#Bell Pepper Harvest

[askwhatsforlunch]

Growing Tip: Growing Bell Peppers

As I always say, gardening, especially growing fruit and vegetables, teaches one patience and perseverance. And I can also say that it often rewards it, too.

Last year, I Planted Bell Peppers in the Lasagna Garden. After a week, some of the young seedlings were gone, and those which did take and started growing were eventually eaten (by whom, I am not sure; certainly not me!)

What this taught me was that I maybe had not waited enough before planting the seedlings, which were too young and fragile.

Thus, I kept the ones I still had upstairs in 'The Nursery' there. All Summer, Autumn and Winter! I watered them regularly, oftener in the warm months, and decreasingly as the days became chillier and then properly cold. Whilst it was freezing outside, my seedlings, then growing into leafy plants were warm and cosy under the window, providing them with all the light they needed.

In April of this year, they were lush and green, and just about to bloom! I was absolutely chuffed.

I waited until all risk of late frost had passed and, a month later, on the 19th of May, I prepared two large pots in the garden, which I filled with a mix of garden soil, vegetable potting soil and compost. I planted my three Bell Pepper Plants in them.

Soon enough, they were growing and flowering beautifully!

And in early June, some of the flowers became tiny Bell Peppers!

And from then on, they grow quite quickly! All one has to do is to water them regularly (their soil should always be moist, but never soggy), every two weeks with a mixture of 1 cup Onion Skin Decoction and 4 cups Nettle Soup in a watering can, topped with about 8 litres of water. It both encourage growth and protects them from insects. Likewise, if slugs manage to crawl into your Bell Pepper pots (they are very fond of the leaves!), sprinkle Coffee Grounds generously at their feet; it shall deter them!

And then, just watch the magic happens as they grow bigger with each passing day. These pictures (above) were taken in late June!

And these (still above) in early July!

Finally, I harvested my first Bell Pepper on the 8th of August! It is big enough, eh!

And there are plenty more growing on the plants, which are also still flowering! I am very happy I learned to be patient; --and this isn't the first of my qualities!-- it was more than worth it!

You can harvest Bell Peppers green, and let them ripen in the kitchen, they will become orange-y before turning red! I like to have a mix of colours in my dishes, thus I allow them to reach different degrees of ripeness. They will also taste and feel different: Green Bell Peppers are firmer and crisp, and fresh whilst Orange and Red ones are softer, mellower and sweeter in flavour.

[ahedderick]

Bell peppers seem to LOVE a dry year. K meticulously chopped all these and I froze them spread out on a cookie sheet. Stored in a big ziploc bag, they will await the ripening of the tomatoes and the Days of Sauce. I need to chop some of the onions, too, because the ones we grew this year don't look like they're going to be good keepers. Sometimes you can store them long-term . . and sometimes you cannot.

My neighbor just drove his bobcat s-l-o-w-l-y up the lane to deliver a round bale for Hero and Missile. I gave him a big bouquet from the garden in trade.

[bridoesotherjunk]

I harvested peppers today 😊

[inthecityofgoodabode]

August 2024: The Last Full Week

Tuesday harvest:

My queen having fun while we were scouting out places to fish:

One of the ponds that we looked at:

Our second planting of corn is starting to tassel. This variety is Fisher's Earliest:

The Kumato tomatoes that we grew from seeds collected from store-bought tomatoes are starting to ripen:

Friday harvest. All the summer squash & cucumbers are from our front yard garden volunteers:

We went fishing today. We came home empty-handed but I got this nice photo of the Wolf River:

[anipgarden]

My Dad: hey I accidentally stepped out into the garden. Check the oven.

Me: ????

The Stove:

Holy FUCK we are popping off with the tomatoes this year.

[ediblegardenspointloma]

In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen

These are the days of small harvests. The seeds and plants of promise grow along in the warm, but waning autumn sun. Rain later this week will spur growth.

