Basket of Peppers

Mrs. Thumb has been so busy canning tomatoes and making pickles out of the of cucumbers, that we neglected the peppers. This morning we took a look, and this is about half of what could be picked. This is a good sized basket and has Bells in green, yellow, and chocolate. Also Hungarian, Anaheim, and yellow chilies. The two white ones are Japanese White Eggplant. If you look closely on the right side you can see a strange looking creature.

This is the first time growing a Japanese white eggplant. We planted two on the outside of the pepper garden and I'm not sure that was the best place with the proper PH level. They have a nice milky color and I'll do a post on the flavor and texture after we cook them.

Strange Looking Tomato Bug

A strange looking creature caught at night sitting in the bowl of cherry tomatoes.

This little bug has revealed his name, but seems to have affected a couple of the pickles by turning them a funny yellow color. Seriously, we have never found any other cucumbers or pickles this color. I don't know if its just an anomaly or if we somehow planted some hybrid without knowing it.

Check Out These Colors

We like to try different varieties every year. Some work out and some don't but nothing ventured nothing gained. (my Dad told me that) We always try to grow some yellow tomato's but this is a Lemon Boy Tomato that isn't producing a lot, but enough to eat. It has a great color with a thin skin and the flavor is really mild.

The bell pepper is call a Chocolate Bell and this is the first one out of the garden. It feels and looks just like a bell pepper with a nice dark brown color.

The Watermelon Radish (cut in half) is about 2-3" in diameter with a mild radish taste. The texture is the same as any radish and we have not had any pithy or bug problems at all.

The bright red pepper is a jalapeno (usually green) that was on the plant to long. It doesn't seen to hurt the flavor or texture at all.

The fun of gardening for us is not only all the great food but trying something new every year. We would find room in the garden for all these variety's next year.

Tomato Update

Mrs. Thumb picked a bunch of tomato's today and we wanted to show what we call sun spots versus nice ripe tomatoes. The three on the left were exposed to direct sun and you can see the damage that was done. Remember it gets over 100 degrees here and this damage isn't caused from lack of water, they are just burned from the sun. The three tomato's on the right were either in partial shade from the sunflowers or the tomato plant it's self. We cut the bad spots off the damaged tomatoes and use what we can. Double click the picture for a better view.

Here's a picture of the sunflowers towering over the tomato plants. The two tallest are over 10' and as the sun gets higher they start providing a little shade.

This picture is just to the right of the sunflowers and you can see the baseball sized tomatoes starting to ripen up.

One of my favorites is the Sweet 100 Cherry and they are starting to ripen up also. This amazing plant is still producing new clusters.

DRUM ROLL......ripe tomatoes on 7/2/09....before the 4th of July.

We are within days of getting more ripe tomatoes then we are going to be able to handle.

The plants look great and there is a lot of tomatoes. It appears they are just about ready to start turning color. This is a nice cluster of Sweet 100 Cherry Tomatoes.
Another nice looking cluster of Cherry Tomatoes.
I am not sure but I think these are Beefsteak Tomatoes. They look so nice in the morning sun.
There are hundreds of tomatoes hidden in the folige.

Update-More Then We Can Eat

We have never in ten years of gardening had such a tremendous amount of food to try and keep up with. The pile of pickles on the left side of the picture is going into pint jars tonight and the tomatoes are going to be cooked down tomorrow for chicken wing sauce. Mrs. Thumb has made over 25 loafs of zucchini and squash bread so far that are in the freezer, and six half pints of strawberry jam. Check out the monster zucchini (10lbs plus) in the middle of the picture that was hiding in the garden.

A really nice example of the amount of food you can grow in a small urban setting. One zucchini plant, one squash plant, and twenty different tomato plants jammed together. Double click the picture and you might notice some small Roma's with the Cherry's in the small basket. This is approximately 50lbs of squash, tomato's, and zucchini.

Cucumbers

Ever had the urge to eat a pickle. Well Mrs. Thumb had a huge two quart jar and found a cucumber hiding under all the bean and cucumber leaves. Here you have it a pickle in a two quart jar. Double click the picture to see this giant up close.

