Herb harvest (Dixon)

I took the largest harvest yet from the Herbs. For those keeping track, this is harvest #3 for sage, 4 for Cilantro, 3 for Parsley, 1 for Thyme, and 1 for Rosemary. I cannot describe to you how all of this smells in the kitchen. Almost overwhelming.

Week 15 Dixon - Circle of Life

These pictures (and the original intent for this post) were from last Thursday, April 25. So the first pepper that was turning red last week started to get  a bit mushy at the end...which is typical of Blossom End Rot - which is a likely side-effect of me depriving the peppers of the amount of water that it seems like they would prefer (I am doing this in an effort to fight back against the Fungal attacks). Shortly after that one turned red, the other 2 original peppers turned REALLY red in a big hurry. Below is one of those BEAUTIFUL peppers. I had tasted the green ones, but figured this one would be even hotter since it had fully matured. I took it to work, and a few co-workers and I cut some pieces and tried them. Wow.....totally unlike any spicy pepper I've ever eaten. Most hot peppers have a aggressive "front" end of the taste, that sticks in the front of your mouth and slowly diminishes. This pepper was literally disappointing in the first 5-10 seconds, but then began to reveal that there was a train of pain coming, which ran over me and didn't stop for about 5 full minutes. I would estimate the green peppers I ate were around 50,000 Scoville units, and the Red one was close to 80,000 Scoville units. But realistically, I have almost nothing to base that on (other than internet research, etc).

Here was the full garden. Herbs doing absolutely insane, as always.

In a moment of decisiveness, I decided it was time to thin the herd. I decided to CULL the smallest pepper plant to make room for the other 2, that had now resumed significant new growth (once I cut off the original pepper). Here is the last photo taken of this plant inside and alive....the leaves were the most yellow of the 3 plants, it was the shortest, and had the fewest peppers.

Speaking of, here is one of the larger of the 2 plants....you can see here the silhouette of about 10 new peppers that are now about 2-3 inches long. This is all new growth in the last 2 weeks, wow!

Growth has resumed...shooting up to 24 inches. Gotta stay ahead of Shaun!!

Rosemary BUSH growing! Need to harvest.....

New pepper buds....

What you are about to see is graphic in nature. Viewer discretion is advised.

Cayenne plant vs Alaskan "Spring".....we know how this story ends.

I took the pot off, and the thing held its shape. Look at all those roots!!!

You can even see the original PEET pod that I planted into the pot.

I cut the stalk open to see if there would be a dark fungal ring (there was not). What was remarkable is how much energy it took to cut this thing open, it literally had the consistency of tree wood.

Week 15 at the Baines Farm: Slow Pepper Progress (toward eventual death)

The pepper plants continue to develop new peppers and drop leaves. This whole growth process has been much slower than on Andy's end. Aside from cooler temp at night than Andy's garage, my hypothesis is that my slightly smaller pots might be confining the roots and leading to slower growth and maturation. Amazingly, one of the three plants still has most of its leaves (although leaf drop seems to be slowly accelerating). Last week, this plant had no peppers - now there are a handful of small peppers which have formed. It's like this plant has been dormant for the past few weeks (although there has been steady vertical growth). The leanest plant now has somewhere around 40 peppers on it. I'm hoping the larger ones start to show some indications of changing color soon. Otherwise, I may pick some of the green peppers before all the leaves are gone! The middle plant, which at one time was the smallest plant, is in between the other two as far as leaves/peppers go.

The herbs are mostly superb. It does appear that the Basil picked up the Bacterial leaf Spot from the Pepper plants. I'm thinking about just scrapping these plants and waiting until I've gotten rid of the pepper plants until planting new Basil. Luckily, Basil grows really fast. The Rosemary continues to make very slow progress, but I think a growth spurt is nearing. I need to get back to cooking more so I can make use of these amazing fresh herbs.

The three peppers side by side, all very different looking because of differences in foliage and fruit production.

The lean lean pepper growing machine.

The tallest pepper plant is now at 22.5 inches and continues to grow on a daily basis.

This plant should be called Divi Divi. Not sure how it developed such an odd shape.

It's amazing that there are around 40 peppers on this one plant.

The entire indoor garden (except spearmint).

Week 14 - Warmer Temps Leading to Deteriorating Conditions???

