On-going Fall Harvest

I've just about gotten everything planted for the fall garden, with the exception of radishes, turnips, mustard greens and spinach.  We're still getting pretty strong bug and worm pressure right now, so we'd like to get some cooler weather that may dissuade them from nightly all-you-can-eat buffets in the garden before we plant.

Speaking of all-you-can-eat buffets, I came back from work the other day to find one of our goats named Popcorn had jumped over a weakened part of the garden fence and that dude was in the garden eating.  Fortunately, he only got to the sweet potato vines when I caught him.  I was still some kind of angry with him.  I had used landscape timbers as fence posts (bad decision) and they rotted.  The goats took advantage of this and pushed the post down and it enabled Popcorn to get in the garden.  Today I picked up 6 treated 8 foot 4x4s at the hardware store.  Mending the garden fence is my next project.  (Thank you, Popcorn.)

One thing that's really coming in strong right now is peppers.  They are in abundance, healthy, and colorful.  We bring baskets and baskets in and have started taking them to church to give away.  They'll continue producing until the first frost kills them.  The average first frost date for our area is November 10th.  That means lots more peppers forthcoming.

The photo below shows Anaheim peppers at top and right, bell peppers at bottom, lilac bell peppers at left and underneath them are sweet banana peppers.  Not pictured are the jalapenos.  We've been picking a bunch of those, halving them and coring/seeding them and freezing for making jalapeno poppers.  With the Anaheim peppers (mild) and bell peppers and banana peppers (sweet), we chop those up and freeze for cooking.

Around here there's something called the trinity of Cajun cooking.  That includes bell pepper, celery and onion.  When we were in the grocery business, one of our more popular selling items was Pictsweet Seasoning blend.  This was pre-cut and frozen Cajun trinity.  No chopping or work.  Cajun Trinity frozen in a bag.  Open the bag and dump in your skillet to cook down.  Easy peezy.  Although we don't freeze them all together.  We cut and freeze peppers, onions, and celery to use in cooking.  It's a great time saver in the kitchen.

The bright orange peppers below are called Datil peppers.  They are HOT!  We core these and put them on the dehydrator for drying.  Once completely dry, we put them in a food processor and make pepper for seasoning.  We learned you've got to be careful.  We've added a little too much to dishes and you had to have a glass of water handy while you ate!  The peppers on the right are Hot Banana Peppers.  Unlike their cousins, sweet banana peppers, these will start a five alarm fire in your mouth.  They look just like the sweet ones, too!  We normally pickle most of the banana peppers - both sweet and hot.

The last photo is okra.  The production of okra is certainly way down since the summer.  We grow several varieties (Louisiana longhorn, Burgundy okra, Beck's Big okra, and Clemson spineless).  We chop them up and cook down with onions and then freeze in quart freezer bags.  We'll freeze a lot of this to use in winter gumbos.  Once you have an inventory of all the garden harvest in the freezer, it makes cooking the meal that much easier and cuts out trips to the grocery store.

In a few weeks, I'll chop all the okra down and plant mustard greens, spinach, radishes and turnips between rows on the fallow ground between where the okra was planted.

My New Favorite Pepper in the Garden

We eat a lot of peppers at our house.  Now, I don't grow the super-hot varieties.  I don't like the peppers that make you sweat and your nose run.  Jalapenos are about the top of the Scoville Scale for my liking, and I do love jalapenos.  I don't do habaneros or definitely not ghost peppers or Carolina reapers.  Mainly the varieties we grow in abundance are: Anaheim, Jalapenos, Sweet Bell (several varieties), Banana and now, my new favorite: Shishitos!  Shishito peppers originate in East Asia and this year is the first year to add this variety to my pepper roster.

Shishitos grow quickly and produce abundantly.  I'm picking peppers about every three days or so.  Here is a little mess of shishito peppers that I picked.  You'll notice from the photo below that I like to leave the long stem on each pepper, if possible.  I'll show you our favorite way to cook them.

