hard time persevering them without forking over the cash for a dehydrator (making a solar one is an option I hope to try once my wisdom teeth have heeled. However; there has been incredible rain fall this august so outside sunshine hasn’t been much of an option)

PRESERVATION FAILURE #1: I tried hanging some jalapeños by the stem in sunny areas around my apartment to dry and hopefully make chilies with, but within days they turned moldy – a huge disappointment

PRESERVATION FAILURE #2: we tried splitting a basket of all the peppers in half and placing them on a baking sheet. We then put them in the oven on the lightest temperature with the door ajar and they ended up just cooking instead of drying.

Both these issues seem to have come from the constant humidity here in southern Ontario, therefore, my next step is to try building a solar dehydrator – this site gave me the hope that I could do such a thing: http://ecobites.com/component/content/17?task=view

In the meantime…we are cooking them like crazy in sauces, soups and salsas…I will be posting the recipes soon!

IN OTHER NEWS: the bell peppers are bigger than my head!

First things first

Without any formal introductions, please regard this as a late diary entry for my gardening season 2008.

I started planting, sowing and transplanting the weekend before Victoria day (I’m an anxious bee) and had two separate garden beds: the first 10′ X 4′ and the second 7′ X 3′. Located in a sunny backyard, London Ontario. After planting, I realized the necessity of a compost and segregated that to a different spot (aside: I am aware of the importance of composting, but having the only ‘yard’ to grow vegetables in owned by three young males, I was, by default, a little late on what is laid first – but! there’s always next year)

The first ‘big bed’ consists of:

7 Tomato Plants; 1 Habanero pepper plant; 4 Jalapeño pepper plants; 4 crimson red plants; 5 bell pepper plants; there are three basil plants in between the tomatoes

Papa Garden

The second ‘baby bed’ has:

a row of different peas (along the fence); parsley (two kinds); mint; cilantro; sage; oregano; creeping time; rosemary; lettuce; cauliflower; radishes; spinach; 1 banana pepper plant

 

BRIT CRUISE made/painted the lovely fences

I will continue to post the trial/errors/successes/failures that happened throughout my 2008 season (which is the second consecutive year where I’ve given a damn about anything more than human misery – so enjoy!)