Apple Wine Update

I was in a bit of a rush to try the apple wine around the time of the first apple wine post since I was having some friends over and I wanted to have it available for consumption at that time. Over the weeks since then, it continued to settle. It now is crystal clear and the yeasty flavor is entirely gone. It still lacks apple flavor and has too much acidity, but it is definately better than it was. I can now give it a 5 out of 10.

Hot Sauce!

If you recall a post from a few months ago, we had a bumper crop of peppers this year, including cayennes.

What better to do with excess cayennes than make hot sauce? I made two different batches. One was intended to mimic Frank's Redhot, while the second would be a bit more custom. Here is what the peppers looked like. Some of the peppers had fuzzy mold inside. I'm wondering if this was because I left the peppers that ripened early in the season on the plant rather than taking them off? Anyway, here is what it looked like when I was chopping them up.

I found a recipe online that said it was a copycat recipe for Redhot, so I decided to start with that. The recipe is quite simple. Pepper, vinegar, garlic, and salt. Boil everything together for a while, then put them in a blender and strain the resulting liquid. I got about 8 fluid ounces from the recipe. Using small pieces of bread to dip in the sauce, I decided that it had too much vinegar, not enough salt, and the vinegar flavor didn't seem quite right. It wasn't necessarily bad, but I also wouldn't say its all that great.

For the second batch I decided to use more salt, less vinegar, and use half apple cider vinegar. In addition, I used more salt, more garlic, and added a bunch of black pepper. Unfortunately it didn't work out too well. There wasn't enough liquid so I put in some water, but it ended up too liquidy. Somehow I managed to put in too much salt also. Its a shame, too, because if it wasn't for the excess salt/water, I like the underlying flavor of that batch quite a bit.

I didn't have any empty hotsauce bottles around, so I put the sauces in 4 oz. jelly jars. Makes it a bit inconvenient for using it. Here is what the final product looked like.

Here is a visual comparison of the two homemade sauces along with Redhot and a random hotsauce that I happened to have at the time. This is after letting the sauces rest for a few weeks.

Both homemade batches are slightly hotter than the commercial sauces, but not overwhelmingly so. The vinegar flavor in first homemade sauce seemed to mellow a bit in the jar. It tasted reasonably good, though it didn't have a lot of depth of flavor. The second batch continues to be too watery and salty, but the underlying flavor is quite good. With less salt and water, I think it would be right there with my favorite commerical sauces like Redhot and Cholula.

With very good (and reasonably cheap) commercial hotsauces widely available, I don't see a lot of reason to keep trying to make my own hotsauces. However, I do plan to grow at least one hot pepper plant next year since they are great for throwing in stir-fries and other dishes.

Year End Garden

Here is what the garden looks like as of 12/26.

The carrots are still fine, the scallions are sort of ok (partially frost damaged), while the lettuce and arugula finally got killed off in a hard frost in mid-December. The weather has been unseasonbly warm here this month. That is nice for the heating bills, but it confuses some of the plants. The garlic, onions, and shallots that I planted in October have started to sprout above the leaves that I put over them.

The garlic I planted last October did the same thing and it turned out OK, so hopefully they will all be fine this year too. I'm thinking next year I'll plant that stuff in November rather than mid-October.

Holy Cauliflower

I was recently in Wegmans and I saw some massive heads of cauliflower in their locally grown section. I was satisfied with my ~1.0 lb per plant yield, but these cauliflower put mine to shame. I measured one of them and it was around 4 lbs! I don't even know what somebody would do with 4lbs of cauliflower. Either have a cauliflower party or freeze it, I guess.

South Wedge Winery 2011 Apple Wine Review

It is cloudy, but quite a bit lighter in color than the cider that the initial cider.

The aroma isn't terribly enticing as it smells somewhat yeasty. There is only a mild apple smell. It has remarkably little flavor. Some fruit and apple flavor, but way less than I expected. Its actually kind of remarkable how little apple flavor there is. There isn't too much yeasty flavor, though its hard to get away from it since the smell is so strong. The wine benefits tremendously from an open-air rest as much of the yeasty aroma/flavor disappears. The sugar is almost entirely gone, and without the sweetness to mask it, there is a surprising amount of acidity.

