Gardening Gardening

Got a deal on pepper plants at auction last week. Couldn't resist. Less than $3 a flat. About 650 plants.

 

What are going to do with all the peppers you get?

 

Most will go back to be sold at produce auction. We freeze a bunch to use over the winter.

 

Whenever I have frozen peppers, they always are soggy.

 

We dice them and put them on a cookie sheet to freeze and then bag them up. Mostly for sauce and chili and meatloaf.

 

I used to do freeze them like farmer steve said. Then use them for soups, stews, meatloaf, chili or anything needs to be cooked. For anything that needs fresh peppers, they don't work.

 

Same here. Food processor into smallish chunks you'd dice for cooking and freeze flat into bags. Ready to go all Winter, no chopping required. Flat seems to freeze faster and not quite as soft.

 

Thanks everyone for your tips.

 

If you freeze them on a cookie sheet first then bag they aren't a big frozen lump. You can take out just what you need.

 

I just do them flat right in the foodsaver bag and suck the air out with the foodsaver machine. Saves a step. Anything that the machine might suck the juice out of I use the tray method though.

 

if you see any strangers hanging around your garden don't worry...

 

That's a lot of peppers.........I freeze some every year to use in stuff as well but I also like to stuff and freeze a bunch. I don't mess with the blanching as some will say, just clean good, stuff and freeze. Been doing them that way for many years now.

 

First armful of flowers picked yesterday

 

Beautiful stocks! A neglected flower, and they smell wonderful. They must do really well in your climate.

 

Our first year growing them, but yes they smell wonderful! Still learning...

 

Added framing of a bed to the Cucumber hanging thing which I found on the side of a road. Looks like a big mess but it worked great last year and also added 4 more plants for this year.

 

picking snow and snap peas

yellow snow peas overgrowing my 6 foot trellis.


picked some shelling peas that are growing in buckets and the ones in the garden are almost ready.
Luckily we haven't had any really hot weather yet so they are doing fairly well.
We usually go from Winter to Summer and peas can be tough sometimes.

Although we had a little bit of a dry spell, the constant rain/showers have been good for shallow rooteds like lettuce but for some reason a lot of my chard is bolting. It hasn't even been hot yet or picked. Go figure.
All my tomatoes are doing well except for yellow plum and Celebrity - they're just sitting there not doing much. Weird.

 

My maters have gone psycho in my new raised beds. I am beginning to believe the boards that I used for construction came off the lunchroom at Three Mile Island.

 

We have had over 5” of rain in 7 days. Can’t step in the garden. Peppers, cabbage and squash are coming along.