Scorching the Garden 2019 Part 9
Every year we grow the peppers and garlic and onions and herbs to make our sauces. Every year we try something new that we hope is better. We ditch something that doesn’t work out. And we repeat and refine those things that promote the completion of our goals. Follow along and steal all our ideas as we Scorch the Garden in 2019.
We are in the home stretch for our growing season. While we are experiencing unseasonably high temperatures, its not going to last forever and can take a big dip very quickly. To be honest, we are nervous that the final harvest will be much less than projected.
This year, our harvest moons were September 13th and 14th. The weeks following are when everything starts to ripen all at once. We still have LOTS of flowers on the plants and many green pods.
The milder peppers will ripen first, then the super hots. These pepperoncinis are looking really good.
The plants are lush, but not as big as last year. Every sunrise reveals the peppers are getting bigger, riper, and closer to being ready for picking.
Our weed situation is still completely under control. A few sprout up here and there, and as we are so close to ending the season, we aren’t on a seek and destroy mission like we used to be. We plan on planting garlic after the plants die for harvest in June and July.
If anything, the Hungarian Wax always makes a good show of things. We always have a few pounds left over at the end of the year. They get tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and basil and baked until the skin starts to turn brown. Drape some of that salty, spicy pepper goodness on a thick slice of fresh Italian bread with a bit of Romano or nutritional yeast-NOTHING IS BETTER!
We doubled our land this year, which may have saved the day. We had to do a lot of extra work to be able to accommodate our growth and learn better ways to work smarter. We came up with better ways of water capture and transporting. We reaped the rewards of knowing how valuable doing all that extra prep is. It would be so nice to be able to grow year round. That’s a future goal TBD, sometime in the future. See you for the final harvests.