I'd have to give this a 4 out of 10. Its certainly consumable, but not exactly good. I would probably only buy it if it was in the bargain bin.

There are a couple things wrong with the wine. The first is the yeastiness. I have no doubt that if allowed it to go through a secondary fermentation and fully settle and clarify, the yeastiness would be gone. In fact, it seemed to improve significantly between the day after fermentation stopped (my first taste) and 4 days later (when I'm writing this review). The yeastiness is probably going to be a fundamental problem with the quick and dirty ferment it in the jug method. The second thing that is wrong is the lack of apple flavor. Its kind of amazing how little it tastes like apple anymore. I think if I had used a yeast that got impaired at lower alcohol levels, it would have ended with some more apple flavor and a little bit of sweetness to balance the acidity. Just a hint of sugar, though. I still maintain that all commercial hard ciders I've drank have been too sweet.

The 2011 Harvest Summary

The 2011 growing season is clearly winding down at this point. There are only a few things left in the garden now including Kale, Pak Choi, Lettuce, and Carrots. Those veggies are still alive, but aren't really growing anymore. I've hacked up all the rest of the vegetation and put it in a new compost pile for the winter. The new pile consists of the recently cut up garden vegatation, the contents of the compost can from throughout the spring/summer/fall, the previous compost pile contents (stuff that was in the compost can but wasn't fully rotted in the spring), and leaves from my front yard on top. You can see that pile on the left side of the picture below.

With the majority of the harvest complete, I've "published" the 2011 harvest spreadsheet. It shows how much of each vegetable we produced here at the homestead and its approximate value. If you're too lazy to look, there was about 120 pounds of produce harvested, with an approximate market value of $300. That is a similar haul to 2010, which is surprising considering that the growing season (especially early) wasn't all that great. I'm consistently impressed with how much produce you can get from a pretty small area. The actual square footage of planted beds in the garden (not including paths) is probably around 160 square feet. Thats an average of 3/4 lb per square foot!

In terms of which crops did well, the best performers were:

• Peppers (all varieties)
• Kennebec Potatoes
• Pole beans, especially the Blue Lake variety
• Kale
• Garlic

On the other end of the spectrum, the disappointments were:

• Corn
• Melon
• Red Norland Potatoes
• Rapini
• Brussels Sprouts (again)

Introducing the 2011 South Wedge Winery Apple Wine

For some reason, the naming of apple-based beverages is unnecesarily confusing. This led to an awkward conversation between myself and a couple people at a local apple orchard. While trying a sample of their fresh apple cider, the following conversation happend (its very likely that this is not entirely accurate, but thats how I remember it):

Guy at the Cider counter hands me a little cup and I sip from it.
Me: Not bad. Do you guys sell just plain apple juice here?
Guy behind counter looks at me with a befuddled look.
Lady who was arranging produce nearby: I think you can probably get that from Wegmans
Me: I'm just looking for some fresh apple juice that I can use to make hard cider. You don't sell that here?
Guy: This cider will work for that.
Me: But doesn't the cider have spices in it?
Guy: No no. Its just apples pressed this morning and UV pasturized.
Lady: Mulled cider has spices in it.
Jaime: The hot cider is usually spiced, but I don't think cold cider is.
Me: So this cider is nothing but apples? No sugar or anything added?
Guy: Its just apples pressed this morning and pasturized with UV light. Nothing added. Most apple juice is heat pasturized so that is why it looks different from cider. Ours is UV pasturized so it keeps the extra flavor.
Me: Ok, thank you.
I purchase two gallons and meekly retreat away, ashamed of my lack of cider knowledge.

