Starting the Peppers

We use soil blocks to start and grow our seedlings here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm. We use the Eliot Coleman soil mix (with a few substitutions) to make our small and large soil block mixes.

below are some pictures of small soil blocks used for starting 300+ pepper seeds.

A tray of small blocks all ready to go. To the right is the metal pan (a full sized hotel pan I got back in my food service days, i believe from Sigma Alpha Mu because they used it for some extra-curricular activity, bent a corner and tossed it in the trash where I retrieved it and brought it home to start it's new life as a farm tool). The red thing is the block maker and the black stuff is left over moistened soil mix

The tray is filling up. Here I have completed the Revolution pepper seed

Almost done, I still had the Valencia (sweet orange peppers) and Jalapenos to go. The green thing is a hand seeder that I use. It makes the job much easier and faster over using one's fingers or tweezers.

the next step after getting all the seeds onto mini blocks is to water lightly with the sprayer and than cover the entire tray with black plastic and into a warm place. the seeds get watered about every day. We don't want the blocks to dry out but we also don't want the seeds to stay dripping wet either so they are checked morning and evening for dampness as well as for any signs of germination.

Once they start to germinate we make large soil blocks and put the little blocks and seedling into the square hole in the top of each large block and they are done until they need to be transplanted which should happen the end of May.

Saved Heirloom Seed to the Rescue

Yesterday was the day to start 700+ eggplant and pepper seeds. we like these seedlings to be about 7 to 9 weeks old when we transplant them out and since we transplant such warm loving crops out at the end of May/early June, April 1st seemed like the perfect time to start them (plus our biodynamic calendar, The Stella Natura sez it was a fruit time which is a great time to start fruiting plants).

In order to start seed you need to know a couple of things. How much space has been allotted in the market garden and how many varieties will be planted. I knew that there was a total of 40 50'x 4' beds reserved for all the night shades (tomato, potato, peppers, eggplant) and out of that 2 beds were reserved for eggplant and 16 for peppers. The next step was to go get the seed packets and see what we had to plant.

The eggplant was easy-we had a total of 12 different packets of seed. 6 of the packets were 6+ years old and so assumed dead so I tossed those seeds out (by tossing out I mean putting the seeds in the compost and saving the packets for other uses such as seed saving). This left me with 6 varieties-Dancer, Nadia, Casper, Galine, Rosita and Oriental Express. Since Galine was bought to replace Nadia and Rosita to replace Dancer (probably because these varieties come from Peto Seed which is a part of Semenis which is Owned by Monsanto, but I would have to look this up to be sure) and both those seeds are 3+ years old, they were not planted.

The peppers were also easy because most of the seed we are using this year we bought this year. So it was a matter of going through the pepper seeds and picking out all the brand new clean, unopened seed packets and putting them aside. I chose 7 varieties, Valencia, an orange pepper we have done for years and years because it is a great pepper, Islander, a purple pepper, Revolution, the best red bell pepper out there as far as I am concerned, Lipstick, a red pimento pepper that is new to us this year, Flavor burst, a yellow Italian type reputed to have great flavor (this is also a new variety for us this year), Jalapeno and Cayenne because, while we do not sell a lot of hot peppers, these two are pretty essential to have around for personal use.

I also used this time to figure out what tomatoes will be planted this year but that is another blog post for another time...

After I figured out just what varieties I would plant I than figured out just how many seeds needed to be started to cover our asses. There is a bit of an art to this. You do not want to run short and find you don't have enough plants to fill beds and you do not want so many that after you are all done you have many flats of seedlings sitting around that Eugene refuses to kill for months on end, getting bigger and bigger. You may ask why we don't sell these plants? We don't because by the time we know what could be sold (the leftovers after transplanting) it is so late in the home garden planting season that it is hard to sell vegetable seedlings, so we make a very feeble attempt at doing so. And we are not at all set up to do seedlings for sale. We need a lot more seed starting space and a proper greenhouse that can be heated and that takes $$$.

