GARDEN REPORT

by Robin

I really didn't want to think about the upcoming changes tonight so I decided to play the avoidance game and blog about my garden instead.

We had a wonderful day doing chores outside. Jack cut the grass & edged while I took care of the various gardens, floral & veggie. I pulled a lot of weeds & hoed a lot of ground. For the most part, the chickens and puppies were in the way so they had to be put in their respective pens. Sammy girl was a big help in keeping me company in the hot pepper garden. She has such an old soul for a young dog. She understands everything we talk about. I wish you could see that her tongue was popped out slightly in this photo. She talked me through cucumber & bean seed plantings.

Where to begin.....

Seeds recently planted: lettuce (my own seed), more sweet bell peppers (my own seed) & 2 variety of sweet yellow onions (store). Those have come up and my hens have done their best to eat as many early-sprouting tender shoots as possible. Thankfully, the recent rains popped a few more tender shoots out of the ground and we're cooking now!

Seedlings found in the ground.... of their own choosing: basil (left) and baby cherry tomato plants (right). I had some other cherry plants that should have been barely producing by now, but they did not survive the flooding of TS Fay last month. So, we're starting over. It's all good, right? (week ol' seedlings next to fallen leaf)

Seeds planted today: cucumber, string beans, spinach, okra, leeks and bunching onions. I am really looking forward to seeing all these in the next week or two. I also resecured many toppling-over hot pepper plants that are still strongly producing everything from jalapenos to cayenne.

Speaking of long, slim red cayennes....... I dried several up and then put them in the cuisinart.

To achieve this with little pepper, I did a lot of short pulses.

Look at the gorgeous color. I made the mistake of taking a whiff of the open cannister and started choking on pepper fumes, I guess.

Click on this to enlarge. The original was soooo sharp I almost started choking again.

Then, I put them in a nice jar to finish drying and be used later in chili or some other dishes.

My only fear is that mold may start to show up since they seemed only partially dried out and somewhat "soft" on the inside.


Here are some surprises that Jack pointed out to me today. I totally missed this!!

Can you non-Florida natives tell me what it is?

Yep, it's BANANAS!!! Not a few either.......... LOTS of bananas to go with my morning smoothies.

My Mango plant grew another 6", the puppies killed my avacado plant and my pineapple plant is in the off year. It looks like it may give me 2 in 2009. They are slooooow growing.

Then, my citrus trees all lost their blooms because they had been recently transplanted last winter. They're still young so I'm not surprised they went through shock. BUT, my neighbor's grapefruit and orange (pictured) trees are coming along nicely. I'm looking forward to several of these falling on my side of the fence. I also get wild grapefruit in the lot next to our home. The owner said we could keep whatever hit the ground. Yeah!! Plus, at church, a lot of our senior citizens are on medication that don't allow them to eat citrus, so we get some that way too.

A couple of miscellaneous things........ I have one sweet bell pepper that produced through Sept and I've got 1 half-grown pepper on the way. My other S.B.Pepper plants are blooming finally. I lost every bit of my big tomato plants. I will have to buy some of those. I don't want to start from seed since I can get a good crop of these before winter if I buy some a month old.

My thyme is dying for whatever reason. It used to be huge. I wish I knew how to save it. I wonder if the hens are laying on it or the chicken poo is too strong for the roots. (I'm composting dirty hay into the garden soil.)

My flat-leaf Italian parsley finished seeding out. I kept plenty of seeds and let the hens eat the rest. Today, I went to pull that dead section and realized it wasn't even attached to the plant itself. I guess it sends a shoot up from deep within the roots....... to the surface. Then, it flowers and seeds. I never noticed that before. D'uh! Anyhow, I didn't have the camera for that, but later, I took this picture of the parsley "stalk". I wonder if it will continue to grow upward off the ground? Does anybody know?

That's it for now. This fall/winter, it should get exciting around here again for veggies.