The 2010 Peppers

This was my first successful season with a few new varieties of hot peppers. The three best were Beaver Dam, Tomato Pepper, and the Fish Peppers. All three of these varieties were harvested before the first hard frost.

I love the Beaver Dam Peppers so much, I dug one out of the garden a few weeks ago and put it into a large pot in the greenhouse. It is still producing and living happily amongst a few other peppers in hanging baskets; Paper Lantern and the world's hottest - the Bhut Jolokia or "ghost peppers."

From what I've read in garden books, pepper blossoms are self-pollinating just like tomatoes, so no need for bees or other insects to do the job. These are blossoms on a paper lantern pepper plant.

The Paper Lanterns have a ton of baby peppers on them! And one of the Bhut Jolokia plants is forming its first flowers.

There must be 30 peppers forming on each of these two Paper Lantern pepper plants!

These plants will remain in the greenhouse until the begining of December, then I will have to move them inside. I have read that some folks have successfully kept pepper plants alive for many years - I'm eager to give it a try!

During sunny weather I make sure to set the onions outside to cure. At night they go back inside the greenhouse. After a week of curing, I will hang the onions from the rafters of my breezway (nexy to the hanging garlic) in custom made burlap boxes to access throughout winter.

here is a crosscut section of a tomato pepper. Not many seeds, but I saved every single one I could find! This variety is pleasantly hot - but not too hot, just like the Beaver Dam peppers.

I suppose this is why the Tomato pepper gets its name, it is shaped simular to a flat tomato or a mini version of a snow white pumpkin.

And last but not least, my favorite the Beaver Dam pepper shown cut open. The seeds are located on the top of the pepper just as you would see in a common bell pepper. And yes, I have saved well over 100 seeds for next season.

I can't get over how great this variety tastes and produces. I still have one plant in the garden that is hearty with new peppers on it - even after half a dozen frosts! This makes me wonder if I can set them out earlier in the growing season... I will have to try in 2011.

:)

September Update

September is a busy month mostly spent outside. Weeds now dominate in most sections of gardens that were not protected with bales of straw.

Here's an example of how the straw triumps over weeds with these six, caged Better Boy tomato plants. All of these plants are over 6 feet tall!

These tomatoes are hybrids which were planted specifically to make spaghetti sauce. I began harvesting them on September 19, 2010 - but I could have started a week earlier.When I began filling my wicker harvest basket with Better Boys, I had no idea how heavy the basket would be once filled. When I first tried lifting the basket, it was more like trying to carry a bag of cement!

That got my curiosity up, so I got out a scale and weighed the basket on the concrete floor of the garage... That got my curiosity up, so I got out a scale and weighed the basket on the concrete floor of the garage...

Ah ha! That's why it was so heavy - 40 pounds of tomatoes!

Here is the 2nd harvest one week later - I got smart and used the wheel barrow!

This 2nd harvest weighed 52 pounds! That makes 92 pounds total!

I'm so glad that I bought this machine - it's a
Roma Food Strainer & Sauce Maker
- Model No. 07-0801 Which I bought on Amazon.com

I highly recommend this machine - but it's not just for tomatoes,
it does pumkins, berries, salsa, grapes and even apples!

I chose to flash-freeze most of the sauce right away. But I did make a large amount of fresh spaghetti sauce on the 2nd harvest. I found that it takes about 7 hours to render-down the sauce to a good thickness for spaghetti and pizza sauce.

Don't forget the hot peppers for the sauce! What can I say, I've fallen in love with these Beaver Dam peppers. Perfect heat (not too hot) with a deep pepper flavor. The plants start producing in August and I've gotten about 10 peppers per plant right through the 2nd week of October.

I even dug one out of the garden and put it into a large pot and placed it in the greenhouse!

Needless to say, I have already saved hundreds of seeds for future crops.

Pictured from top to bottom: 1 Beaver Dam, 3 Wisconson Lakes, and 5 Fish Peppers.

The WI Lakes peppers were a dissapointment - no heat, so no seeds saved.

The Fish Peppers are fantastic! Watch out, these guys are a bit hotter than Jalapenos.

As you've learned, I have a compulsion to let vines grow up, not all over the ground.

The cukes loved it, the Marketmores did great growing up strings

as did this rare winter squash called Pipian from Tuxpan.

I noticed that the Pipian from Tuxpan had a flower-type patern on it, so I decided to compare it to a sunflower!

:)