When I figure out how many seeds to start I take into account the germination will not be 100%, more like 80% for new seed and for seed that is 3+ years old much lower rates of germination. And at least 20% will die for some reason before transplanting. Our first year here we have had 90% die off due to mice decapitating most of the pepper seedlings. So I like to start around 50% more seed than is needed as it is always better to have it and not need them than to need them and not have them. And because we do a lot of heirloom and specialty hybrids it is not as if we can trot off to the local TSC or Wal-Mart and pick up packets of the varieties we need (actually when K-mart had the Martha Stewart seed collection I found for several things like Chioggia beets and Costata Romanesque zucchini were in stock). For most things we have to order through the mail which takes extra time (as I will not pay $50+ for over night delivery for a mofo $10 packet of seed).

Okay, so with all this information I went out to the barn and made 700+ tiny soil blocks, took a break and than came back with Eugene in tow to get all these seeds started as well as finding/making tags so we know what's what. This is simple and yet amazingly important step-all pepper and eggplant seedlings look a like, never ever think you can tell one from the other. And when it comes time to prick the seedlings into 2" soil blocks there will be trouble. There will be even more trouble when it comes time to transplanting the mystery seedlings as one would have no idea what goes where. The problems get even larger when harvest time rolls around 90 days after planting the seeds.

So we started sowing seed and find we did not order enough seed for many of the peppers. This is in large part because both Fedco and Johnny's have gone nuts on using very confusing and changeable units of measurement for their seed sales. Some seeds are measured using English units (oz, pounds, etc..) some use metric (grams, Kilograms, etc..) and some are sold by the thousand. So this means you have to have the ability to convert from measurement to another and it seems we are not great this ability (nor are many market growers, judging by the bitch fest about this topic on the market farming email list in Jan and Feb). Also Eugene's eyes are weakening and the boy is too vain to wear glasses (I am talking cheaters, not prescription) so he missed a couple of crucial decimal points and thus instead of ordering 400 Revolution pepper seeds (4 grams) he ordered 40 (.4 grams) - but we got lucky and Fedco sent 65, about 1/3 the amount we need.

This pisses me off because 2 years ago he did exactly the same thing (but that was the year of the terrible pepper season for western Ohio so it really did not matter in the end, we would have lost them no matter what). The good news is I can still order this variety through Fedco because after years of resistance they have on-line ordering and now will take seed orders until September, instead of shutting down the orders in early spring and I see they have Revolution seed in stock. So I have just ordered a whole gram of seed (Woo Hoo!!!).


Any Hoo, we found, in the end, we were short on a lot of pepper seed variety (due to the confusion of changeable metrics) and thus ended up with not enough potential plants to fill the space allotted. So I looked to see what we had in saved seeds from years past and found Chinese Giant in red and yellow. So I planted enough of those to fill up all the small blocks. these are older seed so they may not germinate well, if at all. And these are not my first choice as the fruit tends to come on late and the peppers tend to not ripen without getting hit with something, so low yields of usable fruit, generally. Still we did have these heirlooms on hand and they did save the day.

But now that additional Revolution seed has been ordered and should arrive in less than a week we should be all right for red bell peppers and probably won't need many of the Chinese Giant.

Frost Warning

Prefrost peppers and eggplant

Got back from the farmers market Saturday afternoon with every intention of relaxing for the rest of the day (farmers markets really take it out of you) but than realized that the weather prophets had issued a frost warning for Sunday morning. That meant we had to do something about what was left of the summer garden. The tomatoes and eggplant are pretty much over except the late tomatoes that in theory are in a hoop house but in fact are not (they have a hoop house frame over them but no plastic on the frame as Eugene did not want to dig in the plastic knowing that he would in all likelihood move the house to another crop such as broccoli or kale) but we had a lot of peppers.

The (probably) last pepper harvest. That's around 400 pounds of bell peppers

I have been picking the peppers green with just a bit of color all summer. I have discovered that peppers, like tomatoes, will ripen up off the plant just fine. And by harvesting them early, the peppers do not get hit badly by bugs or disease. Instead of losing 50% to 80% of the peppers when left on the plant to ripen I now lose under 25%.