We get a cast iron skillet heating up on the stovetop with coconut oil in the bottom of the pan.  While that's getting hot, I drizzle olive oil on top of the shishito peppers and shake to make sure the oil has coated all the peppers.  By now there's smoke coming from the skillet and it's time to pour the peppers in.  You'll hear a lot of sizzling and some smoke will rise, so turn the vent hood on.  We usually put a cover on the skillet to keep the heat in and stop the oil from popping and making a huge mess in the kitchen.  We keep shaking the skillet to keep the peppers moving.  You'll notice than the peppers are starting to blister and char.  This is exactly what you want.  Now, pour the peppers into a serving bowl.

At this time salt the peppers real good and cut a lime in half, squeezing the juice onto the peppers.  We also like to add chunks of bleu cheese (the recipe calls for cotija cheese), and I'm sure grated parmesan would be good as well.

Put a cover on the serving dish and shake real good to distribute the salt, lime juice and cheese evenly.

And now it's time to devour them.  They are not spicy - the just have a nice taste and make a good side dish for most any meal.  They have become a family favorite and were a key part of our Independence Day BBQ.

Planting In January

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."  - Audrey Hepburn

I agree with Audrey.  January is usually pretty cold.  I'm writing this as I hear winds roaring outside and temperatures are set to drop to 30 degrees Fahrenheit by 6 am tomorrow morning.  This is NOT the time to be planting seeds outside.  But it is the perfect time to be planting tomatoes, peppers and eggplant for your spring garden.

That's exactly what I did Friday afternoon.  I readied two trays chock full of seed pots and pulled all of my seeds out of cold storage (freezer).  I got a five gallon bucket of fully composted wood chips that were approximately 4 years old.  The mulch had composted into a moist decomposed planting medium that I mixed (cautiously) with composted chicken litter.

I filled each seed pot with the planting soil I made and carefully labeled each seed pot.  Here you can see that laid the seed packets of peppers I planted over the seed pots.  (Datil, Shishito, Craig's Grande Jalapeno, Anaheim, Banana, Lilac Bell, Emerald Giant, and Black Egg Eggplant.)

 I did the same with tomatoes: (Tomatillos, Spoon, Big Rainbow, Creole, Cherokee Purple, Pink Brandywine, Chadwick Cherry, Black Krim)  This is when tomatoes look their prettiest.  When you are looking at the photos on the seed packets of perfect tomatoes, you kind of forget the heat in which you pick them and the stink bugs that attack them.  But right now, your tomato garden is perfect in your imagination.

I plant two seeds to a seed pot and cover with about 1/8 inch of topsoil.  Then I use a water sprayer to liberally mist the soil with water so that the water soaks in and down to the seed.  Finally, I cover the soil with a cut plastic bag.  This ensures that the soil stays moistened so that germination is encouraged.

I brought both inside to ensure the soil stays warm and moist to encourage great germination.  We'll give progress reports several times a month until its time to transplant directly in the garden.

A Favorite Idea for Peppers

It seems as if all of our peppers struggle mightily during the long summer days, wilting and not producing much at all.  As the days grow shorter and the temps fall off a bit, the peppers catch a second wind.  Suddenly, we are awash in peppers.  We're pickling (by lacto-fermentation) quart after quart of banana peppers.  We brought several baskets of banana peppers to give away at church as everyone likes pickling them.  We're dehydrating jalapenos and habaneros and grinding them into pepper.  We're making poppers with jalapenos and hot banana peppers.  We're dicing and freezing Anaheim peppers that Tricia uses to cook with.  In fact, the wife told me, "There's no sense in planting bell peppers anymore.  They haven't been producing well and Anaheims are better."

And then I went and checked on the bell peppers and there was a half dozen of them on the little bell pepper plant.  Well, what do you know?  They must have heard that they were fixing to be stricken from the planting rotation and quickly produced to save their spot.

 I brought them inside and we promptly cleaned them up and cored them.  We had an idea for supper tonight - something we hadn't done in a while: Stuffed Bell Peppers!  Tricia has a quick recipe that she puts together.  It's basically dirty rice, with a little tomato sauce added and then topped off with cheese, put in a baking pan and toss in the oven for a spell.  Some people like them topped with tomato paste/sauce, but we like cheese on top.  They turned out so good, we brought a couple to our son, Russ, who lives in a town about 10 miles away.  Russ loves peppers.  He said they are his favorite vegetable in the garden.

