Week 22: End of the Peppers is Near

Pepper harvesting slowed this week with only 14 red peppers. There are only a handful of peppers left on plants #1 and #2 which I am waiting for to ripen. One trend the past week or two has been ripening of very small immature peppers. Andy and I think this is likely due to the bacterial disease. Plant #3 has been removed and placed in waiting to go where all diseased plants must eventually go. I have been storing the red peppers in the freezer and they have now been passed on to Andy who will take care of the drying process to create red pepper flakes. I did eat a pepper on a cheeseburger this week and it was quite delicious! (See photos below) Last night I took just a single bite of a red pepper and it was like an erupting volcano! Here is the official pepper count:

Pepper Plant #1:    62
Pepper Plant #2:    72
Pepper PLant #3:    9

Total Peppers Harvested: 143

Prepping to cut up.

Look at all the seeds.

Garnish for a grilled cheeseburger. The heat was very manageable on the burger. It actually seemed quite tame until I finished the burger - THEN the hotness really kicked in. 

Last photo of the three amigos. Plant #3 (middle) has been removed from the grow operation.

Spearmint "vines".

Herbs all continue to do well and now have a little more breathing room.

Week 21 at the Baines Farm

Pepper harvest continues and may be over by next week's blog. I harvested 32 peppers this week and there are about 16 I'm waiting for to turn red. Here is the latest numbers for total pepper harvest broken down by plant:

Pepper Plant #1:    59
Pepper Plant #2:    62
Pepper Plant #3:    5

Total Peppers Harvested: 126

The two top peppers were the first harvested from the poor performing plant #3.

Sage

Cilantro making some progress (3 weeks old).

Rosemary slow but steady.

Oregano

Garlic Chives.

Thyme is a prolific grower!

Parsley dried out and slumped over, but I think it will recover.

Not much red left on the pepper plants - kind of sad.

The bottom three from plant #3. If you look closely you can see a black spot on the largest one.

Spearmint gone wild. It doesn't take much!

Week 20 (Dixon)

Well my week 20 story is not as glorious as Shaun's. The 90ish mature red peppers he has now stocked up compare to about 85 or so green one's I picked after vacation, plus about 30 red ones I have picked since then. This week I put my "green" crushed pepper flakes into some Chili and it was delicious, though!! I can't wait to dry out the red ones and start using them!

Not much to report new this week other than some additional growth of the existing chilis that are on the plants. For the first time I chopped off some of the tops since I didn't see a need to let them get taller only to have to lift the light again. Besides, the light is getting so far above the herbs, now, I wonder if they are suffering at all...??? They don't look like it, as you can see from the pictures below. The thyme is still just a crazy mess, but I've been steadily drying it and the other herbs out (air drying) and collecting them. I think this week I will finally put them into jars :)

The adopted Rosemary plant is doing very good....arguably bigger than it's "sibling" over at Shaun's garden!

Week 20: Cayenne Peppers Galore!

This week has been all about the pepper harvest. I harvested 79 peppers from two plants in the past week! Yippee! Here is the total count thus far:

Pepper Plant #1:   59 Peppers Harvested
Pepper Plant #2:   35 Peppers Harvested
Pepper Plant #3:   0 Peppers Harvested

Total Peppers Harvested:   94

The entire top row of peppers are from plant #1. As soon as ripening kicked into high gear I started to get lots of peppers softening and wrinkling up at the bottom. Therefore, I have picked some of these before they were entirely bright red. The bacterial leaf spot disease is likely the cause of this.

Pepper plant #1 - almost done with the first harvest. Plant will then be destroyed!

Pepper plant #3 - waiting for its 5 peppers to turn red.

Pepper plant #2 - ripening in full gear.

Herbs all doing well out in front of the peppers. I'll be looking to add new things to the garden as the pepper plants finish their first harvest over the next week or two.

Week 19: Take That Bacterial Disease!

Despite the bacterial leaf disease, the cayenne pepper plants are producing as I had dreamed they would. No doubt, this has been a successful initial journey into indoor growing! I harvested 13 peppers this week, but that will pale in comparison to this coming week's harvest. There are approximately 60 peppers (or more) in some stage of reddening.

The herbs continue to flourish. I finally decided to harvest a ton today and set out to dry.

So on to the glorious photos!

The process of ripening has really gone insane since the first few peppers turned red. As seen here, even the smaller peppers are turning red.

Thyme pre-haircut.

Thyme all cleaned up.

Parsley going everywhere.

Parsley after a trim.

Oregano hanging out of the pot.

Oregano with a new do.

Sage standing tall.

Sage just a little bit shorter.

Cilantro about one week after sewing the seeds!

Lots and lots of red peppers on both these plants.

Somewhere around 40 peppers soon to be harvested.

About 20 peppers in some form of reddish stage.

An abundant indoor garden.

The herb harvest. I will dry all of these out in the baskets.

Week 19 (Dixon) Update

Well here we go with Week 19. What a journey, my oh my. Well things continue to move along. The 3rd flush of peppers is ripening en masse now. I have now collected about 80-90 fully grown but immature peppers, and about 25-30 fully ripened red ones. There are now about 40-50 more growing on the plant, working toward maturity. I think the hype of these plants being prolific pepper producers was SPOT ON. Seriously....160+ peppers from 2 1/2 (killed on a few weeks back) plants, starting from seed, plagued with disease, and we've been doing this less than 5 months. I would say that GROW LIGHTS WORK.

Herbs: Another massive harvest. I can't tell you how tickled I am with these herbs. They have become quite wonderful to work with, and VERY easy to grow.

The big news this week in the Herb department was that Shaun graciously gave me a Rosemary seedling from his garden, as he was thinning his. This saved me probably 7 weeks of time, waiting around for germination and early growth. Time to hit the ground running with the new plant. See the exciting pics below, and also look for pictures of my first crop of dried herbs now in bags.

Oh, and I almost forgot. So I have tried the mature red Cayennes on two different occasions, and both were absurdly, painfully spicy (but of course I still love it!). This week, I tried cutting up a full pepper and putting it on a burger (in this case, a turkey burger) as a garnish, and WOW. It cuts most of the painful part out, and leaves the most AMAZING Cayenne flavor I have ever experienced. Highly recommend!!!!