Gardening Gardening

It is the same one as the habanero jelly I posted Chvymn99, but I let it set a little longer in the water bath on a hard boil so it doesn’t really set up. Can’t say for sure on the time, because I am usually busy doing other things if not being too precise, but likely around 20 minutes versus the standard 10 for a firmer jelly.

 

It's taken a little more than 24 hours here ( I have the same dehydrator) but it can also be quite humid here. I did habaneros inside the house once. The smell was unbearable. Same with the garage but I don't sleep in the garage.
I've tried drying peppers on strings and it's just plain too humid most of the time. Half of them molded. Garlic I have better luck with. Some day I might configure a string over the wood stove.

 

Habanadas - one pound 14 ounces. Second pick, there are still more green ones.


Some pepper jelly
This was my first batch to end up with a "short jar" . Usually I always have a short jar every batch to put in the fridge or give away to use soon.

The recipe is supposed to yield seven half-pints, but I've been getting eight and a quarter pretty consistent.

 

Lazy gardening hack: allow some of your lettuce to bolt and go to seed in the late spring, and it will self-seed and come back in the fall

 

Planted some popcorn this year. I was late getting it in the ground, but it came up good. Some stalks over 8’!!
Picked and husked about 5 bushels today. We will have to see how it dries out.

 

Some of our carrots picked yesterday. These are really good and sweet. Some got pretty big despite our dry weather this summer.

 

I’ve got the same dehydrator and got it specially because I’d loose so many cayenne to rot trying to hang the or lay them out on a screen.

Once dried, they all go into the Cuisinart and then into little glass shaker jars.
Both operations are garage based.

 

Nice carrots. Some of mine are big but I don't have that many this year.

 

I used to thin them pretty heavily, but now I just scatter seeds in a 4X8 raised bed, lightly rake in, and forget about them until July when we start nibbling around the edges for early carrots. They grow out and make room for each other if the soil is nice and loamy.

They are at their best right now for sweetness and size.

 

The last of my bell and poblano peppers:





Anaheims:


What I believe was a hot banana pepper plant:

 

Just pulled these out of a 5 gallon bucket.

For stew in the slow cooker tomorrow.

 

Just curious if the bucket was outdoors and if you have had a hard freeze yet? The only thing left in my raised beds are some carrots (they were growing very slowly) and I'm wondering if they are still worth digging up. Obviously we've had hard freezes up this way. This was my first year getting back into gardening since I was a kid so I'm having to relearn a lot of stuff all over again.

 

Yes the bucket is/has been outdoors. I don't think we've had a really hard freeze here yet. Bucket soil usually freeze before anything in the ground . I've made that mistake with trees in pots. Have to bury the pots in something even if it is just leaves. Usually it takes several below freezing nights to kill off the tops. Especially carrots in the ground. I have kept carrots in the ground all Winter and gone out and dug some up any time I wanted some. I have covered them over with leaves and where I live it's been enough to stop them from freezing unless we get some really, really long-ish extended period of near 0ºF weather. What I've found is if I keep ice from forming in the top layers of soil by keeping the soil dry they fare rather well. Dry soil being a much better insulator than wet soil. (Works for your basement too ) Unfortunately the little sheet film row covers I've used also sheltered voles and they ate all the carrots.

Those carrots are likely still good if you can still get a shovel/digging fork in the ground. The carrots are likely still OK even if they froze . A foot or so of leaves is pretty good insulation. Freeze/thaw cycles will turn them into mush.

I have a whole row in the garden still but the deer have hopped my fence at some point in the last two weeks and eaten all the tops off. The carrots are still good, they can be hard to find under snow and leaves though.

They often are quite a bit sweeter with some cold weather.

 

Appreciate the info and advice. My raised gardens are in stock tanks so the dirt will freeze quicker than contemporary raised gardens (probably the same principle as your bucket). We only had our first snow a few days ago and prior to that, the tops of the carrots were still standing up and thriving. It's supposed to warm up on Monday, so I'll probably dig them up and see if they're good to go. The pic is from earlier in the year but shows what I'm working with.

 

I have a few buckets, bigger pots and tubs. I have found the top inch or two of soil one big solid chunk of ice in the early Spring making it difficult to get an early start. A sheet of plywood or even plastic on top in the Fall helps keep the rain out and solves that problem. I like to mix some compost and fertilizer in the top couple inches of soil early for prep. I've had problems with slugs so I grow some things in buckets and tubs. Which helps some. I've grown lettuce in milk crates with a garbage bag for a liner too.

 

I had planned to make some covers for the stock tanks but ran out of time and material before the snow fell. If I can scrounge some scrap plywood, I will try to get them covered before we get hammered with snow. This last growing season I didn't even get anything planted until around the second week of June so I'm hoping for an earlier start next year. Your method of using different containers for growing (i.e., buckets and milk crates) has me thinking about next season. One problem I found this past year was that I overcrowded the tanks (rookie mistake). I have some plastic 55-gallon drums that bear bait came in so I may cut one or two down (either in half or lengthwise) to get some more growing real estate. My soil is typical for NH in that it is full of granite which makes the raised beds almost a necessity.

After all the back surgeries, not having to bend over to work the garden is a blessing and the stock tanks really worked out well and hit the marks I was hoping for (easy to reach/maintain, easy to move with the tractor, drain well, and most importantly - the veggies grew very well). I had a few crops that didn't do well but I blame that on rookie mistakes of the gardener, not the stock tanks! We had no shortage of rain this year however I am thinking of eventually coming up with a system like you mentioned using an IBC tote and rainwater to gravity feed the tanks.