So after a little internet research, I have learned the following about apple beverages:
Apple Cider: Fresh pressed apples, only coarsely filtered, usually heat pasturized for contamination control
Apple Juice: Cider that has been very well filtered and pasturized. Hot Cider: Apple cider that has mulling spices added and then is heated.
Hard Cider: Apple juice or apple cider that has been intentionally fermented
Apple Brandy: Distilled hard cider
Apple Jack: Same thing as apple brandy, though, interestingly, it used to be distilled by fractional freezing and removing the ice crystals, which would make it technically not a brandy
Apple Schnapps: A neutral-flavored malt-based spirit flavored with apple juice or apple flavoring and usually has extra sugar added.
Apple Wine: Nothing is really called apple wine.....until now.

Maybe I'm the only one who is confused by all this, but it seems like a terrible naming scheme. After all, apple cider and apple juice are pretty much the same thing, and hard cider is really just apple wine. Ugh. Well, I'm going to call the stuff I'm making apple wine.

I currently have two different kinds of yeast. One is bread yeast, and I'm pretty sure that would make some pretty gross flavors in the wine, so I'm not going to use that. The other is a wine yeast (actually a champagne yeast) capable of fermenting to 14+% alcohol. Most commercial hard cider either uses a beer yeast which typically can't ferment past about 6% or (more likely) use a stronger yeast but shock it with a preservative to halt fermentation at the desired alcohol percentage. Most commercial hard ciders are also way sweeter than I'd like. The best ones I've had were considered very dry (less residual sugar), so I think the champagne yeast should work out well. It should convert nearly all of the sugar into alcohol.

I expected that my apple wine might be able to reach 7-8% alcohol, but to my surprise, the hydrometer reading (measuring the approximate sugar content) showed a potential alcohol content of 12%. Well, this could be some interesting wine!

I did add two things besides yeast. I added a 1/2 tsp of "yeast nutrient" which was described to me as vitamins for the yeast since they use up a lot of the stuff that they need in the grape/apple juice. Also, I added about 15 drops of a solution of pectic enzyme. Its often used to help break down fruit mashes and release more juice/flavor. It should also help to break down any pectin in the juice and help to clarify it. I've had the pectic enzyme laying around for the last couple years because I was at a wine making store and figured that I might want to make some fruit wine at some point in the future.

Rather than go through the whole ordeal of sanitizing a bunch of fermentation equipment, I decided to try a less formal fermentation process that I saw online a while ago. I fermented it in the one-gallon plastic jug that it came in. To make an airlock, I used a balloon stretched over the top. I put a pin-hole in the balloon, and as the fermentation produces CO2, the balloon stretches just enough to let the CO2 out of the pin-hole, but doesn't let any oxygen in. Seems like a pretty good quick-and-dirty type approach. Here is what it looks like just after putting the balloon on.


Here is what it looks like after about 12 hours. Fermentation is already moving along pretty good at this point. The airlock seemed to work pretty well.

The Root Cellar

A couple times I've mentioned my "root cellar". The root cellar is just an area of the basement where I store vegetables that don't need to be refrigerated. Like a real root cellar, its cool but not cold, moderately humid, and relatively dark. I've had mixed results with storage down there. Onions and garlic have worked pretty well. Carrots not so much. Some of last year's spaghetti squash (harvested in fall of 2010) rotted within a month, but there is still a 5lb specimen that looks perfectly fine. Some potatoes have been fine, while others went soft or rotted.

My recent harvest of 40+ pound of potatoes got washed, then put in a somewhat breathable satchel and put on the floor in the root cellar. A couple weeks after putting them there, I went to grab a bunch to take to some friends, and I found that quite a few of them were rotten. Like smelly juices soaking through the bottom of the bag and making a puddle rotten. Some of the potatoes had holes and blemishes in them when I harvested them, so I suspect that they were either already rotting inside or the water from washing them provided enough moisture to allow bacteria or fungus to thrive. I definitely should have at least let the potatoes dry out thoroughly before putting them in the bag and leaving them in the basement.

Between the potatoes that rotted, the ones that I gave away, and the ones that we've eaten, I'm probably down to about 15+lbs. In the picture below, you can see a three-tier wire rack that I'm using for storage. It contains the loose produce and still allows good ventilation. The top level is onions and garlic and the lower two levels are the remaining potatoes. In the bottom right you can also see the 13+ month old spaghetti squash.