So it is now around 3pm. We have eaten lunch, unloaded the van and put away everything from market and most weeks we would be preparing for a nice afternoon nap. But as i mentioned, the weather service was predicting frost Sunday morning. So we had to forgo the nap and go back to work. We started with the peppers. we took out 6 crates and piled them high with mainly green peppers. That took about an hour with both of us working.

Next we were on to the green beans and haricot verts. They needed to be harvested than covered with row cover. We got under 5 pounds of beans from both beds.

Next the spring mix and beets beds needed to be covered. That took very little time as the covers were already there. They just needed to be pulled over the hoops and secured with rocks. But we realized the broccoli also needed a cover. Granted, all these crops can take cold conditions but they do so much better if they have protection. So Eugene found a cover for the broccoli and put it over top of them.

Freshly harvested ginger

While he did that I harvested the ginger. Yes we decided to try to grow ginger in SW Ohio. And it worked decently. But ginger does not like temps below 50F (the poor plants had to deal with a lot of nights in the mid 40's). I figured 33F would kill them so I decided to dig them up and bring them inside. Now we have a lot of ginger plants that need more time in the ground to make more ginger. And we have about 4 ounces of finished ginger. While I like the idea of local ginger I think it makes a lot more sense to buy the imported stuff if you use a lot of ginger. Because ginger requires a 10 to 12 month growing season and needs to temps to be above 50F (I suspect 85F is where is it happiest) it makes no sense to grow this on any kind of commercial scale here in Ohio. I believe the carbon foot print of doing so would far out weight the carbon foot print of importing it since a lot of heat would be required in winter and that heat would have to be more than passive solar. That said it is great house plant. It is beautiful, smells good and if you can keep the plant alive (which is pretty easy) for more than a year you can harvest your own ginger and divide the rest of the roots to make more ginger plants.

So at dusk we had the garden ready for frost. We were exhausted and went in the house to eat and eventually go to sleep-nothing like a 12 hour day of hard physical work to make you feel tip top. The next morning I get up and find that the low temp is no where near freezing, it is 37F.

Now we are ready for cold weather in the market garden. Bring it on Nature, bring it on.

This and That

So it's December and it is cold and dreary with a bit of snow. Not much going on in the market garden. Lots of things under double row cover we are hoping are not getting too damaged by low temps around 23F. We did have the kale in a hoop house bite the dust. No one put a row cover over top and it all got frosted. I doubt it's dead but it likely won't produce leaves until mid Feb. In the past the kale has done just fine with no row cover in a hoop house but in the past the kale was started outside and was toughened up by being exposed to the elements. This kale was started in a hoop house and was very delicate and could not take the cold. Learn something new, next time make sure the kale inside has lots of protection or do not start kale in a hoop house, start it outdoors and move a house over top in November.

We entertain ourselves with bad TV, cleaning popcorn, making beer, making cider, cleaning and cutting up the last of the peppers and freezing them. Pretty mundane stuff.

I have found myself spending more and more time on FaceBook. I love FaceBook. Through it I have found so many people I had lost contact with from as far back as high school. FYI I still see a lot of my high school friends as I still live in the same area where I grew up. But a lot of people got out of the great Oxford Metroplex. FB has been an incredible tool for connecting. It also is a great time waster. I have started a farm and have a super power, both take time. But time is something I have at the moment.

I have started working on a web page for our CSA/Farm Share Program. We don't like the term CSA as it either represents us as supporters of the Confederate States of America (which we are not, being born and bred Yankees) or it is simply a bad description of selling food shares. So we prefer "Farm Share". Any Hoo, I have started working on an informational page about the farm share program which will commence the first week of April. That outta keep me busy for a few days. So far, I have gotten the thing about 20% done and lost everything. That's okay, it was all replaced by better copy and design. If everything goes right, I should have it functional by the end of this week

CSA: Week Two

I have just finished packing up the second installment of the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm Winter CSA shares.

