Sweet Pepper Mania

My sweet pepper plants are growing really big and well. This years pepper plants are the healthiest I have ever had. I grew them from seeds. The plants that I grew by seeds are at least twice as big as the plants that I bought from a well known seed company. I will continue to buy my seeds from the company but my days of buying their actual plants are over with.

 I dug up some potatoes the day before yesterday and Veronica cooked some of them up last night

Just a few of the many sweet peppers that I have got this season. I must have 15 vacuumed bags of pickled sweet peppers in the freezer already and I have just started to harvest them. I will be giving a lot of sweet peppers away this season.

This is the start of the 4th jar of peppers that I am pickling. I warm the liquid up and pour it over the peppers and seal the top down well. I usually leave them out on the counter for 3 days or so and then put the jar in the fridge for several more days. When I pull the jar out I drain the liquid and wipe off the excess liquid and then vacuum bag and seal before putting them into the freezer. They will last all Winter in well into next Spring by doing it this way.  Our food saver vacuum machine works great.

 Here are the plants on our back deck

Garden Update and Home Renovation

My corn crop came in very early this year and wasn't as abundent as I had hoped. I did 3 varieties of corn. With the heat and humidity being really high and early in the year it took a toll on the crop. Below are photos of the last of my corn harvest. Next year I won't plant as early as I did this year plus I will only plant one variety of corn.
The tomato plants are doing ok and once I got the early blight issue under control I have had some pretty nice tomatos up to this point.
My sweet pepper plants are really looking nice. Good tall healthy plants with quite a number of sweet peppers on each plant. If they produce as well as the plants look, it will be a really good harvest throughout the season. I should have plenty of sweet peppers to pickle.
Veronica and I are starting our home renovation. By the time we get finished this place will look totally different.
I had to add more insulation in the attic areas and had some type of heavy duty bubble wrap on the attic walls that are on the other side of the actual room walls. This bubble wrap product is silver on one side and is supposed to keep the heat in the attic from penetrating through the walls and into the living areas of the home. Extra ventilation was also added.
Tomorrow we get 2 new whole house AC units and furnaces. Without AC it will make for a very hot day.
We have also started having the wallpaper removed from all of the rooms. There is a lot of wallpaper in this house and it is all getting taken down. It will most likely take 4 days to get the job done.
Bu the time we get finished we will have a new kitchen, updates bathrooms, new carpet, new flooring, new windows, new paint in the entire house and new appliances.
I will post photos as we progess through this renovation journey.
Here are photos of the last of my corn harvest:

Below is corn that is called Ruby Queen. It is some of the sweetest corn that I have ever had. Picked early this corn is very sweet but you can let it turn a darker red by leaving it for another week or so and it will still be sweet but not quit as sweet. The color is really cool too. 

You Reap What You Sow

The garden is doing well despite the extremely high heat and all of the rain that we have had in recent weeks.
Got some tomatoes on the vine. Just waiting for them to ripen up.
Potatoes are about a month away before digging them up.
I did dig up one batch of Northern Red potatoes just to see how that did and it wasn't a bad batch that I came up with. Most of what is still growing is Yukon Gold potatoes. I will take photos when I harvest those.
Corn is doing well. I have already picked several ears of the early corn and even froze some for future consumption. We have one of those food Savers with bags and a vacuum system. The things works great and they always go on sale. Might want to check one out.
The sweet pepper plants are really getting big and most plants have peppers set on them.

 

Garden Update

Since my Dad's passing I have been very busy taking care of business. This morning I gave myself a break and went outside to see how my garden is doing. Lately we have had lots of rain, humidity and high temperatures. These factors have not hindered my garden from growing rather well, as you can see by the photos below:

Here are my sweet pepper plants. I started most of these from seeds inside our house

 Below are my 2 plots of corn

 Below are my tomato plants in the wired cage that I built

 Below are my potato plants that I am growing for Veronica. They are mainly Yukon Gold with a few Northern Red

My Dad loved gardening and I think he would have enjoyed the way my garden is turning out

Gardening Season Has Finally Begun

I finally got everything planted in my gardens.
Corn is coming up, tomatoes have been transplanted outside, sweat peppers have been transplanted outside and into their pots on the back deck and potatoes are growing like crazy.
Here is what everything looks like as of Saturday, 5/5/18:

Tomato Cage Has Been Finished

I finished my tomato cage. I had to pick a nice sunny area to put it which ended up being close to the bird feeders. Since birds like to pick at and destroy tomatoes I had to build an enclosed area. I used some left over fencing...both metal and plastic and then used some metal stakes that I had laying around and finished it all up with what I call "flex cuffs"...those plastic fastener things. The tomato cage will hold 4 big outdoor plastic pots, which will yield enough tomatoes that i will be giving them away.
Here is the finished cage:

Almost Time To Start Gardening

With the warmer weather just around the corner I have been spending some time getting everything ready for this upcoming gardening season. The plants that I started from seeds are doing really well. My tomato plants are getting taller and my sweet pepper plants are looking really healthy. I planted approximately 5 different types of sweet peppers. Last count I have 35 healthy plants. I have 15 large pots on the back deck to transplant the peppers into at the right time. I will have quite a number of extra plants, which I will be giving away. I will also have extra tomato plants, which I have 3 varieties.
Yesterday I spent some time putting together a fenced in area where I will put approximately 4 tomato plants after I transplant them into my largest outdoor pots. I decided to move the tomatoes away from my pepper plants since last year I battled all kinds of diseases on both the tomato and pepper plants. This way if either the tomatoes or the pepper plants come down with a disease it won't have an impact on the other.
The location of this tomato cage is on the other side of the house next to the fence. This location gets a lot of sun which the tomato plants like. My only concern will be that the casge is next to our bird feeders and birds like to peck at the tomatoes. My plan is to cage in the whole area where my tomatoes will be growing in so that no birds can get to the plants and the tomatoes themselves.
Below are photos of my plants growing indoors and of my partially built tomato cage. All I need is some open air top to fully enclose the cage...either plastic fencing or wire fencing which will be carefully attached to the fence.
I figure that I will have everything planted outside by the end of this month...corn, potatoes, sweet peppers and my tomatoes.