8th Harvest 8-14-07

Believe it or not, the orange and red peppers, are banana peppers, I have no idea where the color comes from.

7th Harvest 8-8-07

As big as 6 I think. Could be bigger. Man, if u didn't lose the littlest one's to attrition, this would be overwhelming to say the least! The smallest usually have some damage, might be why they stopped growing, they get wrinkled fast. Got and order for tomatoes and banana peppers, happy to oblige.

6th Harvest 7-31-07

I don't think these things are ever going to stop producing, they just keep sending out branches and flowering.

These are supposed to be "low lying" plants, and I figured if they aren't going to get more than 3-4 feet of the ground I wouldn't need a tomato cage, but now I think I should have at least staked some of them out just to keep the fruit off the ground. Some have damage to the bottom of the tomato where it sat in the dirt. As you can see the branches have filled in the middle again, where I cut them back, and since we are still getting 90 degree weather, I'm not going to cut any at this time,

Next year I plan to use a stake and fence technique that I think will work really well with this type of plant and allow for more branches, as they develop.

The peppers are still growing and flowering also although the jalapenos are mild they are quite flavorful.

Unbelievable! 6 days ago they were all green, and this is the biggest bunch so far!

5th Harvest 7-25-07

Wow I never expected 4 plants would produce this much! Everyday I see more starting to change color, and overnight they change in bunches!
On top of that, each plant is still producing branches with flowers, which means they're not done yet!

3rd Harvest 7-21 thru 7-23-07

I picked these,

then before I downloaded the pictures, two days later, I decided to give some of the jalapenos, and banana peppers away with the tomatoes so, I had more harvesting to do!

So this is a combined harvest 3 and 4. They're growing faster than I can give them away.

2nd Harvest 7-21-07

Not bad over 20 tomatoes. Even though I am using bug spray, some are still showing signs of hornworm damage, so I decided to take the tomatoes as soon as they start showing color. This also is necessary if the weather turns hot and we keep getting mid 90's.

A Peck of Pickled Peppers 7-15-07

Since the jalapenos were mild in the heat factor, and the banana peppers don't have much flavor, I decided to try my hand at pickling. I found a simple pickling recipe and decided to go for it.

The recipe calls for jalapeno and serrano peppers so I had to buy and add the serrano for more bulk. I ended up with 3 pounds total weight. I have a large pot that could hold about 5 pint mason jars and decided to use that, as a pickling pot, because canning pots are on average about $80.

The process was long and hot but in the end not too hard, although this might be my first and last time.

As you can see all that reduced to about 4 1/2 jars of pickled peppers. Now we wait and see if I did it right, and they don't go bad, I'm told it takes about 5 to 6 weeks for full pickling.