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.

:)

August Gardens

Now that August is here, I will share some of the photos that were taken in late July. This has been a spectacular year for gardening. My only complaint is that the record heat means watering just about every night.

This photo was taken on August first and shows how I like to tie-up everything! If it has a vine, it gets tied-up! In the front, to the left, is an Ali Baba watermelon growing up a string. Behind that in the next row back is Waltham Butternut squash and Amish musk melons. And behind them, in the third row is Pippin squash and cucumbers - all tied-up and happily growing up their own string to the support wires about 7 feet above the garden.

And of course, the heirloom tomatoes are tied-up as well. I'm a little embarrassed at the weeds shown here. I lost the upper hand on this section of garden mostly due to constant fence construction that consumed nearly all of my free time each weekend. But I'm happy to report that all of that hard work has paid off, with no more attacks from the relentless ground hogs.

This is a Fish pepper with spectacular white and green leaves. I've read that these pepper plants are sometimes used in landscaping because they're a real eye-catcher. I've also read that these are hotter than Jalapeno peppers, so I'm eagerly awaiting their harvest. On a sad note, I lost about 60% of these plants to the extreme heat in early July.

I read about these peppers called Beaver Dam in the winter edition of The Heirloom Gardener (the same one I was featured in...) and just had to have them! I only had a handful that made it to the garden and of the 6 planted, 5 have made it.

So far each plant has given me 2 fantastic peppers. There are a few more that will mature in about a week from now. I'll keep track of yields, but if I only get 4-5 per plant, it's definitely worth it! These taste so good!

This was my first Beaver Dam pepper that I harvested on the evening of July 29th. This is a wonderful tasting pepper that has taste & seed characteristics of a bell pepper but is pleasantly hot (I would rate it as half as hot as a Jalapeno). Needless to say, I saved the seeds and marked as "first" to be grown next season.

This is the front garden with my Better Boy (6) and Trip-L-Crop (2) tomatoes climbing up 6 feet of caging. So far this experiment has been a great success. Please see older posts to get information about the book. The photo above was taken on August first (believe me, they're taller as I type this)!

And this was taken on July 17th - that's only 3 weeks apart, wow! Today, August 7th, 2010, There are hundreds of green, baseball sized tomatoes on the 8 plants. This method of gardening has changed everything. I will be using this method for all of my tomatoes in 2011.

:)