This is one plant we never had great success with. We always managed to get some cucumbers but the plants would develop some kind of leaf mold. This year the plants seem to be developing a little slow but they are very healthy and nice looking plants. Today (7/2/09) we found four nice size cucumbers worth about a buck a piece in our grocery stores.

Mrs. Thumb planted four hills of bush cucumbers on the side of the house with nothing but morning sun. If you double click the picture, you will notice some dark green zucchini leaves on the left, in the back some pole beans, and on the right is the prized dill patch.

This is a pickling cucumber we think. It some how got started in with a patch of pole beans. On the left it has started climbing up a trellis. It's also taking over some parsley and bush peas. We decided to just let this one have its way and go where ever it wants. To us, its not to have law and order in the garden but to have fun with it and get a lot of veggies.

For You Meat Lovers

Couldn't resist taking a shot of this bird on the rotisserie. It was Sunday afternoon (7/5/09)in the back yard. Mrs. Thumb marinated this fat little hen in lemon juice, garlic, cilantro, cracked pepper, and kosher salt. A big sprinkle of Penzeys 300 and about 2 hours later, here she is done and ready for slicing.

This family not only loves fresh veggies, but a big chunk of red meat is welcome on the grill also. We got our hands on a nice prime rib and couldn't resist using the rotisserie. Double click the picture to see a fine piece of beef.
A mixture of cracked black pepper, kosher salt, fresh thyme, and 6-8 garlic cloves get ground to a paste and applied to the meat. We used a meat thermometer and cooked until we had an inner temp of 140 degrees. Took off the grill, wrapped in tinfoil and let stand for about 10-15 minutes. Double click the picture and see if that doesn't make your mouth water. Prime rib on the barbie, a truly religious experience.

Pressure Caner Update

Here we have a progression from "itty bitty" to really big, from left to right is a quarter pint of Ortega Chillies, half pint of strawberry jam, pint of pickled mixed vegetables, quart of bread and butter pickles, and a huge two quart dill pickle. Yup, one huge pickle!

Happy 4th of July

We are hanging out inside the house as it is about 100 degrees outside. Nothing to real earth moving to post, but we did find four nice sized squash hiding at the back of the plant. The crookneck is starting to decline, and is desperately trying to send out squash to seed. It is definitely on the downhill side. We wish everyone a really nice safe fourth.

All That Hard Work

7/2/09 What a day for The Urban Gardener. Double click this picture to see what can be grown in small areas. If you noticed the small cluster of grapes, that's the result of that darned Blossom the possum. Last year we had 2lb clusters of unbelievably good grapes. Well....I guess Blossom has to eat too.

The Pepper Garden

Today (7/2/09) we poked around in the peppers and found these, but there is hundreds more where these came from. Any suggestions out there?

We decided to improve on our pepper garden this year. It's a 6'x 6' area that gets morning and mid-afternoon sun. After testing the PH at 8.5 the girls at the Do-It Center recommended a couple bags of Azalea dirt to lower the PH. We also tossed in some Lilly Miller Aluminum Sulfate for kicks. Double click this picture to see over forty happy pepper plants.

Little baby green bells...Aren't they cute.

Some store bought tomato's but our peppers getting blistered for salsa.

And the end product. A quart of Mrs. Thumbs awesome salsa. Not because its hot but I think it has to do with roasted garlic. There has been fights over the last scoop of this stuff.

Sunflowers

We feed the birds in the winter and they love pecking at the big sunflower heads.

They actually serve several purposes for us and the birds. They provide some much needed shade in the dead of summer but also act as support for the pole beans too. There seems to be a lot of variety's of sunflowers and these ones are about 5-6' tall, but the ones planted with the tomato's are over 8' tall.

Here you can see they are in front of a patch of pole beans growing up the trellis behind the sunflowers. There is herbs scattered all around the base of this bunch of sunflowers too.