It was a cold experience, let me tell you. All the food is in the store and we have yet to turn on the heater in there because we are cheap (and green). So it is no more than 35F in that building. It is definitely above freezing because nothing outside of the fridges has frozen yet, but it's still damn cold. It took a good 15 minutes for my hands to thaw out. Yow!

The shares this week contained:
1 6 oz bag of spring mix
1 pound of rutabagas
a pound of carrots
1 charantais melon
2 pints of strawberries from the hoop house
2 green peppers
1 pound of mixed chard (wasn't planning on including this but the weather dictated that it should all be brought in. Now we have about 20 pounds of chard.)
6 or so pears
5 leeks (we have a lot of leeks)
3 tomatoes
A bag of Italian Parsley and 2 other kinds of fresh herbs (Dill, Cilantro, Thyme or sage)

Not a bad haul for the middle of a cold November.

Autumn Update

Fall has finally arrived and with it a lessening in the work load and nicer weather in which to work. the market garden is pretty much done with tomatoes, we have planted a fall crop and they have tomatoes on them but there are only 30 or so plants vs the 450+ tomatoes planted for the main crop.

The peppers in the hoop house are about over for the year. Heat or blight or bacterial wilt or arm worms or something did a real number on them. We got one good one for every 5 to 10 on the plants that rotted in some way (and this is why green peppers are generally 50% to 75% cheaper than ripe peppers-it's easy to grow a green pepper but quite hard to get a pepper from green to ripe without problems). the 200+ pepper plants planted after the hoop house pepper have not done much at all. I am getting some beautiful green fruit from one bed and the jalapenos are doing okay but there are very few peppers ripening and those that are are very under sized. These plants should have had ripe peppers at least 4 weeks ago and they don't. Most barely have 1/2 grown peppers on them. Bad pepper year. But if it stays mild for another 6 to 8 weeks we should get some ripe peppers out of the main crop. There is always next year.

As we get away from the summer crops the fall things are coming in. We harvested the first spring mix (yes I realize it is autumn so the stuff should be called fall mix or something but changing names on a product don't work good for no one) this week. It looks wonderful but since it is selling well we have not had any yet. We also dug the first parsnips and they look fabulous! I don't believe we have ever grown such nice parsnips.

We have been pulling leeks for about 3 weeks and will continue to do so until we run out (sometime in March or April). I have been using a lot of leeks and they are yummy, much better than what you can buy at the grocery in both taste and the fact we take great pains to get long white shanks on the leeks and that means extra work hilling them numerous times during their long growing season.

The winter squash was a disappointment this year. Last year we had a bumper crop of butternut but not this year. this year the plants went in a bit too late (actually the went in about the same time as last year but the rains had stopped and it got hot) and they were not able to thrive and produce a lot of high quality squash for winter storage. Instead, we got rather small fruits and many had to be harvested too early before they matured because they were being badly attacked by squash bugs (like the bugs were swarming over the squash so you could not even see them under the insects). We did get a decent crop of delicata and sweet dumpling squash but everything else was just so so at best.

The pear tree was loaded with pears until Ike's winds came and knocked down 8 bushels of pears. We did go out and pick up all the drops (which is why we know that 8 bushels came down). We will sell and use the pears but will not be able to get top dollar for them because they are damaged. I supoose in about 5 weeks we will be making gallons of pear wine and pear jelly among other things out of the dropped pears. Despite the wind there is still about 5 bushels of pears still up in the tree. That tree must have had well over a 1000 pounds of pears hanging off it. That's a lot of pears for a single tree. I am very surprised that the tree did not lose several major limbs in the wind storm. It did lose 2 minor limbs. It is in a very protected spot and that is likely why it did not get more damage.


The barn roof has been fixed and it stronger than it was before along with far fewer holes in the roof thanks to a lot of silicone caulk being applied over the whole roof (not that the roof is covered with caulk).