2010 South Wedge Winery Traminette Review

Its been quite a while since I've posted about our 2010 Traminette. There are a few reasons for that. Lack of time and laziness played a part, but a big part of it was also due to me avoiding a review of the wine. I tasted it during each stage of production from raw juice to a few weeks after bottling, and I wasn't too impressed with the last tasting I did. I'm hoping that letting it rest for a few months improved it.

Here is what it looks like. Good color. The aroma has a nice fruity and floral scent(kind of like jasmine), but there is also a bit of a chemical scent. Not overwhelming, but its there.

The first flavor is definately fruity and floral again. Apricot and canned peaches, I would say. Also a bit of honey. I think the flavor of the grape comes through pretty well. A larger sip or several sips in succession produces somewhat of a bitter chemically flavor. Its got a moderate amount of sugar, and that is balanced nicely by the moderate acidity.

Overall, I'd have to give this a 5 out of 10. I don't think its particularly good, but I'd buy it if it was cheap...like under $8.

Knowing what I do about the background of this wine, I have a couple theories as to why it didn't turn out quite as well as I would have liked. As for the chemical flavor, I suspect that might be caused by potasium metabisulphite(heretofore called sulfite). That is the main chemical that is used to prevent bacterial contamination. Its also the stuff that people talk about in cheap wine that gives some people headaches. The vineyard that I bought the wine from sells the grape juice with an initial dose of the sulfite to kill of bacteria that were hanging out on the grapes. The instructions I followed this time said to add a dose of sulfite after each major step in the process, so I added it as directed after primary fermentation and then again after secondary fermentation, and lastly between cold stabilization and bottling. That means it got dosed 4 times. Afterwards, I realized that in the past, I've only dosed the sulfite once before bottling (in addition to the initial sulfite that the vineyard put in). I've read that if the wine has too much sulfite in it, you can taste a chemically flavor.

The other problem that this wine has is the inherent flavor in the grape. The grape's flavor is not really bad, but its not really good, either. It almost tastes more like mead than wine. Traminette is a hybrid of Gewurtztraminer and a more cold-hardy grape that produces more heavily in the finger lakes region. I chose this juice for two reasons. One is that I really like Gewurtraminers, and especially Gewurtraminers from the finger lakes. The other reason was that the Traminette was cheap. Gewurtraminer juice is over $20 per gallon, while the Traminette was $10 per gallon. Unfortunately, you don't have a chance to taste the juices before you buy them, you have to reserve the juice ahead of time. A limo driver for a wine tour I was on once told me that the more expensive juice is worth the money because you can't make good wine without good juice. While I wasn't really confident enough in my winemaking skills to spend $120 on 6 gallons of juice vs. the $60 for the Traminette, I think the next time I make wine, I'll go for the good juice....and also not put as much sulphite in it.

First Freeze of the Year

It really is that time of year. We finally had our first frost/freeze of the year last night on 10/27. I saw the freeze warning, so I figured I should pick the remaining frost sensitive veggies left in the garden. That included beans, zucchini, peppers, and some of the greens. Not much fun picking vegetables in drizzly 40 degree temps as the light was fading, but I got it done. From left to right in that picture are sweet "popper" peppers, bell peppers, the bucket with zucchini and beans, cayenne peppers, scallions, and arugula. I cut the pepper plants at the ground and I'm glad I did because it was a lot easier to pick the peppers off the plant while they were waist-high in front of me rather than bending over to search for the peppers.

Here is what the almost 3 pounds of cayenne peppers looked like. There was one good burst of peppers in mid-summer and while those ripened the plants kept growing, but didn't seem to make many more flowers. Then after the first set had ripened, the plant exploded in tons more flowers in mid-late september and kept flowering through October. Unfortunately, that second set didn't have time to mature. I probably should have picked the peppers from the first set as soon as they turned red, but I left them on thinking they would keep better on the plant. I'm not sure if that slowed down the second batch or not. If I grow these again, I'll probably pick the ripe ones and let them dry. By the end of the year, the first ones had pretty much dried out on the plant as it was.