Watermelon Radish

We pulled the last of our watermelon radishes today (7/2/09). These were just another really pleasant surprise. 1) Because they grew in a PH 6.5 pepper garden. 2)They were fool proof, loosen the dirt, toss some seeds around, wait....no bugs....wait....and wow 3" diameter radishes with a tremendous inside color and flavor. A must grow for next year.

We always grow radishes and they are always the first real crop. We just scatter seeds here and there in between other plants. There was a package of Watermelon Radish seeds at the store that said they would grow to a 3" diameter. So what the heck we tried them, and low and behold here they are. That's a quarter for reference sitting in front.

When we cut into one, this color must be the reason for calling them Watermelon Radishes. The flavor is typical radish but milder. We will definitely grow these again.

Artichoke Surprise

We got our hands on a start from Walmart (about $2.00) in December 2008. It was a pathetic looking start (half dead) but we planted it anyway. It gets morning and a little afternoon sun, but we had no idea it was going do what it did. It got huge in just six months with Artichokes everywhere.
If you have never seen an artichoke go to flower it is a pleasant surprise. As the plant starts to die off any remaining artichokes develop this spectacular 3 to 4" purple fuzzy top. Double click this picture for a close up.

This is a unique plant and if you like to eat artichokes you will really enjoy watching this one grow. Once it dies off you cut it back to ground level and the process starts again with an even larger plant.

A truly awesome plant to watch grow, harvest the chokes, and enjoy the flowers.

Products We Use

The girls at our local Do-It Center told us this was so popular they couldn't keep it on the shelf. It's pricey at $24.00 for three pounds and I didn't buy it when they told me to. Well, I went back and they were out and it took two weeks to get my hands on a bag. We highly recommend it and would buy it again.

This product is from Lilly Miller and we needed to acidify our pepper garden as the PH was at 8.5 and we wanted to drop it to approximately 6.5. A liberal scattering by hand and our little 6'x6' pepper garden has never looked better.

The guys at Loews said this was by far and away the most popular soil amendment they sold. We bought 10 bags @ $5.95 a bag and it looks like black dirt when you open it. We really liked the quality of this product and would buy it again.

The pest control product we use,(besides a live trap)is from Osh Hardware. It's a sprayer that you attach to the garden hose it is premixed and is strong enough to kill bugs but doesn't seem to hurt the plants. It's called Ready-to-Spray Multipurpose Yard & Garden Insect Killer. We would love to grow completely organic but some of these bugs are not only tougher then hell but they have big appetite's also. So we don't fool around with them, we just kill them and be done with it.

As this list grows we will continue to update it. If we can save you the trouble of experimenting with products that don't work, you will have more time to enjoy your garden.

Baby Afghan

It has been raging hot is southern CA for a few days (105+) giving, guess who a chance to finish a project started a couple weeks ago.

Pole Bean & Squash Sushi

Mrs. Thumb out did herself with this one. On the creativity scale this was a 10. Sliced the squash length wise in small diameter pieces and dip both the beans and pieces of squash in tempura batter and fry in hot oil. Shrimp was also batter fried in hot oil. Combine all three items and roll into a nice sushi roll, adding avocado slices to the top. Take a sharp knife cut into bite size pieces and there you have it. Pole bean and crookneck squash sushi. (great dipped in soy sauce)

Herbs

We have always attempted to grow certain herbs with some success. This has been a great year for the herb garden. Cool at night and not so hot during the day. We try and use starts when ever we can and this is a tray of assorted Parsley, Basil, Cilantro, Chives and Peppers.

This is sweet basil which is a must have in any herb garden. I use it a lot and it is nice to be able to just walk outside and pick some whenever I need it.

This is a oregano and grows up to become a very large plant.

This is a perennial variety of basil. It is not as strong but will last through the winter.

Tarragon is in the upper right corner, thyme is in the lower right corner and the remainder is a mixture of parsley, cilantro and a basil plant poking through the mix.

This plant is marjoram which also grows quickly to become a rather large plant.

This is a rosemary bush.

This is a sage plant, which is also a bush and has pretty pink flowers in winter.

This is my prized dill patch. I cook a lot of Middle Eastern food and dill is a staple.