As is often the case, we had too much stuffing and not enough bell peppers.  So we did what anybody would do.  We made do with what we had on hand.  We have an abundance of beautiful Anaheim peppers on hand.  Anaheims will not stand up, so I just sliced them in half, making something sort of like a boat.  We spooned the stuffing into the Anaheim boats.  While bell peppers are sweet, Anaheims have a little heat, but not much.  Mild, I would call them.

The last few nights, the temperatures have dipped into the mid-30's.  The peppers will continue to produce until the freeze gets 'em.  For right now, we're still picking and finding delicious things to do with them.

Patricia Picked a Peck of Peppers

When I got in from work I didn't see Tricia and didn't know where she was until I went out and began filling the cow and goat water troughs with water.  Then I saw her.  She was in the garden with her baskets.  She came inside after a little bit with a nice-sized harvest of various peppers.  From October until December or the first freeze is our best time for pepper production.  Although we didn't weigh them, it's a pretty good haul.  We've already picked and eaten and pickled and dehydrated a bunch and there are a bunch more on the way.  This doesn't count the jalapenos.

This basket are our Hot Banana Peppers.  I have these planted in a row far from the others as I didn't want them crossing with the mild banana peppers.  These boogers will surprise you.  You expect them to be a regular banana pepper and bite into it and it's not!

These are the regular banana peppers.  They are mild and crunchy.  We have pickled (lacto-fermented) quarts and quarts of these this year with many more to go.  We like eating them as a side dish at lunch.

Here are the Anaheim Peppers.  We like cooking with these and often use them instead of bell peppers.  They have a little bite to them - not as hot as a jalapeno, but more spice than a sweet bell pepper.  They add some good flavor to the pot.

And here is a mystery pepper.  I think it is some sort of habenero cross.  It sends you scrambling for milk to put out the fire in your mouth!  We've resorted to dehydrating these and then grinding into a fine powder for making a homemade creole seasoning blend.  It's very good.  You just have to be careful that you don't overdo it.

The jalapenos should be producing more and more now.  We eat those as fast as we pull them.  The shishito peppers, a new variety we planted this year, were a big hit, and we enjoyed blistering them and eating with some lime juice and kosher salt with grated cheese on top.  Sadly, all three of the plants all died at the same time.  We'll definitely plant more of those this spring.

What are your favorite peppers?

Colors in the Garden This Time of Year

August has proven to be a very dry month.  We haven't had more than sprinkles in a month.  The parched land cries out for some refreshing.  Hopefully we'll get some soon as I'd like to get the Fall Garden planted.  I'm still real sore and have limited mobility since my surgery, so perhaps this is God's method of teaching me patience.

Therefore there's not a whole lot going on in the garden right now aside from sweet potatoes that we'll be harvesting toward the end of next month.  The eggplant are full of blooms and small fruit.  The peppers are producing and will continue to do so.  From this point through the fall is where we really make some peppers.  Here is a basket of Anaheims, Banana, and Shishito peppers:

At the tail end of the garden, the Heirloom Louisiana sugar cane is very healthy.  I'm considering making some homemade cane syrup again this year.  We haven't done that in a while.  Back by the sugarcane, we have vines galore.  Louffa gourds sprouted up volunteer and their bright yellow flowers dot the landscape.  Honey bees and bumble bees are attracted to those flowers.  It looks like we'll once again make more louffa sponges than we could ever use!

The fuchsia-colored blooms of the Hyacinth bean brighten up the rear gate to the garden that leads to the barn.  Hyacinth beans are strictly for beauty.  I think they are actually toxic, so I won't be eating them.  They sure are pretty, though.

I have a section of reinforcement wire bent over for the hyacinth beans and louffa gourds to climb on.  It would make a really nice trellis or arbor to walk under, but the doggone goats climb up on the garden fence and eat any of the vines that get too close to the outside fence.

I enjoy color in the garden, but I'm more a fan of eating delicious vegetables from the garden.  If the Good Lord's willing, we'll get some much needed rain soon and my post-op soreness will subside so that we can get some seeds in the ground.

