Green Thumb Season 3 - Ep.1

Another Spring came to an end so you know what that meant. It was time to bring more young plants to our not so spacious, but effective, potted plan garden on the deck! This year we built upon our last two years knowledge and picked our spots for the best blend of edibles. We ended up going with two grape tomato plants, one cucumber plant (burpless), three pepper plants (poblano, jalapeño & habanero), sweet basil, rosemary and cilantro. We improved a bit on last year by getting a few new pots, and using a new technique on one of our cherry tomato plants - using plastic bottles for additional drainage at the bottom of the potting soil. We also got plant food to use, which is only to be used in light spoonfuls, per plant, per month.

I was going to do a preview post, then roll into episode one, but I took so long to begin who cares at this point! By the time you read this our crops have been growing for about almost three months in their new digs, but the time being we'll focus on the first month or so of action. By this point the cucumbers were already trying to strangle everything around it. Seriously, keep daily check on your cucumber vines as they like to latch onto everything. The weather this year has been pretty dry on the whole, but it started acting like Spring around the beginning of May. It rained every other day all the first week so we didn't have to use tap water until week deux.

The only downside from our purchases is that our cilantro is flowering a bit too much, so it turns out we have a dud (or something we're unaware of made it start seeding) leaving very little herbaceous leaves to reap currently. Long story short, things are looking pretty good on this front. I'll update again in another couple weeks.

Highlights from week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

Dreaded seeding.

Green Thumb Season 2 - Ep. 4

If you remember the plan from last time, while we were away from the Country we had my brother-in-law Chris come by the house to water our plants. After getting back from Europe into Philadelphia Int'l Airport, on Thursday, Chris picked us up. I asked him how long it had been since he'd been there to water the plants and he said Tuesday. I was worried. I asked how often he'd been going over and he said every couple of days. I was even more worried. We got home and I made a b-line for the deck with water in hand. Yeap, I had reason to be worried.



irregular growth

The cucumber plants were just about depleted. They require a bit of water due to the size of the fruit and since this had been a particularly hot and dry week, some of the major veins had dried up. There were a couple cucumbers that hadn't been picked yet, so we took those off and tended to the cucumber plants to see if they could make a recovery. Now this wasn't as bad as it seems, as the cucumbers didn't have much more fruit in the tank for the season. The pepper plants on the other hand had thrived; they didn't need as much watering attention, obviously, and all the plants had produced more peppers while we were gone.


Italian Sweet pepper.



Yummy pepper.



Post-trip bounty.


After a week or so passed I decided to ask Beth, who was off for the summer, to make her way to the local nursery's to see if should could find some other herbs or something that we could replace the cucumber plants with. No one in a radius of 10miles had anything; it's odd too because there's at least two months left of warmth with the way the seasons go these days. Anyways, the focus was now on the evolution of the peppers. We took a few jalapeños off and used them in different food dishes and we were pleased to find they had good kick. The Thai peppers weren't quite as strong. Their seeds packed a decent punch, but they were no where close to as hot as I hoped...and I like hot peppers.


Last weeks' chicken fajitas.

Not too much later the Thai and Yummy peppers began to mature. The Thai Hot peppers can be picked while green, but red is preferred. I'm not sure if red necessarily means the flavor and spice has matured, but why not. The Yummy peppers have a similar picking option, green or orange-yellow. We've been having the Yummy peppers in salads and the Italian sweets and jalepeño's have been included in peppers and onions sauteed up for dinner with chicken sausages, beef and chicken fajitas. Unfortunately I don't have many pics of the dishes due to how busy I've been lately, but here are some shots of the last few weeks of growth.

Week 15:



New Yummy's on the way.



Week 16:


Yummy's starting to turn.

The jalepeños have been the best performer this year.

This may be the end of this series as there's a ton of effort going into recapping Eurotrip 2011 through the Fall and editing about 10k images taken over the past month (and more coming up). Never fear, Season 3 will start when the next crop is planted!

Green Thumb Season 2 - Ep. 3

First pepper harvest.

Another few weeks have gone by and we've kept pretty consistent with watering; the cucumbers still require the lions share of water per day, to keep up with production, and there are a few things that have now become quite clear. For one, I don't know how to look for cucumbers. When I was showing pictures of all those mini cucumbers previously, I was unaware of some hidden ones well on their way to maturity. One major reason for this oversight was me assuming all the tiny cucumbers would mature simultaneously. This ideal wasn't proven incorrect until recently as the the larger cucumbers weren't very easy to see...and there is a very good reason for that. Cucumbers need shade to grow, but need a ton of sun to fuel said growth. As these two plants found their directions to grow from the pot, the leaves dispersed from a central position and followed the outstretching vines that developed. In these heavily shaded areas where the leaves grew, a few cucumbers began receiving the majority of nutrients the plants created. Thus it seems only about three or four large cucumbers will be on pace for harvest at any given time. The large cucumbers Beth found while I was on the road, not too long ago, were hanging off the back of the pots, out of the sun. The first cucumber picked was pretty damn large (Finkle and Einhorn large), and since then three more large cucumbers have made it off the vine and into salads. Oh and a couple were specially delivered to my father-in-law as he enjoys them quite a bit.

