What's in your garden, 2012?

While this kooky weather has accelerated the perennial growth cycle, and the self-seeded annual herbs (chervil, dill) seem to suddenly be everywhere, I take no chances with my chiles. Just seeded indoors today, and realized I have even more varieties than I remembered:

Poblano 'San Luis'
Thai Hot
Jalapeno 'Sierra Fuego'
New Mexico (Anaheim) 'Joe Parker'
Chilaca
Serrano 'Tampiqueno'

Still have 'Red Savina' habaneros and orange habaneros left to go. This is the first time I've ever grown chilacas, so I'm pretty stoked to have found the seed. The plug trays are outside right now, but they'll be coming in to spend the next two months in the laundry room nice and snug, for the next two months. Welcome to the house, fellas!

April Update:

I planted purple potatoes in both a BIG container in the condo courtyard and in the front herb/perennial bed, hard by the garlic and shallots. The container potatoes have just sprouted; I'll be banking soil up around them, mimicking a trick shared by Jamie Oliver on his gardening/cooking show. Very sturdy sprouts; hoping the squirrels don't see them.

Didn't buy seed potatoes; bought them from Nichols, at the Evanston Winter Market in February. The garlic is from Henry's Farm, at the Evanston farmers market last fall. This scheme has worked out very well so far, as you can buy precisely what you want to try, and in whatever quantity works with your space available. The shallots? Sprout-y leftovers from the Broadway Supermarket. Looking good so far.

I have a couple of hydroponic gardens and two pallet loads of aerogardens (that I got for dimes on the dollar) that are not being populated this season due to the rebuilding of the kitchen and several rooms. However, as soon as the frost warning is gone, catnip and cat loving peppermint are going to be planted in the front yard. i did promise a blog on how to do cheap aerogardens to several folks, so I am planning on next month building a couple with pictures and growing mild chili peppers.

We're just doing herbs this year. Our tomatoes were too successful and completely took over the deck last year. So far we've planted sweet, lemon, purple, box, and Thai basil; Greek and Italian oregano, lemon and German thyme, rosemary, sage, chives, majoram, tarragon, peppermint, chocolate mint, sweet mint, and catnip.

I am now kicking myself for not buying a papalo plant at the Evanston farmers market yesterday. If you've been to Cemitas Pueblas, you've had papalo, and there's really no substitute for it. Check out Teresa's Fruit and Herbs, right next to her brother Henry's organic veg stall.

Just catnip for us. Hopefully the whole garden in front of the house.

FYI: Tons of plant sales in the north 'burbs this weekend, most notably the Bloomin' Festival at the Chicago Botanic Garden. You should literally be able to find anything you're missing at at least one of these, and do good for the community and/or local growers, as well. Get moving!

I'd really like to grow shishito peppers again this year, but I cant remember where I bought my plant last year and I haven't been able to find a shishito seedling. Wish I'd have started these from seed, but too late now.

Has anyone seen shishito seedlings for sale around town?

Thanks,
--Rich

RAB wrote:I'd really like to grow shishito peppers again this year, but I cant remember where I bought my plant last year and I haven't been able to find a shishito seedling. Wish I'd have started these from seed, but too late now.

Has anyone seen shishito seedlings for sale around town?

Thanks,
--Rich

I'm in the market for a couple of these too--I bought a seedling at the Peterson Sale last weekend but it was very small and I don't think it's going to make it. So if anyone sees any, please post!!

Also, my ghost pepper source dried up this year--I'd bought a couple the last 2 years from a place on Rt. 30 in Ford Heights but they didn't do any this year. So in the market for those as well if anyone sees them (Bhut Jolokia/ghost pepper)

We have started our corn and basil from seed and have planted some red onions. We finally weeded the veggie garden and have mulched-ready to start planting tomatos, cabbage, cucumbers, spanish onions and peppers. Saw some chinese veggie seeds-bitter melon, mustard greeens, bok choy and plenty of others at the Vietnamese grocery store in the large strip mall on Broadway just south of Argyle. Tempting-wonder if it is too late. Our sage, chives, oregano and cilantro as well as lettuce are growing at record pace. The asparagus is 3 feet high! We grew watermelon last year and opted out this year- a lot of vines with small return.

Here are a few shots of this year's garden. After my initial trial this past summer which included a vegetable-heavy garden plot and potted herbs, I've decided to concentrate my garden space for tomatoes and herbs, specifically perennial herbs that will (hopefully) come back year after year. With the warm winter and spring we're having in Minnesota, we planted the garden on May 13th:







I'll make an effort to update the status of the garden throughout the growing season.

