The Case of the Little Peppers

Posted on September 17, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

Peppers have been a challenge for me.  I started these from seed, experimented with the shading and direct light, and some variations in watering.  For a long time I had a great system going where I would water heavily one day and refill my wine bottle ollas the next.  It worked great until everything turned into a big mass of green and made moving around the garden difficult.  

So this is the pepper problem.  Great looking plants, tons of peppers, but all of them have been… tiny.  My jalapenos have been more like buttons – ripe, red buttons.  I’ve eaten M&Ms that were bigger than these things (seriously, the mint ones that are a little bit bigger, so good).  The New Mexico peppers, which should be GOOD SIZED peppers, were getting two to three inches long and turning red.  Grrrr!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, they have good flavor.  If you are patient you can put them in the oven on broil and roast them up.  I ate several that way, they just take FOREVER and you get very little chili.  Not ideal.

So I started doing research on the topic.

Just an FYI, you want to avoid Google search phrases like, “Why are my peppers so small?”  Nuff said on that.

The only thing that people mentioned was that it was the type of pepper that I planted.  

EEEEE!!!  No, that’s incorrect!  Thanks for playing.

Then somebody pointed out that peppers are mainly water.  Ding!

I had been watering pretty much every other day, hoping that my mulch was keeping the peppers from drying out.  The plants looked okay (accept in the heat of the day) so I figured everything was fine.  But the more I thought about it the more I thought it might be a water issue.  So I’ve been watering, heavily, every day.

Two things have happened.  

#1 All of the plants are producing MORE peppers or flowers.  Good sign.

#2 The NM Peppers in particular are getting bigger and are not turning red yet.  🙂

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Obviously the left one is “pre-watering increase” and the one on the right is still growing POST watering increase.

I’ve even dug through and started to refill the some of the ollas.  If I can get the sweet potatoes harvested and out of the way I might be able to get to all of the ollas, but sweet potatoes are a subject for a different post.

For next year i have started purchasing real ollas.  I think these are going to be the best solution for my spring/summer garden, especially when it comes to the tomatoes and the peppers.

For now, I’m watering, watering, watering… and dreaming of roasting peppers on the grill, maybe even filling some with cheese and cooking them in an egg batter… oh yeah, good stuff.

Have a blessed day!

Posted in peppers, wine bottle ollas | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Miss Sue

Posted on September 13, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

Life is a funny thing.  When everything is going crazy, you’re running from predawn to post-dusk with your hair on fire (well, if you have hair), that’s when you usually get thrown a curve ball and everything stops.

Got that curve ball yesterday.

A friend of mine, a fellow fountain pen aficionado, an Arizona gardener, homeschooler, fellow speaker of crazy accents, raiser of chickens, and dear sister in Christ passed away unexpectedly yesterday morning.  She was only 43.  By my clock it was much too soon.

My wife had the difficult task of telling some of our other friends and our boys.  There were a lot of tears.  My family went to their house and picked up their son, who is close in age to some of my boys.  They spent the afternoon watching movies and being kids.  One of my sons found an old, taped up whoopee cushion in the toy room and found all kinds of situations to make that inappropriate noise and get some much needed smiles and giggles.  Love that kid.

I went over and spent a little while with several other people around Sue’s husband , Mark, reliving some good memories and talking about pictures, family, arrangements, food… all of those thing that you talk about when somebody passes.  Mark was a champ through it all.  Not surprising.  He and Sue were a great couple that enjoyed dancing, exotic food, helping anybody, anyway possible, and teaching kids about Jesus.  They mentored, they taught, they counseled, they loved.  I’m sure this won’t stop my friend Mark from doing all of those things, but it will look a little different without his sweet wife by his side.

My heart breaks for their son.  Moms are so important.  Sue was a big part of what made their house a home.  Her cooking filled the air with wonderful aromas, her Celtic songs rang from her phone, and proper grammar was consistently enforced.

She’ll be missed but not forgotten.  She’s absent now, but not for good.  We’ll see our sweet sister again soon.

Prayers for her husband and son are greatly appreciated.

God bless,

-Keith

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Update and a Week of Crazy Ahead

Posted on September 9, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

Got three more beds built, but not the wall units this weekend.  That increases my garden area by 128 square feet.  The wall units are going to have to wait for now.  I have an unforeseen complication.  When I went to lay out the location for one of the wall units I noticed that I have a boulder in that spot.  A boulder.  Who put that there?

Oh wait… I think I know him.

Oh yeah, that was me.

I had thought I could shift the unit down a bit, but that is just not going to look right.  So for now, I’m going to get the soil to get the four beds going and planted.  We got rain all day yesterday and I was kicking myself that NONE of my seeds are in the ground.

UGH!!!!

It’s only 75 F right now, and that is pretty awesome.  Granted it’s 85% humidity, but it’s only supposed to hit 91 today.  I’m not even sure what to do with myself.  It almost feels like fall!

I need to take some pictures, but didn’t get to it with the rain yesterday.

Did i mentioned it rained yesterday?  Seriously, other parts of the world see this stuff all the time?  It’s amazing, it’s like… water from the sky!  For FREE!  How cool is that?

Now, that’s not the most exciting thing that will happen this week.  I actually get to meet with leaders and members of our church all week this week to discuss MVMT.

Check it out at MVMT.org.

God is doing great things at Mission and I am just so excited to be a part of it!  God is good!

Posted in dirt, intensive gardening, Mission Community Church, square foot gardening, Starting Seeds | 4 Comments

Harvest for August

Posted on September 6, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

Maybe I should change the name of the post to the NON-harvest for August.  It was dismal.  even the egg numbers weren’t good between the heat and vacations.

Eggs – 73

Watermelons – 2 melons totaling 24.5 lbs

NM Peppers – .75 lbs

Bell Peppers – 1 (just one little pepper and we only harvested that because my wife REALLY wanted some bell pepper for a pizza she was making.  In her defense, it was a really good, gluten free pizza).

Cucumbers – 0.25 lbs.

And THAT’S IT!  Wow, it really was rather pathetic.  September is looking like it might be pretty decent though.  There are a bunch of watermelons on the vine, and a bunch of peppers from every variety.  The one lone scrub of a tomato plant is coming back, but that assumes that it and the rest of the garden won’t be completely overwhelmed by the gigantic green mass called… sweet potatoes!  Wow, those things are insane.

The fact that July and August were so pathetic does make me think.  I did not stagger any plantings this year and I know some folks who have been getting squash and zucchini during this time period.  My wife had to buy some zucchini at the store the other day.  I would have never thought that would happen back in June, but it did.  With the garden expansion I will definitely look at staggering some additional plantings next year.  Along with some other types of melons, and peppers, some different tomatoes, and possibly some other varieties of (stupid) corn.

I’ve got to get planting and finish getting my beds built.  No more vacations.  Lots to do!

Posted in Arizona Garden, cucumbers, Desert King Watermelon, Harvest, intensive gardening, monthly harvest total, peppers, zucchini | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Still here! Well, sort of…

Posted on September 5, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

So… car accident (a little banged up but getting better)… followed by vacation.  Got to go around NM a little bit.  Check out the famous White Sands area.  Play dodge a rocket at the missile range and spend some time up in the woods with some great friends.  A great end to the summer.

Of course that means I’m a little behind on my expansion plans.  Hopefully that will be resolved shortly.

Temps are still on the ridiculous side here.  Might set a record for today, so here is a shot of the thermometer at the cabin we were at… that’s right a cool 70 degrees.  Beautiful!

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Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments