Our little garden is not in a very productive mode right now. (Makes us thankful for our CSA all the more) Nonetheless we are enjoying what is growing!
Our summer squash plant has regenerated itself, as big as ever. Unfortunately, the blossoms come in all the time but they fail to develop into squash. So I guess that means it is time to pull that plant out.
Last week I planted green onions and lettuce. No signs of life there, yet.
Back in March my son and I thought it would be fun to grow our own hot peppers. So way back then we planted jalapeño seeds in the little jiffy starter packs and put it under the plastic dome. To our surprise, they actually popped up! A few weeks later we put them in the ground over in a corner where nothing else was having success.
A lot has happened in our garden since then. Corn came and went. Eggplant grew up next to it and matured. The tomato forest grew next to it. We were over run with summer squash. And all the while our little jalapeño plants just kept on growing, and we waited for some sign that we’d get hot peppers.
Spring gave way to summer. And the little plants just quietly grew. We kept watering the 4-5 plants who made it past the transplant and watched them grow bit-by-bit stronger. All the while, Paul and I would ask… is this thing ever going to flower?
We’re pretty patient gardeners. And so we were more curious than anything. When would this thing mature?
Right before we left for our summer vacation all of the pretty little flowers gave way to this beauty. A baby. But we were still hopeful that our plants would grow even bigger and that we’d get a lot more peppers!
A couple weeks back, I could tell we were on our way to a bumper crop. Now fully mature, our jalapeño plants got to about 3.5 feet tall and had fruit all over the place. It was just a matter of time.
Today, 180+ days after we planted the seeds, we have our first basket of beautiful jalapeños. Well worth the wait.
We’ve got a large crop of jalapeños coming in. That’s why I was a bit surprised to spot this little red dragon as I was getting ready to pick some other stuff tonight. Most of them are long and green, but this one must have hid under a leaf while it matured and came out short, stubby, and bright cherry red.
In the next 2-3 weeks we are going to start harvesting 5-10 jalapeños per week. And since I’m the only one in the house who likes things really hot, I’m just not sure what we’re going to do with them.
That said, Kristen is always quick to find a recipe that matches what’s growing. I’m sure she’ll come up with something.