What's Growing in Your Veggie Garden? Got pics?

[clarkinks]

That a thai hot Tony?

[tonyOmahaz5]

Yup, it got a good kick for a tiny little pepper. I ate 2 hot peppers at dinner time.

Tony

[Drew51]

Some pepper plants attract aphids, others do not. I have ornamental peppers that are going on their 2nd winter now… I keep them Bonsai like. Well I’m slowly training this one to be a Bonsai. Germinated in March of 2014. A Numex Twilight.
On the left is just a piece of wood being used as a stake.

It’s going to take 4 or 5 years to get an awesome looking specimen. I’m just shaping them the first couple of years. Here is a fish pepper. I just recently wired the branches to direct growth. It’s going to be years before it looks cool.

[tonyOmahaz5]

Drew,

Very nice Bonsai looking form. I hope some of those flowers will become peppers.

Tony

[Drew51]

I hope some of those flowers will become peppers.

Tony

Yes they do, it had peppers this spring, that is a 2nd crop. I’m new to Bonsai, so these are for sure learning plants.
You want the root structure to look old and gnarly. So a rock was placed under the root ball, to make these roots dry and harden off. In 5 years this should look fantastic.

[Drew51]

On the fish pepper, I really like the peppers. They are hot but not too hot. The taste is really good too. You can harvest the peppers white or red. Here is the same plant before bonsai treatment 2014 08 19

[tonyOmahaz5]

Drew, maybe we should swap some pepper seeds.

Tony

[Drew51]

I love growing peppers, so sure PM, me for email address I can send list of what I have. I saved a ton of fish pepper seeds. I have plenty of extra seeds, so whatever you want. It would be good to get rid of some!
I’m keeping a couple plants in my garage still. Yellow Monster bell pepper is one. It looks very sad, just keeping it to keep the 3 peppers on it fresh till I need them.

[MuddyMess_8a]

Last week I was delighted to see the cauliflowers starting to make heads. I loosely tied some of their leaves over the heads in hope they expand in size. It’s been so long since I’ve grown cauliflower that I don’t even remember if the heads do get much bigger than what they start out showing. If any of you know, please share. I really hope they do because the current size would compare to heads sold at the grocers about the same way that a personal sized watermelon compares to a regular watermelon

. It’s suppose to start raining tonight and rain tomorrow (Thursday). So, I dug potatoes yesterday, before the ground where they are gets any more saturated. Ended up with a bucket of mostly red potatoes. Although we’re enjoying what I dug, it was probably less than 1/3 of what I would normally get from what was grown. The growing area has been wet for 3 months straight. Everything harvested was from the long since compacted straw above the filled in trenches where they were planted. All the taters in the ground had either rotted or were in the process. The harvested ones ranged from tiny to bigger than fist sized.

Having a planting area stay too wet is just the opposite of what I usually work with. Most of the time I struggle to keep everything watered enough to keep it going.

Those potatoes went very nicely with the pot of green beans that I picked. We cooked a very enjoyable pot of freshly picked green beans and freshly dug red potatoes for dinner. It was only by chance that I planted those beans off season, just before our floods, thinking that maybe if we had a late frost I might harvest a light crop if really lucky. The only reason was that I had an empty row, extra bean seeds, and thought they might work to fix some nitrogen while shading out some weeds.

Our unusual weather over the past few months has made differences in the fall/winter growing. Some, like getting quite a decent crop of beans, have been positive. Others, like the rotted potatoes, washouts of spinach and beets, and repeated nitrogen depletion from heavy rain haven’t been.

There’s a very high chance we’ll get frost this weekend when temps drop down to 50’s in the day and lower 30’s at night. After that it goes to the 60’s and back to the 70’s in the daytime. Weather this time of year is such a yo-yo, but I think that’s likely true of most places.

It started raining hard while I was typing this post.

[mrsg47]

Muddy, its really pouring in Newport tonight. It is still in the 50’s and 60’s here. Next week is Christmas. We have had a lot of mist and ‘spitty’ days and now rain and thunderstorms. I hope the rest of the winter is not like last year. That said, last years frost did wonders for my trees and plants. (also brought out more deer and rabbits). May we’ll have a mild winter after all. My perennials do not like that.

[SMC_zone6]

Pics!

[MuddyMess_8a]

Yes, this season has been wonky, at least on this side of the country. I’ve got forsythia, violets, cannas, and hibiscus blooming along with the brugmansia and sassanquas of this time of year. And peppers and eggplants and raspberries in the gardens keep making blossoms. I guess they’re doing their best coping with the mixed signals of abundant moisture after months of drought, shorter day length, and stretches of very warm weather interspersed with short bouts of above freezing chill.

Last winter was a wonky one in its own way. Here the winter pretended to start for awhile in December, but then retreated for far longer into January than normal, but one the cold weather decided to come, it didn’t seem to want to let go. I usually start seeing daffodils blooming around Jan 18, but all the early blooming plants ran 2 to 3 weeks late. The first ones didn’t open until Feb 8. It was a year of zero snowfall for us. But when I think of last winter, I think of those of you in the Northeastern part of the country, where it seemed to me like both the snow pack and the wildlife were relentless. I ached along with you when I read about the damage the deer did to your orchard.

@SMC_zone6 I WISH I could take pics that I could get posted! My very old phone is possessive of any that I take with it. It won’t let me upload them to anything. It’s too late for pics of dinner from the other night. It’s already digested. If I could post pics of anything right now, it would be of the flowers, raspberries, ripe peppers, and happy kale and carrots. Those are what looking best right now. Actually, I’d probably give you a peek at the citrus and bananas in my grow tent, too! You might have to wear sunglasses to look at that one, though. I’ve got it so highly lit that I have to don special glasses when I go in.

[Johnnysapples]

I grew pumpkins in a tree. I used string tied to burlap to hold them when they got bigger. I grow my cucumbers up rerod lattice. It works great and the plants seem to be healthier.

[mrsg47]

I would love to see pictures of that. I have an empty trellis that would be great for a climbing veg.

[MuddyMess_8a]

And I’d love to see the expressions on people’s faces when they get their first sight of a pumpkin tree!

[k8tpayaso]

Muddy, the cauliflowers do increase in size. We left some last year and ended up with an 8 lb cauliflower head. It was still tender and had good flavor. I didn’t know to pull the leaves up then so the only abnormality was that it was a little pink. Still ate good though! (Now last year I could have planted a light bulb and grown a Christmas tree. Everything was beautiful and productive. This year has been a whole different story with the flood-drought-flood episodes. And now all our trees are budding out with blooms, leaves, and in some cases fruit. I have tiny fig buds on my fig tree.)

I have a few cauliflower growing. I’m hoping they get bigger before weather gets too cold.

[Johnnysapples]

It was years ago when I grew mine up my grape arbor. From the arbor they sprawled out onto wild black cherry branches about eight foot off the ground. I have pictures somewhere but not sure where so I just googled and found a video on it. I think they grow better up in the air away from the mold.