Week 18 (and 17, kind of) Upate from Dixon Microfarms

I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed that I missed out on week 17, and didn't even take the pictures to post them later. BOO!!! Well let me catch you up, faithful legion of readers: the crop of peppers that developed after I cut off all the green peppers upon my return from vacation have now grown to full size and turned red. That means from flower to ripe pepper was just about 5 1/2 weeks. At this particular moment, I have 9 red peppers on these plants! I tried the red pepper out on another one of my friends, and it almost reduced him to tears. I've never been so proud. I was marveling this week to my wife about how all the things I've read online would suggest that it is not feasible to grow peppers all the way to ripeness in any kind of timely manner exclusively under fluorescent grow lights. I think that has been soundly proven wrong...in fact these plants have grown and matured at almost twice their normal growth speed, near as I can tell. I'm not sure about the pepper ripening timeline, but it is no LONGER than normal.

There is some sad news to report, though. Two days ago I noticed mites on the Rosemary....tons of them. Thankfully they were not apparent on any of the other plants. I isolated the Rosemary plant outside, but now it's getting ready to snow. So in a rash act that I already partially regret, I CULLED the long-suffering (and slow-growing) Rosemary and washed it off and am now drying the whole thing. Hey, it's the circle of life. Don't judge me.

On with the show!!!!

 

I have too much empty space!! Now that rosemary AND basil are gone, I need to fill this space back up!

Beautiful red and green colors....dream come true.

Jungle!

Look at the TONS of flowers forming!

After the massive harvest 2 weeks ago, the parsley is back and ready to be cut again.

You'd never guess I cut out half of this Thyme plant 14 days ago. Insane.

Sage....like a rock. A beautiful rock.

I have harvested the crap out of this Cilantro plant....seriously 8 or more harvests so far. A few of the plants tried to bolt, so I cut off their main stem to force them back to vegetative. Nothing like playing god to help improve the mood since it never stops being Narnia-like winter outside here!

Final ode to the Rosemary...

Check out the bags of herbs that we dried from that big harvest (last post). These things smell so strongly that they are coming through the ziplock bags!