This is what more than 9 pounds of mixed peppers looks like. I gave away a bunch of these, but I probably still have about 5 pounds left. I'll be making stuffed peppers soon, and I'll probably chop some up and freeze them. The red cayennes I will almost certainly use to make some hotsauce.

I took a look at the garden today and it looks like the bean plants, and the zucchini definitely got hurt pretty bad by the frost/freeze. Asparagus, broccoli, and peas all survived the temps, but are probably done for the year. There are still pak choi, rapini, lettuce, kale, and one very small cauliflower head that can be harvested. None of these guys seem to be growing anymore, though.

2012 planting

I've already started planting for next year. After digging up the potatoes, I sprinkled what remaining chicken manure (dried, pelleted) fertilizer I had left on the area, then turned over the dirt with a shovel. I saw some of the fattest worms I've ever seen in there. When they were not extended, they were about 4-5" long and almost as wide as a sharpie marker. Thats got to be a good sign for the dirt.

After turning over the soil, I planted a few different things. First was 12 cloves from the garlic that I harvested in July. According to the internet the size of the garlic plant and the yield is proportional to the size of the clove that is planted, so I took the biggest cloves from three different bulbs. Some of them were quite large and most, if not all, were larger than the cloves that I planted last year.

Next up was the "potato onions". I'd read about these previously online. They are supposed to be kind of between shallots and regular onions. Each plant makes 4-8 bulbs of varying size, the largest ones probably being almost the size of normal onions. Much like garlic, you can just just keep a few of the onions to plant for the next year and eat the rest. Supposedly they are what most people used to grow in their own veggie patches 100 years ago, but fell out of favor because they weren't really appropriate for large-scale farming. I do plan to plant some regular onion sets in the spring in case these don't live up their promises.

Lastly, I planted a small quantity of fancy french shallots. Supposedly they are the kind that are most prized by foodie types. I'm not sure that I have a refined enoung palate to care about such things, but I figured I'd give them a shot. Again, these should hopefully produce a cluster of shallots for each one that I plant.

I probably should have taken a picture of all this stuff before I planted it, but I forgot to. These all get planted in the fall because it gives them time to start a good root system and get primed for fast growth in the spring. This variety of garlic is quite hardy and shouldn't have a problem surviving the winter around here (no problem last year), but the potato onions and shallots are somewhat less hardy. These potato onions are supposedly ideal for Virginia. To try to help them survive the winter, I put about 3" of compressed leaves on the area, and then I put some of the potato vines on top just to keep the leaves from blowing away. Here is what it looked like when I was done. Hopefully those fat worms don't eat all the insulation before winter.

Potatoes!

Here is what the garden looks like in mid-october. Its still surprisingly green and growing. The potatoes (bottom right) look like they are just starting to die out. It doesn't matter if they are done or not, because I need to plant next year's garlic where they are now!
After some digging it quickly became apparent that the early-season Red Norland potatoes (died off in early july) did not do too well this year, while the late-season Kennebec Whites (the ones that are still alive in the picture above) exceeded expectations. Thats why I planted a couple different varieties. If the conditions are poor for one kind, they might still be good for the othe kind. After all the digging and washing, this is what the potatoes looked like. I put the camera lens cap there for some scale, but it still doesn't quite convey how big some of those white ones are. How much potatoes is that you ask? After taring the weight of the bin, those potatoes weighed in at 41.2lbs!! I've already asked Jaime to start looking into potato recipes, but its likely that we'll have to give some away because there is no way we can use that many potatoes. Combined with the 2.5lbs of red potates I harvested earlier in the year, that comes to 43.7 lbs. Approximately 5lbs were red and 38lbs were white.

Here fishy fishy fishy

The Miller homestead focuses mostly on growing vegetables, but we also take part in harvesting fresh local protein when the opportunity arises. Late September is the beginning of the local Salmon run. While the pacific northwest seems to get all the salmon run press, we have one as well, right within the city limits of Rochester.