Temperatures outside have slowly been warming into the 40s the past week. The larger affect on inside temperatures has been the 15+ hours of daylight. The sun shines into my floor to ceiling windows during the afternoon hours warming the second floor grow room into the lower 80s. I have also added a couple hours of grow light - now running at around 14 hours/day. The affect of this has been a return to rapid leaf loss on the pepper plants. There also seems to be a direct correlation between the number of peppers on the plant and rate of leaf loss. The pepper plant that has the most peppers (30+) is by far the barest of the three. Meanwhile, the plant that has mainly flowers (just a couple peppers which just started to form) is still quite bushy and is holding on to most of the large leaves at the bottom (which seem to be the first to fall). The third plant is in between these two, with some peppers and moderate leaf loss.

The herbs all continue to do well. I have been taking the Basil in and out of the grow area because brown spots have been showing up again. I'm assuming this is due to an overabundance of light.
The health of the plants improve after sitting in natural light for a couple days.

Note the difference in amount of leaves on the pepper plants with the bushiest plant on the left and the leanest on the right.

I take them out of the grow area every few days to clean up the fallen leaves and manually pollinate the flowers. 

The bushy plant is a solid 21" tall (3" of growth in the past week). There are tons of blooms on this plant - I lost count in the 50s! My guess is as soon as peppers start forming leaf drop will rapidly accelerate.

This plant now has over 30 peppers on it. Note there are very few leaves left at the bottom of the plant.

One of the largest peppers measures just shy of 4" long.

Week 14 from the Dixon farm

Finally getting caught up.....these pictures are being posted the same day they were taken, amazing!! First I'll start with the herbs (for once). The Cilantro is going crazy....this is the 2nd major harvest, and as you can see things are still growing like gangbusters.

Sage....almost ready for a 2nd harvest....just waiting for the right recipe :)

Still haven't had a need to harvest the Parsley yet, but it looks AWESOME, and is ready to be cut if needed. Kind of slow growing compared to Cilantro, but steady progress nonetheless.

Not sure when the top of the stalk got browned, but nothing seems to have happened to this garlic in the last week. Hmmm...

Tiny onion growing from seed....still pondering ripping this out and planting the "core" of a full grown onion to speed things along (much like the Garlic)

Developing a strong emotional connection to this Rosemary plant (well, not really). But I am very proud of how its really taking off lately...the key has definitely been to basically neglect it and give it much less water than I think it needs.

Thyme...also still waiting for a recipe/harvest....it seems to be just kind of hanging out, waiting for something to happen. I think I need to harvest it, even if it needs to go in the fridge.

OK, now on to the Cayenne's. So last week I cut off basically all the peppers and turned them into hot flakes. I continued with a very minimalist approach of watering (compared to before vacation) to see what happens, since I am basically prepared to junk these plants and start over, anyway. Well, as I wait for the 1 original pepper per plant to turn red, and without doing any manual pollination this time, whadya know peppers are forming again! There are probably 3-5 new peppers per plant in the last 10 days, and have grown out to 1-2 inches long already. Pretty cool!

Rapidly-growing new peppers!!!

1 of the original's is turning RED!!!! It first turned black at the end, and I was wondering if it was rotting, then suddenly it started to change to red. Obviously it's now spreading up toward the base of the pepper. This has all happened in about 4-5 days, and the rate of color change is really accelerating in the last 24 hours. So cool!!

The whole plant (with red Cayenne). Looking pretty thin in terms of leaves these days.

The good news is that the rate of leaf drop has slowed quite a bit (but then again, there are much fewer leaves to drop now!) And, in fact, tiny new leaves are forming at the base of the plant again. This is a new development!

Tiny new leaves!!

Here's the whole garden...I love seeing the green when I come into and out of the garage each time. It's exactly as I'd planned on it being.

Tallest plant....not growing too much anymore....maybe another inch or so this week.