The peppers have come a long ways over the last few weeks as well. The Yummy, Thai Hot and Italian Sweet peppers have finally began to flower and as of Independence Day weekend all have at least one pepper growing. We've already snagged about three Jalapenos from the stud of the group and they've all been spicy as advertised. With our trip overseas we've figured out a solution for watering needs over the two weeks we're absent; the help of family via spare keys ha.
 
Week 7:

 
Week 8:

Week 9:

In prep for the trip we've taken three large cucumbers (we're now up to 7 harvested) off so they don't lose their luster; apparently if you let cucumbers stay on until the spikes fall off (and turn yellow) the flavor goes out the window. As you can see from the last shot from weeks 8 and 9, the curly cucumber didn't take more than a couple days to grow noticeably larger from when the other cucumbers were picked. You can also see the Thai Hot peppers growing significantly from weeks 8 to 9; multiple peppers are growing vertically and some should turn red once mature. The Yummy and Italian Sweet peppers are finally showing several small fruit growing simultaneously, on each. When we return ~17 days would've passed. Hopefully we'll have a plethora of peppers to cook with. For those of you interested, all the green thumb Season 2 shots are uploaded here, in order of old to current. I typically skip over shots (including week 6) for composition purposes. Until next time.

Green Thumb Season 2 - Ep. 2

After four weeks had passed from the initial planting, things started to take shape a bit. The start of dime sized cucumbers showed up on both plants along with yellow flowers, and there was a reasonably sized jalapeno pepper forming on our most mature pepper plant. The weather has gotten very hot in the Mid-Atlantic US. It feels like summer without it being the end of June and with the strong sun we've had to nearly double down on the watering that's done on a daily basis. Thankfully due to our very different schedules we're able to put two watering sessions in (morning and afternoon) on the cucumber plants during the rain free, 90+ degree days, that have been showing up lately. Another thing learned is what the cucumber plants look like when they're in need of water; their leaves slump over when they're running low and the more tacoed leaves visible the worse water is needed. Thankfully we only had one really close call on a day that hit 100*. I woke up at 1:30pm to see both cucumber plants in bad shape, then proceeded to pour about 2 litres of cool water on both. They bounced back within 30 minutes as they are quick drinkers as well. The peppers have been perky regardless of heat, and it makes sense as cucumbers have such a high water content. This worries me for when they get even bigger, as they're not even the size of baby carrots currently. We'll be gone for a good bit of July, give or take the hottest month of the year, so I'm trying to figure out some type of small irrigation system that can operate independently for several days; heavy rain and storms will be icing on the cake.

Week 4:

Week 5:



As you can see the cucumber plants have started growing in their own directions and not all of the peppers have started flowering. The cucumbers have these coil like tentacles that grow along with the stems/leaves which wrap themselves around whatever they touch. After about 4-5 days I have to readjust both plants so they don't grab onto the pepper plants or each other. It's becoming clear how they will look in another month of growth. According to the stats, Bush Crop cucumbers mature in around 90 days. It'll be about 70 days in when we return from overseas.

Green Thumb Season 2 - Ep.1

Picking up from last time, we found ourselves coming home from the plant nursery up the road with some seedlings, soil and pots. Beth worked her magic and got everything transplanted and watered. The biggest wildcard this year is growing cucumbers, which we've never done before. Growing them isn't the issue as much as how they grow. Last year with the tomatoes (another plant that likes growing with a support system of sorts) we found out late that they should either be supported as they grow vertically or you should just let them grow out horizontally, naturally. If they slump or grow out horizontally after they start their upward climb, it's easy to damage the stalks. Cucumbers by all research we've done can grow in a similar manner, but the weight will be considerably more. For the time being we have pots with 'mounded' soil and we plan on letting them go horizontal once fruit begin to develop (or whenever the plant naturally leans toward the ground). Another unknown is what local woodland creatures like cucumbers, but we'll deal with that when we come to it.

I didn't end up taking shots of them initially planted, but these are about a week in:

After another week or so of rain from the last shot, the peppers sprouted upwards with a couple flowers here and there. The Bush Crop cucumber plants exploded in size.

The full pepper list is Thai Hot, Yummy, Italian Sweet and Jalepeno. They all serve their purpose depending on the dish you plan on cooking and I hope to do a food dish special (or two) using the ingredients when harvesting time arrives. In the meantime though, I'm going to stick to grilling my food on this lovely but hot Memorial Day weekend.