Picking Peppers

I have 30 plants full of Aji Cristal peppers. Holy pepper overload! So I've been picking them and wondering what to do with them... a lot will be frozen and turned into jam this fall once things slow down.

To give you an idea of just how many peppers I am talking about... I picked every single pepper off just two plants, and filled my trug to overflowing!

Bountiful Harvest

September arrived with an overflowing garden! I spend as much time harvesting as I did on some earlier days of tending the young plants. And it is worth it... behold:

Patty pan squash, yellow and purple string beans, cucumbers, zucchini, bell peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, and hot peppers.

Moving into Harvest Time

As August comes to an end, I know there may be only a few weeks until frost, so I'm enjoying the fruits of my labor.

Here's my colorful harvest of tomatoes, summer squash, zucchini, patty pan squash, cucumbers, and a few mini red bell peppers.

Life Goes On

Unforeseen circumstances kept me from the garden for the last two weeks, though I was able to do a harvest a few cucumbers, zucchini, and summer squash during that time.

Luckily everything is still doing well despite my neglect. Putting straw down between most of the plants earlier this summer kept the weeds at bay for the most part, and nothing seems to have dried up without watering.

The melons got a late start, so I don't expect them to reach maximum size/flavor this year, but they are looking great!

Mini-pumpkins are so cute tucked away in the shade. They'll be plentiful this year, and will be a nice deep orange color once they ripen fully.

My Hercules pumpkins are doing great! If all continues to go well, there should be four big ones for carving in October. Two of them we were able to turn on their ends early enough in their growth so they will be nice and round, but the other two will be oblong side-lying pumpkins. They just got too big too quickly, and I didn't want to risk damaging the vines by twisting them around.

My Aji Cristal hot peppers are thriving in the heat. Time to pick a peck or a bushel and freeze away, since I just don't have time to turn them all into jam right now!

I really love my tomatillos, they are such a neat fruit to watch grow and fill out their husks. I had absolutely no worries about them during the last few weeks; as a Mexican plant they can certainly handle a dry spell or two.

And of course, the zucchini is still prolific!

More Than a Handful

Veggies! I Instagram'd it.

That's a patty pan squash, two bell peppers, a cucumber, a zucchini, and two hot peppers.

How Doth My Garden Grow?

Everything is getting big, and a few things are ripe enough to pick. All the hard work is paying off! First we have some tomatoes.

Aji Cristal peppers, they should be harvested when they are nice and yellow like this (they do eventually turn red but the flavor is not as good). They are hot peppers, not sweet, so don't mistake them for banana peppers.

Mini bell peppers... "Cupid" is the name of this particular variety. They should turn red in another month.

Ugh... this guy has built his luxury condo right among all the Pink Brandywine tomatoes. I'll let the squatter stay, since presumably he's catching bugs.

Dear lusciously plump tomato, please turn red soon. Thanks.

Patty pan squash (also called scallop squash, UFO squash, or pâtisson for the Francophiles out there).

Gherkins! These will be slicing cucumbers but they look so cute when they're the size of my pinky.

Projected Pepper Overload

A couple weeks ago I realized that I had somehow mixed up two flats of seedlings. Lesson learned: label seedling flats clearly and directly in a manner than cannot be mixed up when you adjust things. So here you see two rows of what I originally intended to be tomatillos. I was looking forward to a huge overabundance of tomatillos! They cook down into a delicious jam.

But no. These are all pepper plants. And about half of what has been planted. Originally I thought I transplanted 8 hot peppers, 20 bell peppers, and 30 tomatillos. But I actually have 8 tomatillos, 20 bell peppers (see, I didn't mix those ones up), and 30 hot peppers. 30! And they all look fantastic and healthy and strong. What am I going to do with all those peppers? Here is a tomatillo husk from the other side of the garden, by the way, looking nice and plump, waiting for the fruit to fill it out from inside!

Heating up in the Cold Frame

Earlier this month I assembled two cold frames from a pair of old windows, some scrap wood, and straw bales. They're not pretty and I didn't document the process, but the result is happy heat-loving plants!

Here are the bell peppers with their glossy green leaves. They struggled to germinate under the fluorescent lights where I started them as seeds, but things are going much better now. The cold frame traps the heat from the sun during the day and keeps it nice and warm.

Here are the tomatillos I started from seed. They love the warmth, but the cold frame is nothing compared to the heat that comes in July and August. If it's anything like last year, the garden will be exploding with tomatillos!

Peppers for Cold Climates

Bell pepper from the 2012 garden.

Due to Michigan's short growing season, pretty much the only way we can grow peppers here is by sowing seeds indoors and transplant outside after the last frost date, so they can be harvested before the first frost. I use a last frost date of May 20 and first frost of September 25 (based on data for Jackson, MI), which means a window of around 120 days.

This works pretty well for most bell peppers, which will be ripe in 60-90 days (that's days after transplanting outdoors, not days after you initially start the seeds), but some hot peppers can take up to 150 days. Do the math. Even if I took a chance and transplanted a hot pepper on May 15, got lucky with no frost, I'm looking at October 15 for harvest. And I know better than to expect summer to last that long. So I need to be picky about the varieties I select. I look for cold-hardy plant varieties no matter what, since Michigan weather can be so unpredictable (frost in July? not unheard of).

Last year I didn't have much success with peppers. I started seeds indoors from an old pack of Sweet Carnival Mix from Burpee, which I transplanted outside in June, along with a poblano pepper seedling I bought from Lowe's. The bells each produced 2-3 peppers but I only picked about 3 usable ones total, and the poblanos got zapped by the frost before I was able to pick them.

This year I looked at the varieties suggested on the peppers tip sheet suggested by MSU Extension; they are common ones you can get at gardening stores in packets from Burpee, Ferry Morse, etc. Great info there, but as far as pepper varieties I was looking for something a little different (and in a larger quantity than those little packets), so I ordered Cupid (mini bell pepper), Ace (regular bell pepper), and Aji Cristal (hot). I should have started the seeds indoors already, so I'll be doing that as soon as possible, hardening off at the end of May, and transplanting probably at the start of June.