Currently it is 16 degrees outside and given my grow box containing jalapeno peppers is in my unheated detached garage, which can bring some challenges. Like most plants, peppers will continue to grow in the range of 60 to 90 degrees, but thrive in 70 to 90 degrees. With the lights on the grow box gets to about 60 degrees but drips to the 50’s at night. This will…
I was lucky enough to win some Bhut Jolokia pepper seeds from Red Icculus. In case you haven’t heard of these they are the hottest peppers on earth having a heat rating of over 1 million scoville units. Just to put that into comparison jalapenos are around 5000 scoville units. One property of this pepper is the way the heat builds after consumption, on first bite it is spicy…
My jalapeno peppers did great this year. So good I didn’t really know what to do with all of them. After making some salsa and having several mature red ones as snacks in the garden, I still have about two pounds that I didn’t want to go to waste. After a little thought I decided to make some pickled jalapeno peppers. CVG Picked jalapeno pepper recipe 1 cup vinegar…
Well slightly more exciting than watching grass grow but for something that takes several weeks to complete is definitely worth a watch. If you watch carefully you can even see the automatic watering in action. Joining the sprouts is a mature pepper plant which has been flowering and daisy seedling my 7 year old planted hoping it will flower as well.
Big moment this week, I was able to make salsa entirely from ingredients. I normally don’t use cherry/grape tomatoes for salsa but my Early Girls are not that early this year and have not quite turned red. CVG Garden Salsa Recipe 2-3 tomatoes (or 12-15 cherry/grape tomatoes) 2 cloves garlic 1 small onion green onion 5 sprigs of cilantro tablespoon vinegar 1 jalapeno pepper (seeded) sugar Directions: Coarsely chop…
I am starting to get some cherry tomatoes turning red but not enough to make salsa so yet again so I decided to make some Mango Salsa. It is great to eat on tortilla chips the same you would for regular salsa or black bean corn salsa. One of my favorite things to do with is as a topping to blackened salmon (salmon grilled with dusting of Cajun seasoning)…
UPDATE: With weather climbing my grow box got up to 111.5 degrees today with the lights off. If I was using one of those fancy computers with temperature sensors it would have turned itself off by now. Turning off computer so I will have something working this winter… [July 25, 2009] I was planning on growing my jalapeno peppers in my grow box this summer, but given the higher…
My jalapeños peppers have been growing like crazy and I have had to start harvest to prevent the plants from stop producing. Given my tomatoes are still green I have been itching to do something with them, I decided to make some corn salsa. Given I couldn’t find a recipe that matched the ingredients I had on hand I decided to make my own. CVG Black Bean and Corn…
When your fruiting plants are flowering and bearing fruit this is a good time to give them a little extra boost. Though you don’t want to throw any old fertilizer at them at this point. You want them to get the nutrients they need to produce high yields of produce, though you don’t want to shock them with an abundance of nitrogen to stimulate new vegetative growth when you…
One of my goals in my garden is to make salsa entirely from ingredients from my own garden. In the past I have come close only requiring the purchase of a couple jalapeño peppers from the grocery store but this year with much effort and a strangely hot summer for the Pacific Northwest I have all the ingredients growing in my garden. Though unfortunately the ingredient cilantro could be…
It can be difficult getting rid of aphids on plants in your garden. Fortunately you can get rid of those aphids with materials you have in your kitchen. First of all I am a little embarrassed that I let the infestation get this bad before noticing. I unfortunately set the grow box to have the sunrise at 1:00am and the lights always were off by the time I got…
I am moving into a new office this week so I had to bring a couple of my lemon verbena plants home and given the great weather we were having I decided to move them right back into the garden. Fortunately they were a little leggy from lack of sunlight in my office so I cut off some of the dropping stems and was about to put them…