Garden update.. what's this blog?

Yeah, so there's a bit of a time lapse here between this post and last. Still doin' stuff, but that freak blizzard crap.. jeez. I wish I had a picture of the 15" or so we got in one single day in *October* that killed my plants... but suffice it to say, they're all gone now. What we have left is a few cleaned up garden beds and some garlic being the only thing that's gona spend the winter in 'em.

Both beds all put away with straw on the top from a recent chicken coop cleaning. 

Cascades plant here, with the Llama manure treatment again. 

Looks like hell, but I expect this horseradish is just fine underneath. 

Jelly and relish.. still canning!

Did my first batch of jelly the other day. Used the wild grapes I've found in the neighborhood as well as a few lbs I've found out and about in other parts of the world (top secret locations!). This is 4.8lbs of wild grapes..

 It was actually pretty stinkin' easy. In order to do it, I had to buy a new (had to? Well.. that's debatable..) kitchen gadget. But I've found this thing to be pretty useful in the jelly making role. It's a thing called a Food Mill, and it's a hand cranked thing that just sorta squeezes the heck out of whatever soft food that you put into it, and leaves the skins and seeds behind, neatly separating them. It supposedly makes the most awesome mashed potatoes, too. Here's a pic of it in action:

After this, you simmer the grapes for 10 mintes, strain out the solids from the liquids and then add a truckload of sugar and the pectin, bring to a boil and then start ladling into the cans. Process for a super short 5 minute time span and then leave 'em be. This batch made six, eight ounce jars and one small kitchen glass that I put some of the leftover stuff into. It's got a very strong grape flavor that's *way* better than I anticipated. It's actually quite, quite good, and now I'm on the hunt for some more grapes out in the wild do do up some more. Here's some more pics of the rest of the process:

Simmering on the skins...

Separating from the skins after simmering

The aftermath!

Finished product.

Additionally, I just whipped up and caned this 4.5 pints of hot pepper relish. It's made of a combo of my Portugese Hot's, Jalapenos, and Hot Cherry peppers.. I did not expect it to be very hot, and actually picked a few Habaneros to spice it up a bit after I got it all mixed together, but after it simmered for a bit a taste test showed it was quite spicy indeed. The Portugese Hots aren't all that hot, raw, so I'm not sure where all that heat came from. These are gonna be for sandwiches and hotdogs and stuff.. take a look:

4.2lbs of hot peppers!

These Portuguese Hots are huge!

Relish!

Got a few jar of Hot Cherry pepper relish put away and then did up nine 1/2 pint jars of Jalapeno pepper rings the next day. Very industrious! Still haven't cracked open any of the salsa, because they say to wait a couple weeks for all the flavors to meld together well, but we're getting close now and I should have some results to post soon. Here's some of that stuff I mentioned above...

Hot Cherrys, all chopped up.. 

87 Jalapeno's in this basket alone, all from the Earthbox.

Pepper rings! 

Canning still going strong. I expect to do up the Portugese Hot's in a while, but they're such a massive pepper, they're taking forever to mature. The Fatalii's are small, bu they're also taking their time to come around. I've been using them green, and they're still quite tasty, but the color is not quite there in them.. I've also got a few Hab's in the dehydrator, for use in chili's later on. Those things are killer. Dried out a few handfuls of hops from the bines, too, although it's tough to do with the small sized dehydrator I have here.

Salsa

Putting all these tomatos and peppers into good use, been making salsa for the past few days straight. Every day pretty much, I go out back and pick three more pounds of tomatos and grab a dozed Jalapenos and a few of the super hots and swish them into the cook pot. I've found that two Fatalii peppers and one Habanero is a really excellent combination of spicy hot and really flavorful, but not over the top killer hot. These Fatalii peppers really have been the top dog around here lately.. they're super delicious, but pack a big punch. Easy to fine tune the heat in the salsa that way.

Starting to get some product now...

