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!