From Peppers to Pesto

While half of the garden is finishing up in the summer heat, the other portion is still producing.  Peppers is one of those items.  We have several varieties going right now: Jalapenos.  These are probably my favorite, followed by Anaheims.  This year I planted a new variety (for us) called Shishito Peppers.  They are delicious, roasted and blistered.  I'll plant these from here on out.  We have a bunch of Banana Peppers that continue to produce.  We eat them raw.  We pickle a bunch of them, too.

There is a local meat market in our town called Cormier's Specialty Meats.  They sell boudin mixed with cream cheese for making poppers.  One afternoon last week I cut the banana peppers in half and seeded them.  Using a spoon, Tricia and I filled each pepper half with the boudin cream cheese and broiled in the oven.  Mighty good!

One of the other things we're making is pesto.  Plenty of pesto!  We have a lot of basil that popped up volunteer in the garden.  We've given away many seedlings and have a bunch more.  If you're in the area and would like some, get in touch and I'll pot one or two up for you.  We'll pick 8 cups of pesto leaves packed to make a big batch of pesto.  

We love to make pesto and freeze it in 16 ounce sour cream containers.  It makes the perfect lunch!  You simply start some pasta going on the stove, thaw out a container of pesto, drain your pasta and stir in the pesto and you have a delicious, easy meal.  The whole family loves it.  We even like to snack on it by spreading it on toast.  One word of warning:  Check your teeth before you go in public.  Pesto notoriously gets stuck between your teeth.  It's pretty embarrassing going out in town with big, green pieces of pesto in your teeth.  (That's experience speaking, right there!)

This week I planted a couple more rows of Purple Hull Peas and two rows of Black Turtle Beans.  Also, we got three varieties of pumpkins in the ground.  I got out my LSU Vegetable Planting Guide and looked at what I can begin planting in early August.  Time to get additional things in the ground!

Jalapeno Hot Sauce (Part II)

Way back on November 30th, we showed how Benjamin and I made Jalapeno Hot Sauce.  Well, it turned out so good, that it is gone!  In a little over a month we devoured a quart of the stuff.  Rather than being a hot sauce like Tabasco, Crystal, or Louisiana Hot Sauce, it was more like chow-chow.  It was good, but not really a liquid.  To put it on eggs or rice and beans or anything else for that matter, you had to use a spoon.  That's not really a problem, but we wanted to make a hot sauce that flowed.

We have so many peppers!  Jalapenos, Anaheims, bell peppers, criolla sellas.  We're going to make jalapeno hot sauce with these and then dry the rest of them and make ground jalapeno pepper for seasoning. 

For this recipe, we'll use the following:

• 20 jalapenos
• 1/2 cup onion
• 3 garlic cloves
• salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup white vinegar

I sliced up the jalapenos, minced the garlic and chopped the onions.

I splashed the olive oil in the bottom of the Dutch oven and sautéed the peppers, onion, and garlic for about five minutes on high heat.  I added salt.

The aroma of the mixture permeated the kitchen.  It cleared out my sinuses!

Then I added the two cups of water and let it cook for about 15 minutes.

All the liquid was boiled off, leaving the jalapeno/onion/garlic mixture.  I pulled off the burner and allowed it to come to room temperature.

This was put into the food processor and as I pureed it, I poured the 1 cup of white vinegar into the processor.

Once liquified, I used a funnel to pour the jalapeno pepper sauce into 2 hot sauce bottles that we had saved.

Tonight, Tricia made a Beef Vegetable soup.  It was fresh.  Everything came from right here on our little farm.  It was raining outside and chilly, so the hot soup hit the spot.  I was able to test our new pepper sauce.  I unscrewed the cap and poured several squirts of hot sauce in the soup.  It flowed!  The flavor was GOOD!  Spicy, with a kick.  This is a keeper!

Beginnings and Endings in the Garden

The new year brings with it new things to do in the garden.  A tradition I have is to get my tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds started on January 1st each year.  I like to grow a lot of different varieties.  My favorite is probably Black Krim.  In past years I would plant a six pack for each variety with two seeds per seed pot.  If all germinate, which most of them do, that means you have 12 plants.  That's really too much for the space I have allocated for tomatoes, so we ended up giving a lot of plants away.  This year I decided to plant just one seed per pot.