The remainder of fall will be taken up with several fall tasks including the unexpected hand watering. We are starting water certain things daily by hand because the drip irrigation just ain't doing the job, especially for seeds and seedlings that have just emerged. Than there is planting crops for winter and early spring, putting up hoop houses for the late fall and over wintering crops, hoeing and harvesting and putting the beds to sleep for the winter. Which means taking up any mulch (we use landscape fabric which has to be cleaned of roots/weeds and than rolled up for winter storage), drip tapes (these we roll up onto garden hose caddies), planting cover crops in beds that won't be used until mid May and removing all debris such as tall weeds and the dead crops. We have found over the years that getting the garden cleaned up in fall is very important. If you don't do this you will have a bug and disease problem the following year. The plant corpses go on the compost piles and thus feed the soil next year.

The season officially ends with the garlic planting in late October/Early November. In reality, the work never ends it just ebbs and flows.

The State of our Garden

It's almost summer and that means new crops coming in. We have peas (snow, snap and shelling), raspberries, beet greens, garlic scapes, red salad turnips, broccoli, basil, oregano, zucchini and green onions coming in now. The spinach is over, the asparagus is over the lettuce is nearly over. Spring mix we thought would be nearly over but now that it is getting cool again we will do another planting of it and see if we can keep on cutting it through early July. Radishes are about done too, maybe another 10 days of harvest.

The tomatoes we started in mid April in a hoop house all have green fruits on them. None are full size yet but soon they will be and than after a 100 year wait they will ripen to either red or yellow. Why does it take FOREVER for the first tomatoes to ripen and than after that you can barely keep up with the harvest?

The early pepper plants (also started in a hoop house in late April) are about 2.5' tall and are in full flower. Ought be getting tiny green peppers in a week or so. this is the first time we have tried early peppers and so far it has been a stunning success. they are 3x to 4x bigger than the peppers we put out 10 day ago and, as I already mentioned, in flower. If things continue as they have been, we should have the first green peppers at market in Oxford. Usually we have the last peppers.

We planted zukes and cukes early in a hoop house. The zukes have been poky-not many flowers and mostly male flowers which do not give us zucchini. We need female flowers for squash. the cucumbers were coming on strong in May and than the voles found the baby cukes and ate every last one of them. #@!!^^&%*(% voles. We set up traps and caught many but not all of them and than the cuke beetles exploded and started ravaging the cuke and zuke plants so it was decided to pull the plastic off of the hoop house about 8 days ago to see if that would not break the cycle of bugs. It did not, but it did make the voles go away (or maybe we killed them all) so now, a month later, we have some 1/2 sized cucumbers on the vines and should be able to harvest a few this coming week. Pulling the plastic also allowed more pollinators in the area and also made it a lot easier for us humans to work around the plants. Hoop houses and 92˚F days do not mix what so ever. I have noticed since the plastic has come off the zukes are producing a lot better. It must have been too warm for them and now they are much happier.

All in all, the market garden is doing very well. We have all but 22 beds filled up with crops and those will be planted with potatoes, dried beans, popcorn, green beans and likely spring mix. We have been getting too much rain but the garden drains extremely well so we are not getting too much rot. I have found a couple of rotted kale plants and some seeds have rotted in the ground. This has been especially true of the French filet bean seed and some winter squash. If it decides to dry up we will be in great shape. If it decides to do to us what has been done to Iowa, Wisconsin and much of southern Indiana than we will lose the entire crop planted to date and will be pretty well screwed for the summer. But will likely be able to plant for fall and winter.

Being an optimist I will figure things will continue as they have so far this season which has been the best we have ever had, thus far.