Amazingly enough, the extraordinary weather in March,plus my use of "walls of water" combined so that last week I began harvesting cherry tomatoes from my raised bed garden!

OK, I've finally gotten almost everything in the ground. I went a bit peppers crazy. I've got 47 pepper plants at the moment, with two more (bhut jolokias from my brother) to come. So, we've got fatalii, mustard habanero, alma paprika, hot portugals, rooster spur, a single Trinidad scorpion, scotch bonnets, and Thai chiles. Only ten tomato plants: 2xWisconsin 55, and 8xMegabites (never grown either of those before.) In the herb section, we have stuff from last year that made it through: chervil, lovage, English thyme, lavender, chives, sage, some sort of mint, dill, rosemary, and a gooseberry bush. Added to the garden: oregano, marjoram, tarragon, cinnamon basil. I still need to add a couple more basil plants (Thai basil. I might add a traditional sweet basil plant, too, but I find myself always going for the cinnamon and Thai basils.) Oh, and there's a sad strawberry plant somewhere back there, too.

Anybody have any recommendations for herbs or veggies that like shade? I have a plot of dirt abutting the north side of the garage that gets very little direct sunshine that I've never used for planting. Weeds run rampant in it, so it's not like it can't support plant life.

RAB wrote:I'd really like to grow shishito peppers again this year, but I cant remember where I bought my plant last year and I haven't been able to find a shishito seedling. Wish I'd have started these from seed, but too late now.

Has anyone seen shishito seedlings for sale around town?

Thanks,
--Rich

We just bought a Shishito pepper plant from Genesis Growers at the Green City Market.

Gethsemane had a bunch of pepper plants and vaguely remember seeing Shishitos among them.

Rule of thumb I've always followed is that anything you're growing for the leaves (lettuces, arugula, kale, chard, spinach, etc.) does fine in partial sun. I've also managed to grow beans and peas in shady areas. Not sure you could do much with NO sun but partial (a few hours/day) or dappled sun should work just fine.

Darren72 wrote:

RAB wrote:I'd really like to grow shishito peppers again this year, but I cant remember where I bought my plant last year and I haven't been able to find a shishito seedling. Wish I'd have started these from seed, but too late now.

Has anyone seen shishito seedlings for sale around town?

Thanks,
--Rich

We just bought a Shishito pepper plant from Genesis Growers at the Green City Market.

Gethsemane had a bunch of pepper plants and vaguely remember seeing Shishitos among them.

I ordered Shishito seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
I got two out of 20 seeds to sprout so not recommending them
the two plant are in the ground and here is to hoping they produce some peppers!

boudreaulicious wrote:Rule of thumb I've always followed is that anything you're growing for the leaves (lettuces, arugula, kale, chard, spinach, etc.) does fine in partial sun. I've also managed to grow beans and peas in shady areas. Not sure you could do much with NO sun but partial (a few hours/day) or dappled sun should work just fine.

Thanks. I know I've grown chervil on that side before (just realized that my "never" growing anything on that side isn't completely true) and it did okay, but it's jumped across the garden to the sunny side.

BTW, I'm checking with my brother to see if he's got a source for those bhut jolokias, or if he was just gifted them and generously passed on a couple my way. Last time I got "bhut jolokias" (two or three years ago), they turned out to be some sort of mild Italian frying pepper-type thing. I was SO disappointed, as it was the very first time I grew something from a very young seedling stage. On the positive side, I didn't pay anything for them.

In regards to the bhut jolokias, my brother says he got them here:

Vern Goers Greenhouse
5620 South Oak Street
Hinsdale, IL 60521
(630) 323-1085

Call ahead to check availability.

I am growing herbs in large pots on my patio. I group several together in a pot and it looks very pretty. I have basil, sage, rosemary, thyme, greek oregano and dill. I also planted a pot with flowers and purple kale in the middle. In the garden itself we have Black prince and one other kind of heirloom tomato and a few other tomato plants. Cucumbers and hot peppers. Rhubarb. I have two large pots at my front door that usually are planted with geraniums but I am thinking of doing rainbow swiss chard in the pots and incorporating some flowers with it. I like the idea of putting edible plants and flowers together.

