Well it hasn’t been a great year here in the Northwest for summer vegetables but got enough tomatoes and peppers to make some salsa and get stocked up with enough jalapeno pepper powder (been great on omelets) until next year. With a larger abundance of ripe jalapeno peppers this batch of peppers have a more festive look to them. Here are the peppers ground up, as you can see…
I always settled on making salsa leaving the skins on, knowing there had to be a better way I did a little research and learned a simple way to get those pesky skins off with minimal effort. The process is very simple, get a pot of boiling water, drop in your tomato for 10-15 seconds ad immediately remove and drop in a bowl of ice water. This submersion…
One problem with growing plants indoors is you don’t always get the benefits of beneficial insects, but as you can see above it doesn’t always have to be that way. At least one little lady bug snuck into the grow box and seems to have found some snacks on a basil plant. If anyone is curious I also have one of my jalapeno pepper plants in the grow box…
The winner of the bottle of Annabees bee attractant is Mary C. That is the last of our current wave of contests but I am always out looking for new ones.
Congratulations to the winner of the Gard’n Gro filter…meemsnyc.
With stores making way for Halloween and Christmas decorations, now is the perfect time to find some great closeout deals at your local grocery store or garden center. I had meant to imitate the Topsy Turvy planters above, but at 60-70% off I was not even cheap enough to pass up on these deals for the Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter (picked up two at $1.99 each) and the Topsy…
For a couple years now I have attempted to start onions from seeds and the same thing happens each year. All is going well, good strong seedlings, then I run out of space in my grow box and the poor seedlings get kicked out to fend for themselves a few weeks to early leading to very few survivors. This summer I decided to try something new, during the end…
As I have mentioned on my post on watering, I like to dechlorinate my water by filling 5 gallon buckets with water and letting them sit overnight. Though this year I always seemed to not have enough time (or foresight) to be diligent about this and ended up just dragging the hose out and watering the plants chlorine at all. Fortunately our friends at AllFilters have a solution to…
Last year I played with sprouting seeds in a mason jar to hold me and the kids over during the winter until it was time to start growing for the following spring. The process worked great but I ended up with way more sprouts than I could consume and most of the sprouts were wasted. One option was to use smaller jars and stagger the starting of the seeds,…
Most avid gardeners will tell you that planting crops in the summer can produce some wonderfully tasting vegetables. However, many of us are guilty of becoming too complacent with crops during fall months, leaving them diseased and unhealthy. It’s essential that harvesting is continued throughout cold winter months, to ensure vegetables have the best chances of growing naturally and healthily. In fact certain vegetables prefer to grow during cold…
In my last post I talked about my quest for a cheap smoker to make some of my own chipotle pepper powder. Typically chipotle pepper powder is made using red ripe jalapenos and smoked for about 24 hours. Given my lack of ripe jalapeno peppers (had 3 small ones) and it being the beginning of August I opted to make an alternate variety of brown chipotle powder. While picking…
After many suggestions that I should smoke my jalapeno peppers in comments of my making jalapeno pepper powder post, I decided to give it a try. After doing a little looking most recommendations say to use a new or very clean smoker so this eliminates using my propane grill as smoker and an excuse opportunity to make myself a smoker. After a little research on the internet I determined…