Planting Update

Eugene planting leeks. they are so small you can't even see them in the picture

The Pepsi cup is not full of pop but rather a bit of water and powdered kelp and leek seedlings

So far this spring we have planted the following in our market garden
strawberries, 2 kinds of leeks (with 2 more beds to plant of King Seig, our huge beautiful leeks), 2 kinds of sweet onions (with several kinds of yellow and red still to go. Should have 10 to 12 beds of onions when we are done), shallots (we probably will not sell any this year. instead will use this planting to build up our seed stock for the 2009 season), garlic (3 kinds planted last November), shelling peas, snow peas, sugar snap peas, scallions, lettuce (many kinds, mostly heirlooms), arugula, spring mix, spinach, asparagus, 3 kinds of kale, 3 kinds of broccoli, cilantro, perennial herbs (these had already been in the garden but were in a very weedy spot so we dug them up, pulled pounds of switch grass roots out of the herb root balls and replanted them in what we hope is a better spot)-oregano, French tarragon, garlic chives, regular chive, winter savory, sage and thyme. I also have basil and parsley started but not planted in the garden yet.

Soon we will transplant cucumbers, zucchini, French melons, tomatoes and basil into the two hoop house we have erected for them. the hoop house will mean we get these items 4 to 8 weeks earlier than if we waited until our last frost date (officially May 15th but the reality of the past 10 years is last frost can be as late as May 31). We have lots of seedlings in our germination room and also in the cold frames just waiting for us to get the time to put down mulch and irrigation tapes (which might be today as it is too wet to till, transplant or direct seed anything that is not covered by plastic in the garden)

We still have leeks in the ground from last year. The plan is to dig all of them up for the farmers market next Saturday, Apr 19th. Than we will be out of leeks until august when the first leeks should be ready to harvest. We also have a few potatoes from last year that have not yet sprouted. Some may just make it to the market as well. As will the garlic from last year I had to put into a refrigerator to keep them from degrading any more. In spring garlic wants to either sprout or rot but keeping them cold tricks them into believing it is still winter.

In the cold frames we have celery, celeriac, two kinds of lettuce (that should have been transplanted yesterday but instead we spent the day transplanting hundreds of leek seedlings. This is a lot like planting grass one blade at a time), a second planting of broccoli, parsley, and pots and pots of of onions and leeks.

Inside we have more lettuce, around 350 peppers seedlings, cuke and zuke seedlings, early tomato seedlings (we have around 35 right now, 3 kinds, yellow taxi, Matina and early Girl.) In a week or so I will plant another 1000 or so tomato seeds, around 25 different kinds, for our main crop along with the eggplant and more zucchini, cukes, melons and basil. It will be a full house until late May/early June when we start transplanting them into the garden.

That's the planting Update for April 11th.

2nd to Last Saturday Market Day

This past weekend went by fast. We did two farmers markets in Oxford.

Saturday was the Uptown market that we have been going to for the past 3 years. It was one of the few gray and rainy markets we have had all year (a great thing about drought is lots and lots of sunny days. Makes doing outdoor markets easier). It was a cold one too, with a nice damp stiff breeze cutting through things. And because we are almost into November it was quite dark because the sun was still in the process of rising when we got there around 7:40am (market starts at 7:30am, we were late).

So we did not have high hopes for a good market. We were wrong, we had our second to best market ever by selling a lot of tomatoes, peppers, leeks, scallions, arugula, basil, potatoes, etc.. I believe the bulk of our sales happened in about 1.5 hours. It was intense. That's over $700 in sales in less than 2 hours. not bad. I suspect we will do better next year because the market will be better (it gets better every year and right now has the rare combination of a good manager and a good governing board and I believe Larry will be back next year to run the market and most the board members still have a year left in their reigns).

We went home via the Streits so we could pick up our raw milk for the week. Talk to Joe and Janet for about a half hour. Met a young hippie couple from Yellow Springs who were also picking up milk and other things. Eugene marveled over the fact these people drove over an hour to buy milk and other organic items. He forgot that were are doing the same thing to get raw milk (though we do live a lot closer to the Streits than the folks from YS) and if we did not raise most of our produce and poultry needs we too would drive hours to get the food we need.