Starting to get some production out of this thing now. Some of the long season stuff, that is. The chili's we've been picking into a bit every ow and then out of the Earthbox pepers, but here's some different stuff now. The potato's that unfortunately got crushed in the storm last month finally gave up the ghost, but when I went digging around in the Smartpot to get the thing cleaned up and put away, I found a zillion little marble sized and up potato's growing happily inside. It's a meal or two worth of potatoes, though they're all really small.. sorta wish these guys had lived a long and happy life.. there would have been many, I'm sure.

Potatoes

First ripe tomato of the year. Heh...

Fatalii chili pepper

Cascades hops going really strong. 

Fall plantings..

Tis that time of year.. just did my first Fall planting of beets, turnips (yep, gonna try again..) and some more Brussel Sprouts. I've never had one of my own Brussels Sprouts, because the one I put in in the spring haven't popped out any Sprouts yet, but hey, if I love 'em I'd hate to not have planted any news ones. And I've heard the Fall crop tastes even better than the spring ones.

Pulled a few more garlics up, but damn, they're tiny.. the experiment worked, but super small results. My Jalapeno's in the Earthbox are coming along like gangbusters though, so that's good. The Habanero and Fatalii are both looking fine and I'll probably get a few good jars of those put away this year just off those two plants alone... peppers, I can handle that. These damn tomatos though, that's another story. The ones in the beds are OK, but the containers are growing like mad but they're all getting blossom end rot, I suspect dur to fluctuations in the water supply. I've had a couple instances so far where the reservoir has been dry.. it's just so hot and the plants are so damn big, they drain the couple gallons out in an afternoon alone. Sheesh.. I need a bigger bucket, apparently, but where do you get something bigger than a five gallon bucket thats' stackable?

Look at the size of these tomato plants. Space hogs! Pushing the poor peppers out of the way.. I've got half a mind to hack 'em down a bit.. cucumbers climbing that trellis on the left there pretty good though.. lots of little pickles forming just fine there..

Stay tuned..

Garlic is up.. mostly.

Just doing some research on the garlic growing stuff I've got and it turns out it's time to harvest some of them. The ones I've got out of the ground right now are happily drying on the back porch out of the direct sun on the mesh table we have. They're awfully small looking things, but I guess that's all I'm gonna get. Looks like a couple got killed off and didn't grow underground and another one looks like it just plain ol' got too far along and keeled over and broke up into pieces.. but I've got ten good ones so far. Not all of them were quite ready. Here's a shot of the evidence:

Garden update.. and a bagel for good measure.

Yep, here she is.. the almighty Earthbox. Stuffed with Jalapeno's, she's doing quite fine. The potato SmartPot also got rolled up a bit more and filled with some more medium.. not quite all the way up, but it's darned full now. The horseradish has taken over the whole right hand side of the herb garden area, and looks healthy enough since I've been pulling slugs off it on a nightly basis.. (sheesh!). Most of the peppers are all ding quite fine, with the exception of a Fatalii in the upper raised bed which kicked the bucket due to it being too cool for it out there when I planted it, hop house notwithstanding.. (Darn it, my father is going to laugh when he reads that.. ) but otherwise, the other peppers in that same bed are all doing just fine. The Tobasco in the Smartpot is a textbook specimen, too. Those things are doing nice across the board. In bad news, I've got a mole in the beds now that's giving me fits knocking things over and tilling up good garden beds.. I will stomp the life out of that thing with my foot if given the chance.

In even sadder news, we lost another chicken the other day. A large bobcat was seen with one of my Red colored birds in it's mouth, walking off across the yard.. broad daylight in the middle of the yard, too. That's the first bird I've lost to a predator in over two years now. I'm looking to add a couple more to the flock in the near future.. stay tuned for that. 

Earthbox Jalapenos

Horseradish

Sideways shot (sorry) of my Gardners Supply hanging planter with Roma tomato inside..

Potatoes!

