Re: Harvest time

Been a strange experience here for me this year, but I didn't know what to expect and got started late to boot. Peppers, however, have been a big nothing. We have one jalapeno bush and it has two peppers about the size of serranos. I think next year I'm going to put black weedmat around them and see if that will heat up the roots enough to make them interested in growing. Everything else is doing well so far if a bit late--beans are all producing and it looks like we may have a few to freeze. Summer squashes are just beginning to fruit and will likely give us more than we need. Winter squashes have set nicely. Our odd salad plants--nasturtiums and rat-tail radishes--are producing more than we can eat [so we'll plant fewer next year]. Tomatillos are beginning to flower. Second plantings of cauliflower, carrots, and beets are up. Vegetable gardening is the perfect example of hope trumping experience, no?
On Aug 25, 2008, at 8:55 AM, Johnson, Cyndi D Civ USAF AFMC 95 CG/ SCSRT wrote: 


I finally managed to put up some produce from the veggie garden. About
all I have left is peppers but at least there's quite a few of them. I
picked maybe 10 pounds or so of bell peppers and made two weeks worth of 
stuffed peppers for dinner plus two pints of roasted red pepper puree,
got that all in the freezer. There's still plenty out there too. The
orange bell peppers are smallish but very pretty, the red bells and red Italian not quite as nice but still not bad. I doubt I would have won 
anything with them at the fair even if I had entered, it's some
consolation I suppose.  Maybe the orange ones would have gotten
something.
My chile peppers are weird this year. Nice looking plants with very
small fruit. The Anaheims are about as long as a finger, but they should 
be six or seven inches at least. The ancho or poblano peppers are like
big knobs, they didn't elongate much. The jalapenos look more normal but 
even they are about half the size of what I normally grow, they look
more like supermarket chiles now.  Huh, some kind of deficiency in the
soil I suppose. But I found a recipe for red chile sauce that doesn't
require roasting and peeling the peppers, they're just too small to make 
that operation worthwhile, this way I can not waste them.
Speaking of the fair we went Friday and their preserving entries were
way down. I didn't enter and neither did another woman who usually puts in 30 jars at least, and another of the perennial contenders only had a 
few entries. The garden produce section looked about the same though
many of the names are new to me, usually it's the same 10 people every
year. Wasn't there some news articles about more people trying to save 
money by growing vegetables? I wonder if that translated into the new
entries at our fair.

Cyndi

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Island Jim
Willamette Valley
44.99 N 123.04 W
Elevation 148'
Hardiness Zone 8/9
Heat Zone 5
Sunset Zone 6
Minimum 0 F [-15 C]
Maximum 86 F [30 C]

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