Cranberry beans harvested last month formed the base of several salads and a soup. Read more about the Dry Bean Harvest. Warm Cauliflower and Cranberry Bean Salad from Smitten Kitchen was a culinary delight. The cauliflower was pan roasted and an olive oil, white balsamic, Dijon dressing was superb. I’ll repeat when my cauliflower is ready. Maybe purple cauliflower with the cannellini dry beans I grew.

Here, a small cutting of arugula, the beans and red bell peppers combine for a savory lunch salad.

Other small and final harvests—Hot Cocoa rose and strawberry guavas.

The last of the bell peppers find their way into salads and entrees. We enjoy the red ones sliced with lunch.

I dice the peppers and freeze on a tray before storing in containers. They’re useful in the off season.

Some of our apples for Apple-Pear-Cranberry crisp.

A bouquet from what’s at hand in the garden—grevillea, cosmos, willows and red fountain grass.

Check the What I’m Planting Now page as I transplant and sow seeds for the cool season garden.

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[kan-bu]

hi hi hi!! look at my very amazing gardening project im super proud of!!! with so so many growing bell peppers and never ending harvest of parsley + chives + basil + oregano

[gb275]

My Friday harvest is exactly on time for that fish I prepared for shabbat

[venvsflyytrapp]

6 pound, 6 oz sweet potato and other harvest

[sheikh-n-bake2]

Harvest season

[the-re-farmer]

Our 2024 Garden: a little morning harvest

Well, the predicted rain did start last night, and it’s still raining now. Sort of. It’s a very light, barely there sort of rain. I’m just hoping it keeps up long enough to actually water the garden. It’s actually pretty much stopped right now, but it’s supposed to start up again this afternoon – quite different from the prediction of rain all morning that I was looking at last night. I did���

[askwhatsforlunch]

Smoked Tofu and Vegetable Stir-Fry (Vegan)

This tasty Smoked Tofu and Vegetable Stir-Fry makes a lovely and easy lunch --especially if you only have to walk in the garden to pick Bell Peppers! Cutting the carrots will be the longest step, then it all comes together quickly and deliciously!

Ingredients (serves 2):

2 large carrots, rinsed

1/2 green Bell Pepper, rinsed

1/2 red Bell Pepper, rinsed

1 1/2 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

1/2 large onion

100 grams/3.5 ounces firm smoked tofu

1/4 teaspoon Red Chili Flakes 

2 tablespoon soy sauce

Peel carrots, and cut them into thin strips.

Seed green and red Bell Peppers, and cut them into thin strips as well.

Heat a large wok over medium-high heat. Once hot, add sesame oil.

Stir in carrots strips, and sauté, a couple of minutes. Then add red and green Bell Peppers strips.

Peel and thinly slice onion, and stir into the wok. Cook, a couple of minutes more.

Cut smoked tofu into strips too, and stir into the wok. Sauté, 1 minute.

Season with Red Chili Flakes and deglaze with soy sauce. Reduce heat to medium, and cover with a lid. Cook, about 8 to 10 minutes more until carrots are just tender but keep a bit of their bite.

Serve Smoked Tofu and Vegetable Stir-Fry hot.

[papa-squat-89]

Bell peppers, cantaloupe, avocado, rose of Sharon, cherry, black berry, raspberry, citrus fruits, and smart weed/pink weed

[queenofcandynsoda]

Harvesting potatoes and peppers from my home garden~

[the-bottle-tree]

Today we harvested our first bounty of the year! A beautiful bell pepper and 3 Jalepenos! We are so excite to have them in our meals this week. Fresh form the garden picks are always so much better than anything we can buy in a store.

The passion flower is blooming! She looks absolutely gorgeous and I'm so happy that these just decided to pop in our garden last year. I guess the birds dropped them off. 😅🤣

I thought I should do an update on the Rosemary that I saved. She is doing very well considering how close to death she was! She is growing new little baby arms and I'm so excited.

