Pepper Pictures

I got a viewer request for some pictures of the actual peppers. The first picture is one of the bell pepper plants. Its not easy to get a good picture of the peppers, but there are 4 or so on each plant The peppers are almost 2" wide now.

This is one of the cayenne pepper plants. The have sparser foliage, so its easier to see them. Both plants have about 10-12 peppers on them, with the biggest ones about 4" long now.
This is the red popper variety given to me by a friend. I think they are supposed to be small red sweet ones. In fact, the peppers seem to have stopped getting bigger (1-1.5")and look like they are starting to turn color. There are about 8 pepper per plant right now.
Bonus pictures of corn. You can see that some of the plants are fully tasseled out now. Unfortunately they are only about 3 feet tall. The corn might be a total failure. It also means that the beans don't really have much to climb and they are just a big tangled mess.
So far I've only found one baby ear of corn. You can just see the silk starting to come out in this picture.

Another Garden Update

This is the potato/lettuce area. The potoato plants are all sort of flopping over in random directions. Last year my potatoes all flopped to the south, but this year they are going in all directions, which is annoying. On the right side of the picture there are supposed to be lettuce plants, but you cant really see them underneath the potatoes. You may or may not be able to see that some of the potatoes on the left side look sickly and are turning brown/yellow. I think that just means that those early season potatoes are basically done, but I haven't checked underground to confirm that yet.

Here is the broccoli/cauliflower patch. Just a few days ago I harvested a small head from the plant in the front left. The others don't show any signs of making heads yet.

Topsy-turvy with tomatoes. Asparagus behind that, and kale underneath it. The kale is ready for harvest, I just need to find a night when both Jaime and I are around at the same time and one of us has enough time to cook dinner.

The pea patch. It has basically stopped producing, so these plants got ripped out soon after this picture was taken. In a couple days, I'm going to plant some more peas and we'll see if we can get a fall crop out of them.

The edamame (soybean) patch. I'm not sure if they are supposed to be bushy or climbing or what. They are relatively tall and spindly, but don't have any tendrils to cling onto anything. I've been trying to keep them upright, but they are starting to fall over.

At least they are starting to grow edamame pods!

Here is the three sisters patch. This doesn't look too impressive in the picture, but be assured that there is quite a bit of vegetation there. The corn on the right was given to me by a friend. It doesn't seem to be doing very well. The middle patch was planted a week later and is growing quite well. I just noticed that if you look down into the middle of the plants, you can see the pollen producing thingys starting to grow. It seems a bit early in the year for that, but I don't have much corn growing experience. The patch on the left was the last planting of corn and is doing well. The beans are still growing vigorously and are flowering now. The cucumber and melon are also growing well.

First cuke of the year!

Pepper plants. They continue to grow and flower like crazy with all the sun and heat we've been having. A couple of the plants had fallen over and needed to be propped back up. I remember last year that I had to stake up all of the pepper plants to keep them upright, so I'll probably have to do that for these soon.

Perhaps its all the peppers that are weighing the plant down! All the plants have peppers on them. You can see out-of-focus cayenne peppers in the foreground and sweet red poppers further back. The bell peppers are hidden behind those plants.

The brussels sprouts row with bonus radishes and arugula. The radishes seem full grown and are getting in the way of the brussels sprouts, so they got yanked out soon after this picture. The arugula also got yanked because it looks like it will continue to keep flowering and producing seed pods all summer. There are already a couple hundred seed pods, so I figured its about time to yank the plants. I'm letting the seed pods dry on the stalks and hopefully they'll be good seeds for next year.

See, I told you there were baby brussels sprouts in there.

Its garlic harvest time! About half of the leaves are brown and most of the stems are getting soft and starting to bend over. I was excited to harvest the garlic because I have no idea if anything is underground and I've never seen garlic harvested.

Success!!

Lots of success! These went into the garage to dry. I read that unlike onions, garlic shouldn't be left out in the sun to dry.
Speaking of onions, here is the onion patch. You can see that all of them are flopped over on the ground (except for the scallions). After they've been fallen over for a little while and the necks are all soft, they are ready to harvest. I swear, onions are the easiest things to grow. Plant an onion set in early spring, keep it weeded, and just yank them out of the ground when they're done.
Easy, yes. Prize-winning bulbs...no. By sheer quantity I got a good amount of onions, but those are pretty small. I should have put something in the picture for scale, but the biggest white onions are about the diameter of a pop (or soda) can.

Other harvest from today. The last of the peas, a few radishes, and the first cucumber.

After all the harvesting, I about 15lbs of dried poultry manure all over the garden. In the areas where I had just pulled out all the plants, I turned over the dirt and mixed in the manure. Here are the onion and snow pea patches after I turned them over.
In a couple days I'm planning on planting some fall crops. A couple different kinds of greens, a second planting of snow peas, and the first carrots to be planted and the homestead.

Knee High By the Fourth of July!