Finally, got home around 2pm hungry and we still had to unload the van (which was not nearly as hard as loading at 6am because we had sold a lot of stuff and had around 15 empty crates), make lunch and get a nap. Together we unloaded the van and put food where it needed to go and than had tuna sandwiches and took a much needed nap (you would too if you had already worked a 8 hour day by 3pm). Eugene got up before me and went out to the garden to cover the few crops that were not already covered because frost was predicted for Sunday morning (and we did get a light frost, finally!). I got up as the sun was beginning to set, quite groggy from sleep. Fed the dogs because they demanded feeding and did not do a whole lot after that because Saturdays wipe me out.

Our Season So far

Despite the drought, we have had a good growing season. Not everything has grown well but most of our crops have done well for us this year. Roots have not been all that great for us. The carrots have been ravaged by carrot maggots and we have lost about 1/2 the crop. Beets have been hit and miss all summer. We have generally had a few but they have rarely been great beets. Some kinds of radishes have done exceptionally, other types have barely made roots. Onions, garlic, leeks and scallions, on the other hand, have done very well for us this summer (and will continue on into fall and winter).

Kale has been spectacular, though lately it has not been growing well. The chard was doing well until early August when it got some fungus that looks like black pepper has been sprinkled all over the leaves before the leaves turn brown and rot. The leafy cool weather greens did well in spring and we have had arugula since early August. Who knew arugula will grow well in hot dry conditions with no irrigation? Annual herbs have done especially well. We planted a lot of basil this year and all of it has produced abundantly. Parsley has also done well, though we had some major germination problems this spring so only have 12 plants. Dill has been a surprise. Eugene planted some in early summer and it got forgotten until late August so it went to seed all on its' own and has done a super job of thickly reseeding itself making for a gorgeous bed of cutting dill. Cilantro has been real hit and miss. It hates hot dry conditions so has not grown very well most of the season, that should change in a few weeks since fall has now arrived.

Winter squashes have done well but by mid summer the summer squashes had begun to give up on life. Same with the cucumbers, we had great cukes early but the main season cukes were hit and miss. Probably because we were growing several new types and did not know what we were doing with them. Melons were decent. Not terribly prolific, well, they were but so were the voles early on. The voles damaged at least 75% of the early melons. But Eugene and the dogs got on the ball and got good control of the varmints so we got many cantaloupes, Winter squashes have done well though, by mid summer the summer squashes had begun to give up on life. Same with the cucumbers, we had great cukes early but the main season cukes, charantais melons and watermelons all through August and September.

Corn was another disappointment. We rarely do good sweet corn. It is very hard to get clean well filled ears producing it organically. We do not use treated seed so we cannot plant until the soil is at least 60˚F which this year was mid May, well after they rains had left. So from the get go we had some serious issues with the sweet corn. What we ended up with was basically crappy corn. About 10% was sellable another 15% we froze for winter and the rest was composted. I don't know if we will continue to grow sweet corn. In theory, we need it for the farm stand, though our sales were not horribly impacted by not having much corn this year and I believe that we can get our customers not to expect sweet corn but to look forward to over 100 other produce items we grow at the store. For all the time and cost put into growing sweet corn it is one of our least lucrative crops. But I am positive Eugene will hanker to plant sweet corn next year and so it will be planted.

The nightshades-tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes have all done quite well. I have noticed these crops tend to do much better in dry conditions than wet. Last year we harvested, maybe, 200 peppers the entire season and most went into the freezer and were not sold. This year we have already harvested close to a thousand sweet peppers and the season is far from over. The hot peppers have loved the hot dry conditions and have been extra prolific. Tomatoes would have liked a bit more rain, I think, but overall they did well, though it seems the season was a bit short as after this week we will likely not have any tomatoes and I noticed at market this week very few other farms still have 'maters. Eggplants have done better for us in the past but this was a good year for them, no the less.

The strawberries have been a real workhorse all season. Early and mid September was not a great time for the berries but other than that they have produced high quality fruit. The raspberries have been a disappointment. Between the Easter freeze, birds and Japanese beetles we have not gotten a good harvest from either the Latham which produce one time or the heritage that produce spring and fall. The berries we have managed to harvest have been excellent, just not at all plentiful.