Cooking

I received a Youtube education about making your own dried hot pepper flakes....so I gave it a go. They all fit on one large cookie sheet. The goal here is not to cook them, but rather just dry them out (you can also accomplish this by letting them hang up on a string or something for several weeks). I kept them in the oven for about 7 total hours, at a temperature of 170 (which was as low as the oven would go). When it was all said and done, I crunched them up with my hands and put them in a bag to enjoy. While green instead of red, it still packs a pretty good punch, and is the culmination of many MANY hours of internet research, several hundred dollars of investment, and countless sleepless nights worrying about Bacterial Leaf Spot (OK, that might be a slight exaggeration). I successfully cheated the outdoor reality of living at a coastal 61 degrees N latitude location, and I would chalk Cayenne Version 1.0 up to a general (though not exceptional) success.

Just for fun, here....of note, it is mid APRIL and this is what things still look like outside. Yes, those are winter hats and gloves and 20+ inches of snow.

Dixon Farms - Week 13 Update

**Updated 4/18 to fill in the "blanks" from the tumultuous last few weeks of gardening/vacation**

OK, I'm trying to re-create this history of the last few weeks. When we left for vacation around March 22, leaves were falling off, though no peppers had fallen off yet. What we suspect is/was Bacterial Leaf Spot (BLS) was afflicting the plants, likely because we had consistently over-watered them. I was just hoping to get 1 crop of peppers before the plants lost ALL their leaves and photosynthesis (and, thus, growth) ground to a halt.

When we returned from vacation, there were dozens and dozens of leaves down on the table, and even about 12 small peppers had fallen off. Not a good sign. The pepper plants looked like trees on the African Serengeti, with all canopy and virtually NO lower leaves. Meanwhile, the herbs were all growing pretty well, and the garlic clove and onion seeds I planted before leaving had even come up. 

This picture was taken after cleaning up all the carnage/debris laying around on the table. To be honest, it took a few days to be motivated to try to make things look good again, since it looked SO bad with all those leaves down when we first got back to Anchorage.

Garlic...doing well after 2 weeks in the soil.

Sage flourishing

Glad I only planted 1 rosemary plant, as it is now sticking out on all sides of the pot. Doing very well...could probably start harvesting anytime.

Thyme has been neglected a bit and needs to be harvested...kind of out of control looking.

Cilantro....time for Salsa!

Parsley looking good!

Onion seeds.....why did I plant them near the edges of the pot? Did I really think I would be growing more than 1 onion in this pot? I think I might pull them and replant just in the middle for max. growth potential.

After a few days, I got motivated to whip the garden back into shape, and decided to harvest some things. Here is a delicious and VERY aromatic bowl of fresh cut cilantro and sage. It's hard to describe how strong these herbs smell when you cut them fresh...it's really remarkable!

And, I also decided to cut my losses and harvest all of the peppers before the plants died, even though none of them were turning red yet. I knew they wouldn't be as hot and spicy as if they were fully ripe, but oh well, there's always next time. Imagine my surprise when I bit into one of these bad boys and my throat started to burn so bad I could hardly stand it. If this is "immature" heat, I can't imagine a mature pepper! For the record, I left 1 large pepper intact on each plant, just to see what would happen and if they would ever turn red.

I think I cut just over 80 peppers of varying sizes (2 inches to 5 inches)

Cilantro and Sage...bagged and ready to be used in a recipe!

Survival of the Pepper Plants - Week 13 Report

Well, sickness prevented me from updating the blog last week. Luckily, everything is alive (including me), which is a little bit of a surprise since the plants went about 4 days without watering and were not treated well for about a week and a half. The bacterial spot continues to afflict the pepper plants. However, I think I have slowed the progression of the disease (and leaf drop) with lower temperatures and less light. I backed off to 12 hours of light per day and temperatures have been topping out in the lower to mid 70s.

Less light also seems to be benefiting some of the herbs - particularly the Basil - which had been displaying significant leaf burn under 18 hours of light. I have somewhere around 15 peppers which have formed on one plant and peppers are just beginning to form on the other two. There are lots of flowers, although some of them have been dropping with the leaves.

The herbs are looking great and Rosemary has finally germinated! I've only harvested Basil thus far (unbelievably potent and delicious when used directly off the plant!), but plant to start making use of some of the other herbs.

There are about 15 peppers on this plant, which ironically is the one which has lost the most leaves.

The plants are still growing taller, although very slowly. This one tops out around 18 inches. 

Peppers and herbs (with exception of spearmint).

Sage - love the smell!

Basil.

Oregano.

Thyme.

Parsley.

Rosemary finally germinated after a little over 4 weeks!

Spearmint.