Last year I went out with a few friends and tried to catch salmon with absolutely no luck, not even a bite. This year, I've been out a couple times with my friend Mike. The first time I had one on, but it got off as we were trying to figure out how we were going to land it without a net. The second time, Mike brought a net and we fared better. He landed this "small" 14lb King Salmon. I say small because other people who were nearby told us that this was smaller than average and they get a lot bigger (up to 40lbs or so).

After spending a little while figuring out how to gut it and remove the head, we took it home for further processing.
We probably spent about 1.5 hours cutting this thing up. Mostly it took that long because we didn't really know what we were doing, but it also took a while to remove all the pin bones. In the end, we were left with two sizable filets that we portioned. In the end there was about 5.5lbs of meat. I haven't actually had a chance to try it yet, but hopefully its yummy.

I was a bit hesitant to eat the fish since I had heard some unflattering things about Lake Ontario Salmon, but I did give it a try. I pan seared the Salmon and did a side-by-side comparison to some wild Washington state Coho salmon. In the picture below, the Coho is the pinker one. I actually had some wild King from Washington state and it was paler than the coho, but not as pale as the fish we caught. The Lake Ontario Salmon was significantly milder than the wild Coho. Much less fishy, but also less flavor in general. The texture was good. It was moist and soft. Not bad at all. I would eat it again, which is good since I have another 1.5 lbs of it! Also of note from this meal, the beans and potatoes are from the homestead, as well as the rosemary and sage used to season the potatoes and fish. Also had a pretty solid harvest from the garden this week. >1 lbs of bell peppers, >2 lbs of green beans, plus small amounts of broccoli, peas, and small peppers. The peppers that you see in the picture below had to be harvested because the branch they were on broke off due to the weight of the peppers and the heavy rain we got over the weekend.

Melon

Here is my one good melon. Unfortunately I had to pick it before it was 100% ripe. There was a dent in the rind (just above my thumb) that was getting bigger and softer, so I decided to harvest it before it got any worse.

Here is what it looks like inside. Not too shabby! It seems that the dent was an area of thin rind that was allowing the melon under it to dry out or something. Its wasn't rotten or moldy at all. The flavor was just OK, though. It wasn't as sweet as I'd like. I suspect that was because I picked it before it was fully ripe. Sadly, this is probably both the first and the last melon of the year since the vine is dying back.
On the other hand, the pepper plants are definitely NOT dying back. They are going crazy. Here is one of the bell pepper plants covered in peppers.
This is the largest of the peppers I've harvested to date. It would actually fit right in with the grocery store peppers. In the background you can see the rest of the recent harvest. The last cucumber of the season, 1.25 lbs of beans, 3/4 lb of broccoli, and a small amount of snow peas.

Its (unofficially) Fall

Night time temps are dipping into the low 50's or even lower. Some of the daytime highs aren't even hitting 70 degrees. That hasn't stopped the garden, though. The beans continue to grow, and while I was gone for a little while they overtook one of Jaime's herb pots. The beans have tons of flowers and little beans on them, so at least they're being productive while being annoying.

The corn looks like its ready to be bundled into a front-porch decoration.
The potatoes are somehow still going strong. What you see here is actually half of the potato plants. I grew early season red potatoes that finished and died off in june. Since I had some potatoes in my root cellar, I just left them in the ground. Now the long season Kennebec potatoes have totally overgrown a huge area and show no signs of slowing down. I can't even get to the early potatoes without damaging the greenery, so I've just decided to wait till it all dies back. Also in the picture below is a random broccoli plant that is just now growing its first head.
After being away for a while there was a good amount of stuff that was ripe/overripe and needed to be harvested. Broccoli, peas, beans, and two kinds of peppers. There are tons of Cayennes that are ripe also, but I'm leaving them on the plant as long as I can so that I will have a maximum number of ripe peppers at the end of the season for making hot sauce.
After harvesting the onions at the beginning of July, I replanted the area with various greens and some radishes. Seen below is one of the radish plants that is neither bolting nor growing a radish bulb. It is just growing like crazy instead. Radishes are supposed to be easy and quick, but I have not had good luck with them.
I had a viewer request for a picture from further back showing the whole garden. This is about as far back as I could get. This shows about 90% of the garden. What is left of the three sisters is against the garage to the left, peppers, broccoli, and brussels sprouts in the middle, pototoes on the near right side, and greens and peas in the back right.