Spent a fair bit of money on seeds, with limited success, but at least they're in the ground as of Sunday morning:

Paragon, Pineapple and an italian plum variety whose name escapes me
A red bell and jalapeno (not many of those grew well)
Basil
Dinosaur Kale
Delicata Squash
Pickling cukes
Thyme (pot from Fresh Farms -- $0.99 for a nice-sized pot of that and a genovese basil to supplement the itsy bitsy seedlings)

None of my tomatillo seedlings survived the pressures of an extended absence a couple weeks ago, plus the hardening off of the last week (too many temperature extremes) -- I'll have to see if I can find a couple small pots, and/or scatter a few seeds.

I got some things in pretty early so now the peas are flowering and setting pods and the potatoes are flowering. Winter onions are topping out and were too strong to eat weeks ago. I picked enough chive flowers to replenish my stock of chive flower vinegar and to give some away.

Lettuces and radishes have been salad fixings for a while and spinich is big enough to pick. Beets (2 kinds), Swill Chard, carrots (2 kinds) and turnips are up but no sign of the parsnips yet. I got those seeds in a little late and they're picky. This year I think we planted 7 different tomato varieties and I can't remember them all off hand. I bought tomato and pepper plants as well as broccoli and brussels sprouts. I have room for them in the garden but no room to start seedlings indoors. Oh well.

We're also growing burpless and pickle cucumbers, pole beans (heirloom Turkey Craw) and are hopeful we can get some canteloupe before the squirrels eat them. And lots of different herbs, garlic chives, and garlic. Also started a new bed of strawberries to replace one that got trashed last year.

My persimmon tree finally leafed out so hopefully we'll have fruit this fall. It fruited for the first time last year but we only got about 5 fruits. And of course, rhubarb that has already found it's way into muffins and pie.

I finally did plant the front door pots with rainbow swiss chard. I surrounded the chard with small marigolds and red verbena. Very pretty and I do not miss the geraniums there. I also put a few eggplant plants in the back garden for the fun of it.

Some pics of my bhut jolokia





Lots of peppers waiting to turn red

I harvested a few of my fataliis yesterday:



For those of you who like habanero-type peppers (Capsicum chinense), I strongly urge you to seek these out. In terms of flavor and heat level, these can't be beat. This particular batch is hotter than my Scotch bonnets and mustard habaneros, but what I love about these is their flavor. It's similar to an orange habanero, but even fruitier, and a little bit, I don't know, sweeter perhaps? But there is serious fire in these things. These are definitely my favorite Capsicum chinense peppers.

I decided to showcase them in a simple arrabiata-type of preparation. I used bacon, pureed tomatoes from the garden, one finely diced fatalii, a couple cloves of garlic, and then garnished it with cinnamon basil and Polish smoked cheese from the Tatras (not oscypek, but something akin to a fresher milder version of it.)



I also had half a Trinidad Scorpion pepper today. On an empty stomach first thing in the morning. Let's just say that that was not a very good idea.

Nice lookin' chiles! I have a couple of newbies this year, too: pequillo, and yet another strain of NuMex. Both have just started to set fruit. Crazy ecumenical cross-section of container chiles this year, covering the globe like the Wide World of Sports: Caribbean (2), Japanese (1), Spanish (1), Mexican (4), and the NuMex from the Chile Pepper Institute at NMSU.

Also, I just harvested my purple Peruvian taters, also container-grown, that I planted during that kooky spell of very warm weather that we had in late March. Container-grown spuds are the way to go, if you have big enough containers. I grew mine from a half-dozen that I picked up from Nichols at the Evanston winter market; I have three more plants in the veg corner of my flower/herb garden, but they're going to be a while yet. Time for a lurid potato salad!

sundevilpeg wrote:Nice lookin' chiles! I have a couple of newbies this year, too: pequillo, and yet another strain of NuMex. Both have just started to set fruit.

Yeah, mine have been weird this year. A few of my chiles I've been harvesting for the last two months. Most of my ultra hots haven't started to set fruit until a week or two ago. All the plants are HUGE! For me, the winners this year were easily the fatalii and the rooster spur peppers. I definitely want to continue those next year. I'm also curious to try aji amarillo, or any of the capsicum baccatum peppers (peppadew, lemondrop, etc.), as I don't think I've ever had any of those, except in an aji amarillo hot sauce.

Long Tom tomatoes...a big hit this year.

I still have celery, tomatoes and squash. I have a lone cuke and my brussel sprouts are still fetal size. I have huge cabage leaves-no heads. My basil was not so good this year-it got too much water-it is a light green with some yellow leaves but super tall and still flowering. Wonder if I can use it in a pesto or other sauce. But my sage, oregano, rosemary and chives are still going strong. My onions are done.

Just harvested my Zeus hops. Wet-hopped ale coming soon.