It's starting to look like all of our efforts are starting to pay off;  This weekend, after getting back from a little family vacation to Michigan, we came home to discover a veritable cornucopia of veggies waiting for us.  We had actually already picked about a half-quart of green beans just last week, but in one week's time the plants we had were already full again.  As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too many green beans.  On the other hand, I think we may have overdone it on the jalapeño peppers; We picked about 20 peppers last night, and left behind at least half as many that weren't quite ready yet.  If they keep up the same pace that the green beans have been taking, we'll be swimming in homemade salsa by the fall.

Unfortunately, the tomato plants are thirsty little devils and we're barely keeping them up;  We did get a ripe tomato yesterday that I'm excited to try out, hopefully the rest of the plants will hang in there.  The rest of the plants are coming along pretty well, with the green peppers getting to a pretty good size and the cayenne peppers are the right size, but not quite red yet.  We've also got a couple tiny, baby eggplants just beginning to form.

Lessons learned so far:

1. Broccoli takes up more space than it's really worth 
2. One jalapeño plant is plenty
3. Tomato plants take a ton of water
4. Homegrown green beans are so much better than store bought.

Comments (3)

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written by Chalupa, July 26, 2008

It might have just been a fluke, or maybe we had special peppers. Let me know if it works though.

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written by andy, July 21, 2008

Awesome, thanks for the tip. I haven't tried any of these guys yet, but I plan to tonight. I'll let you know where they rank on the scoville scale.

So, even plain-old green bell peppers got hot when you left them on the vine for a while? We have several of those plants going, I'd be interested in seeing how that works out.

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written by Chalupa, July 21, 2008

My mom always had a garden thing going growing up. We found out with the peppers if you leave them on the plants they'll eventually turn a darker color, almost black, and then they're really hot. We first found this out with bell peppers, both the green and red varieties. The next year we noticed the same with jalapenos. Maybe give that a try if you want some with extra kick.

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