Now that it is autumn we will be harvesting spring mix and lettuces soon. Hopefully, we will get some rainy weather this fall, though I am not counting on it. Lettuce, especially, likes rainy conditions. Thankfully we have a drip irrigation system and we know how to use it so the leafy greens will grow well enough for us.

Roasted Peppers and Tomatoes

Yesterday I believe I finished putting up tomatoes for the year. I did my 3rd 5 gallon pot of sauce which yielded 11 quarts. That will go with the other 20 or so quarts of tomato sauce. I also did some salsa (I do not remember how many jars) and tomato juice (IIRC I have 21 or so jars of that.) Next on the agenda is apple sauce.

I have also been freezing. Right now peppers are the main thing I am freezing as they are coming in. I like to have at least 8 well packed gallon freezer bags of chopped sweet ripe peppers and a couple of bags of roasted peppers to get through winter. So far I have 5 bags of peppers and none of the roasted variety. I am thinking Sunday may be a good day to start a fire in the Webber grill and roast and skin a bunch of peppers. They are so good roasted. They add a wonderful smokiness to any dish you add them to.

Last year I was lucky to get 5 gallon bags. It was a bad pepper year for us-too wet I suppose. Those 5 bags were gone by April meaning we rarely had peppers all spring and most of the summer. I rarely will buy peppers at the store as ripe peppers simply cost too much for my budget (but I understand why they cost so much-a lot can and does happen to a pepper between green stage and full ripe stage and about 1/2 to 2/3 will not be sellable at ripe stage). But because I grow peppers I am used to being able to use a lot of them every time I cook with them.

This year has been a good pepper year and I should have more than enough to get through winter and spring. I already have about as many frozen as all of last year and we are still picking lots and lots of peppers and I will be freezing quite a few more in the next 10 to 20 days.

How to Roast a Pepper

Over a flaming wood fire (you can do this with charcoal but wood gives you a much better flavor and you won't have petrochemical residue left on the peppers from the fire starter. I guess a gas grill will work as well but again there is the flavor issue) put on as many peppers as you can fit. Let the flames blacken the peppers and split the skin. Turn every 15 to 30 seconds (this is fast cooking over high heat). When the peppers are black, flaky and ugly on all sides remove them and place in a paper bag to steam for a 5 to 15 minutes. Bring the bag of peppers inside to the kitchen sink. Take a pepper out of the bag and start removing the skin (which is charred). The skin should come right off. If it does not that means you did not cook the pepper quite long enough. Don't try to re-char it just take some extra time to get the skin off and next time take more time to roast the peppers. Cold running water will help in removal. Once the skin is off slice open the pepper and remove the seeds and the placenta (the thing the seeds are attached to at the top). Now, you can either use the roasted peppers right away or slice them into thin strips and place them on a cookie sheet and freeze them. Once frozen, pop the strips into a well market plastic freezer bag and store for winter use. These peppers can be used anywhere a smoky sweet flavor will work like fried potatoes, chili, macaroni and cheese, soups (I can see using these in a butternut squash soup).
Bon Apatite

Chipoltles

Last night I roasted peppers for dinner (also had a chicken we raised and grilled eggplants and pattypan squash). I put a couple of marconis, a Giant Chinese pepper, several Hungarian Hot wax and some red ripe Jalapenos in order to make chipoltle peppers (I think these need to be dried after roasting to be true chipoltles, I did not get that far with them). Long story short Eugene and i were eating our dinner and he asked "have you eaten one of the roasted jalapenos yet? I had just taken a small bite and it lit me up. roasting increases the heat factor...a lot. Those puppies where almost as hot as a habanero pepper. Yikes!

I was on fire for a good 15 minutes and could not eat. I stupidly drank water which made matter worse. I think today I will roast and freeze more Jalapenos as these would be good in chili sauce, curries and other hot dishes this winter.