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.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.

Green Thumb - Season 2 Preview

Summer is on the way and it's about time to get some deck crops going for this years' warm season. Tomato plants are very rewarding, and delicious too might I add, but Beth and I wanted to go in a different direction this year. We'll be out of town for about three weeks come July, so having a more robust plant will be good as well; tomatoes need quite a bit of attention, especially with the way the vines grow and our planting constraints. This year we'll be growing cucumbers and a variety of peppers. This past Saturday we drove to a local nursery and picked out a few items; Yummy pepper, Thai hot pepper and Italian sweet pepper starter plants, as well as cucumbers. The cucumbers are supposed to be grown on a mound, but we only have large pots so this should be interesting.

Stay tuned.