Varieties this year include: Big Rainbow, Pink Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter, Black Krim, Roma, Creole, Chadwick Cherry and Tomatillo.

In past years, I would purchase a special seed starting mix.  If you look on the ingredient list, it contains items like: sphagnum peat moss, vermiculite, coconut coir, perlite, and rice hulls.  Nothing wrong with any of that, but I would rather not pay money for something we can produce on our own - and we can.

I theorized that our wood chips that have composted in the back of the garden for three years could work.  It looks like rich, dark, moist topsoil.  I fill each seed pot 3/4 of the way full.  There are some lumps and even some small chips that haven't composted down yet.  For the top 1/4 of the seed pot, I take the same wood chip compost and scrape it through hardware cloth (think wire like on the bottom of a rabbit hutch).  This screens out the bigger chunks and makes the compost that falls through the screen have a fluffy, light, fine texture - perfect for starting seeds in.

I also planted the peppers and eggplant.  I'm planting Black Beauty Eggplant and the pepper varieties I'm planting include: Sweet Banana, Anaheim, Craig's Grande Jalapeno, Hot Jalapeno, Chocolate Bell, Emerald Giant Green Bell, Lilac Bell, Horizon Bell, and Criollo Sella.  

All of those germinate a little slower than the tomatoes.  In fact, most of the tomatoes are up.

That's the Beginnings of the garden that starts on January 1.  We also have some things ending.  The broccoli has been producing, but they aren't near done.  A cauliflower produces on head and then it's done.  A broccoli says, "Not so fast, my friend."  After the big head has been picked on a broccoli, the plant produces many florets.  So many that you must pick them just about every day.

If you aren't dutiful in picking, some of the florets quickly go to flowering, which is bad for us, but good for the honeybees.  You can see a honeybee checking out the beautiful yellow flowers of a broccoli that has gone to flower.

Each day (that I remember) I bring a colander out to the 3 rows of broccoli and do some picking.  In no time at all I have pretty good mess of broccoli florets picked.  Yeah, a few flowers, too.  I'm not particular, I'll eat the flowers.  We generally pour this on a stoneware tray, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper and sprinkle minced garlic on top and then stir up.  We roast that in the oven and devour it.  We call it broccoli candy.

I don't know how to quantify it, but I would guess we harvest MORE pounds of broccoli florets like this than we do in the bigger heads of broccoli.  It's like a 'second crop' of broccoli.

Peppers and Plans

December 8th here and it hit 80 degrees Fahrenheit today.  Lots of fog in the morning, too, that didn't burn off until around 10 AM.  The plants are really growing.  A few days ago, I had the opportunity to plant some mustard greens and two rows of spinach.  The only thing I've left to plant is turnips.  I'll get that done this weekend.  I also dug up the rest of the sweet potatoes.  That will give us room for the onion crop for next year that I'll be planting in January.

The peppers have been producing nicely.  Here are some Lilac Bell Peppers showing off with their snazzy colors!

This year we've had a nice pepper crop and have frozen some, eaten a bunch, dehydrated some, processed some into dried peppers.  Since it hasn't frozen, they continue to produce and produce.

I mentioned plans.  We're planning for a new homestead venture this spring.  We'll be getting a couple of boxes of honeybees.  We've kept bees for the past 7 or 8 years, but they live in the hollow column by our side entrance.  We cannot access their honey, but they do pollinate our garden and fruit trees.  Once we get some bees in boxes, we'll get pollination and will also be able to get the benefits of honey.  Can't wait.

But we don't know much about beekeeping.  In order to learn, we were invited to join the local beekeeping club.  They meet the second Thursday of each month at 7 pm at a local diner here in town.  We went to our first meeting tonight.  There were about a dozen people in attendance.  We had a fried shrimp po-boy and fries and listed and learned.  The beekeepers were friendly and knowledgeable and willing to answer our questions.  Some have only a couple of boxes, while others in the club have 100 boxes.