Its about time for an update

For various reasons I haven't been giving my garden much attention lately. I finally got around to doing a bunch of needed work on it today. One of the things I did was thin out the carrots that I planted in July for (hopefully) fall harvest. These thinnings, while small, look promising. There are actually little baby carrots there!

For the last month or so, I noticed that there was a "volunteer" cucurbit growing out of one of the compost piles. Its not in the way of anything (its in a mostly shaded area), so I've been letting it grow. It has started to flower and by the looks of one of the female flowers, it seems to be a zuchinni plant. We'll see if it actually makes any zuchinnis before it gets too cold out. Here is said plant.
This area is a bunch of greens that I planted in July and August for fall picking. They are growing very well and need to be thinned out. There is lettuce, arugula, pak choi, and rapini in there.
Here is the pile of bean vegetation that grew up a couple of wooden stakes that I leaned against the garage. The stakes are 8', and the beans grew above that and up into the lilac bush. This variety is supposed to consistently grow beans all summer long. They certainly grew well all summer, but never produced a single bean. The crazy thing is that now they are covered in flower buds. I think they should have time to mature into beans before it gets too cold.
Meanwhile, the other bean variety has produced beans all summer. I'm not sure how I feel about the taste or texture of them, but they are productive. It turns out that if you let the beans keep growing without picking them, they can get huge.
Its always tough to get a good picture of the peppers since they are shrouded in foliage, but I was doing some re-staking of the pepper plants that are currently over-burdened with peppers and I was able to get a reasonable shot of the two cayenne pepper plants. There are (quite literally) dozens of cayennes on each plant and they keep growing more of them. I planned on making hot sauce out of them, but I may have more than I know what to do with.

Yet another garden update

A random closeup shot of ripe edamame on the plant.
Here are the fall greens that are coming along nicely. There is arugula, lettuce, rapini, and pak choi. They sure are doing a lot better than the same seeds in the spring.
Sad looking tomato plants in the topsy-turvy that are somehow producing tomatoes.
The first melon. I have high hopes for at least the flavor of these melons if not the quantity.
Harvest of the day. Broccoli, a couple small bell peppers that have blemishes, edamame, and a couple red popper peppers. I tried one of the red poppers and it just tasted like a red bell pepper to me.
The garlic and onions have been curing/drying in the garage for the past few weeks are done now.
Here's what they look like after the tops were cut off and the dirt gently brushed off. Almost two pounds of garlic. Two pounds of red onions, and almost 5 pounds of yellow onions.
Here is the garden during a downpour. I took this moments before it started hailing. There was a little bit of hail damage on the baby greens, but I think they'll be ok.

The next day I took a look at one of the oldest ears of corn and realized that it was borderline overly ripe. Looking at a couple of other ears, they looked ready to pick also. These ears almost look respectably sized, but it turns out there is a lot of empty space inside those husks. Some of the ears clearly didn't get pollinated as well as they could have been, even though I manually pollinated all the ears for the first few days that each ear emerged.

Here is what they look like inside. Hmm...I've seen bigger ears of corn. On the other hand, the reviews came back overwhelmingly positive for the flavor and texture.

After another rainstorm, I looked at the corn and found that the bean plants have broken the tops of some of the corn plants over. This 3-sisters thing is a terrible idea. I don't know what those indians were thinking. If I ever grow corn again, I will not be growing it together with climbing beans. Its only the top foot or so that is bent over, so hopefully it won't stunt the rest of the corn ears that are growing. These rainy days have been pretty common lately. In the last 17 days it has rained 4.79 inches. In the previous 60 days before that it rained 2.02 inches. On the one hand, I haven't had to water the garden at all in the last couple weeks, but on the other hand, yesterday I had to mow my lawn for the first time in literally two months.