We were supposed to get lots of rain this weekend....So I had decided not water or do anything yesterday after I finished working in the garden. I left the orange mint plant to it's own devices too thinking we would be getting an inch or two of rain. SURPRISE. We got absolutely nothing so I had to water this little guy. It was limp and sad today but I was so worried about overwatering since other things in the garden were looking a little sad from over watering.

Other than that everything in the garden is looking good today and totally enjoyed the sun!

[hedgehog-moss]

I finally planted my garden last week! We had a couple of days of sun which gave me hope, but it's once again raining every day. Thoughts and prayers for my tomato plants, but I couldn't keep everyone in the greenhouse forever, I had to make room for other plants.

(In the fourth picture above you can see what's inside the hügelkultur mound—it's a pile of branches + llama manure + compost + potting soil. One thing I find great about it is how well it retains moisture! Well it's not a problem this year so far but during heat waves I water these plants a lot less than non-mound plants.)

In the greenhouse my seedlings have been struggling due to lack of sun. Impossible to get courgette plants so I had to buy a few from the young couple in town who recently started a plant nursery—they didn't have many either, and I had to share with the mayor who also came looking for courgette plants because slugs devoured all of his.

He must have seen on my face that I thought my plants didn't stand a chance if slugs don't even respect municipal authority, because he kindly advised me to place crowns of bedstraw (see above) around my plants to protect them. I didn't dare to ask "If it works so well why do you have no courgette plants left?" I just said thank you, and then spent an entire evening last week weaving this sticky weed into crowns and whatsapping photos of my art to the mayor, who always replied "More! More! It needs to be thicker! Like a doughnut!"

Meanwhile 1 leek in the greenhouse suddenly grew a lot thicker while the other 3 remained skinny and fearful-looking and I'm not sure why. They share a pot, so maybe it's like vanishing twin syndrome. My bell pepper seeds had the same asynchronous development issue—one pot is just now starting to have timid seedlings while the other (right next to it) already contains a grown-up plant with baby peppers:

By far my happiest greenhouse plants are the potatoes and lettuce. They shot up so fast! I've been eating a lot of lettuce lately but I can't keep up with how quickly they grow in this cold, rainy spring. And I haven't had any slug raids in the greenhouse so that's great.

My greenhouse squash, onions and pickles are still tiny and not worth a photo (harsh, but this post already has too many photos). My strawberries in the aquaponic towers are beautiful despite the lack of sun and I've been getting mini-harvests of 2-3 strawberries a day for two weeks! They're done now, but I started more seeds so maybe I can get a second round at the end of the month.

Three more things:

1. Morille helped a lot as I was planting the garden. She kept an eye on my gardening tools so no one would steal them, and sometimes used them as cheek-scratchers. At one point I put one of my beautiful bedstraw crowns around her neck so she looked like Philip III of Spain in that painting where he wears a big ruff, but tragically she ran away in outrage before I could take a picture, and when she returned she'd got rid of her collar.

2. At the cow parade the other day there was a lady at the market who sold jars of homemade pesto sauce made from all kinds of different plants, and it opened up my mind to entirely new pesto horizons!! I always make the traditional kind with basil, but I have plants that grow much faster than basil, like my rocket, so I tried making pesto with 1/3 basil 2/3 rocket (plus garlic, olive oil, parmesan, cashews) and it was so good! I have to explore all of her recipes now, like plantain or nettle or sage pesto...

3. There's a monster in the greenhouse. It appeared practically overnight and is quickly claiming more and more territory. Unlike last year it's not a parsley monster—it's my lemon balm. One day it was growing in its vertical tower, luxuriant but tidy, like a normal plant, and the next it had quintupled in volume and was threatening to swallow the nearest planter. Look at the tiny tomato plants, they look terrified of it!

I urgently need to fight back against this giant mélisse (as we call lemon balm) but I've been really busy and I keep putting it off, and then remembering anxiously at 11pm that I still have this creature to take care of, which is ironic seeing as lemon balm is supposed to relieve stress and anxiety. This is the exact opposite of why I planted you. Anyway if you never hear from me again after this post it's because I finally engaged in battle against this year's vegetal menace, and lost.