Tobasco

Upper bed

Lower bed

And lastly, a home made sourdough bagel of the cinnamon rasin variety. Was delicious!

Updates.. Hops, tater's and stuff.

Everything is still slowly moving along now.. starting to pick up the pace, but still pretty slow. The cold night time temps is still holdin' us back I think. I think I see some flea beetles out there, but they're not hurting anything so far. Still no slugs, which was what was killing me last year. I'm keepin' an eye out fr them, though. Got the last Global Bucket project finished up finally and put a Roma in it the other day, and here she is on the deck, next to the EarthBox and the other bucket project..

Also filled and hung the new Revolution Hanging Planter from Gardners Supply. This is a spinoff of the Topsy Turvy, of course, but it's way better built with a zippered enclosure, steel coated wire surround and a self watering feature from the top from a one gallon reservoir. Curious to see how this goes, as I've never done the upside down thing before..

Revolution Planter

Cascades

The Smart Pot farm

Upper bed

Brussels Sprouts, arguably the strongest thing in the beds right now..

Lower bed

Potatoes...

Potatoes are starting to come up.. check it:

That didn't take long.. sprouted right up once we got some soil onto them. Nice.. the hops plants are both doing well now. I'm constantly untangling them every day to keep them somewhat on the trellis..

Cascades

Here's the little Fatalii I put out in the Smart Pot.. a bug did a little damage right there on the left side, but it'll make it. The yellow bit there was a bit of a cold snap that came along that I didn't see coming and failed to take precautions against. I was in NYC, so I was a bit far away to work on that part, though..

And finally, some Arugula poking up in the lower bed. Hard to see, but it's coming along too. Everything else is just a bit larger and doing quite fine. Better than last year, so far, I'd say. Much more orderly with the SFG method. So far, so good..

Arugula

Earthbox filled and Smart Pots up and running..

Took some time yesterday and the day before to fill the Earthbox up with the mix I'll be using this year for all my containers out of the beds. It's called ASB Greenworld Growers Mix, and it's a pretty standard Peat based mix, pH balanced to just slightly acidic and filled up with a bunch of Perlite too.

Jalapenos installed. That's gonna be a lot of growth in a small space..

So that's the mix, and there's the Earthbox. The Earthbox company says, seriously, to put in 6 Jalapenos in that thing.. so, that's what I did. Last year I just ran with two Hab's in the box and they grew like gangbusters... but they're saying I should have done six plants arranged like shown in the pic above. the only problem I see now is the slow release food I've put in there is good for three months, but these things will probably grow and produce well into the month of September. I might have to open the top and re-fert the thing in August some time. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I also filled up the #15 (15 gallon) fabric Smart Pot and installed the potatoes just under the soil. They're already chitted and wanting to grow.. it won't be long before they pop right out of there and reach for the sky. I got 5 of 'em in the big pot, per their instructions as well. In the photo below, you can see the #15 pot int he middle, surrounded by the smaller #7 pots, which will each be holding one chile peper plant. I've got one plant in each, except for the lower left pot right now, which is reserved for a Tobasco chile that's just not quite big enough to be outside just yet.

Potato in the middle, surrounded by chiles. 

Also, I finally located the horseradish plant that was missing for a while out back.. but here it is. Coming up strong in the herb garden area which I put down all that manure on last fall. That trick seems to have worked well.. the chives are growing like wildfire too. I'll probably put out some basil in a couple more weeks.. I should start some up today in the basement, I guess.

And finally, above, a pic of the upper bed as it now stands. Garlic is strong, Brussels Sprouts doing well, a bunch of Bell, Jalapeno, Hot Cherry chili's all in place.. starting to look like a garden, finally. :) My dad says that this stuff should not be here so early in the season, and that they're all going to die in a wicked cold snap.. but we'll show that old man how it's done. Clearly, he has not read Elliot Coleman's book, the Four Season Harvest. Read up, old man! It's time to learn some new tricks! ;-)