It was very interesting learning about feeding, splitting hives, supplies you need, hive placement, how to not lose your bees, swarming, etc.  They are very motivated to get more people involved with beekeeping and aim to get beekeeping into the Ag departments at 3 local high schools.  Hathaway High School, the school Benjamin graduated from already has 8 bee boxes.  We are going to have the students come to a meeting and tell us what they've been learning.  

It's nice to have helpful folks like this to help get us involved in this new undertaking.  We are excited about learning something new to add to our homestead.  We plan to learn as much as we can for the next couple of months and purchase supplies and equipment we need and then will jump into this new endeavor this spring.  That's our plan, anyway.

Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplant Planting in January

Normally, I plan on planting our tomato, pepper and eggplant seeds on New Year's Day.  This year it didn't happen.  I'm six days late, but that's okay.  Better late than never, as the old saying goes.  This year I'm planting the following tomato varieties:

Roma, Mortgage Lifter, Creole, Pink Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Chadwick Cherry, Black Krim and Big Rainbow organic.

This year (being late) I didn't do what I normally do and purchase Seed Starting Mix as the medium for planting the seeds.  I used what I had on hand, which was various types of potting soil.  We'll see if that works.  I plant two seeds per seed pot and I always label the seed pots with the variety and the date planted so that I can keep straight what is planted.

I'm also planting the following pepper plants:

Horizon (orange) bell, Hot Jalapeno, Craig's Grande Jalapeno, Anaheim, Banana, Lilac bell, Emerald Giant, and Criolla Sella.

Same thing here, they're labeled and planted two to a seed pot.

I covered with an eighth of an inch of soil and watered them in.  I did the same with Eggplant.  Last year's crop was a PHENOMENAL crop.  I'm hoping they do as well this year.  Unfortunately, I ran out of the Florida Market Eggplant and I'm using Southern Exposure Black Eggplant.  We'll see if this variety rivals the variety from last year.

Now we'll watch for germination.  I keep them inside when it is cool outside and once they germinate, I'll put them under grow lights.  

72 Days

Or 10 weeks and 2 days.  Or 2 months and 13 days.  We planted all of our tomatoes (and peppers and eggplant) from seed on January 1st.  72 days later we put them in the ground.  The plants were healthy and green, tall and vigorous, yearning to leave the confines of the seed pots and stretch out their root system in good soil.

I used some baling twine to stretch from one side of the garden to the other.  Then I raked away the wood chips until I got to soil.  The twine enables me to plant the seedlings in a straight row.  It is not necessary to have straight rows, but I like order.  I planted 5 rows of tomatoes, 18 inches apart.  This allowed me to have 13 tomato plants per row, 65 tomato plants total.

I used a shovel to open a slightly deep hole and tossed a handful of biochar inoculated with composted cow manure in the bottom of the hole.  Then Russ planted the tomato, burying it up to the bottom leaves.  The 'leggy' stem will become part of the root system of the plant.  Then Tricia followed behind, pulling the wood chip mulch around the plant to preserve soil moisture and block out weed growth that might compete with the tomato for nutrients.

I planted the following varieties of heirloom, indeterminate tomatoes: 

Black Krim                Black Vernisage            Big Rainbow            Pink Brandywine

Mortgage Lifter        Roma                              Chadwick Cherry    Creole

Cherokee Purple    

Then I planted the peppers, two varieties of of each:

Anaheim        Chocolate        Lipstick        Lilac        Banana        Emerald        Horizon

Then, very far away, in the front of the garden so they don't cross pollinate, I planted six Jalapeno plants - 3 hot jalapenos and 3 Craig's Grande (a big variety for making poppers)  Finally, I planted 3 Florida Market Eggplant.

I climbed on top of the wood chip pile in the back of the garden to capture the newly planted tomatoes, peppers and eggplant and to get a look at the entire garden.

You can see the onion plants in the photo.  They are looking better at this stage than in prior years, believe it or not, after being concerned that the freeze killed them.  We have lots of beets, carrots, chard, kale, kohlrabi to harvest in order to make room for beans, corn, squash, cucumbers, etc.  We'll get to some of that maybe this next weekend.