Gardening Intervention

[hosspak]

Tell me about fish peppers! GMO? Hi in omega3's, hydrponics, or another boring pepper with funny striping!

Go with boring!

 

[PhilaGardener]

But real pretty! And a Philly area heirloom. To quote from SSE:
Nineteenth century African American heirloom first offered by William Woys Weaver in the 1995 SSE Yearbook. Weaver’s grandfather received the seeds in the 1940s from Horace Pippin of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Two-foot tall plants have beautiful variegated foliage; 3" long fruits are striped and colorful. Traditionally used in oyster and crab houses around Chesapeake Bay. 80 days from transplant. MEDIUM HOT.

 

[hosspak]

But real pretty! And a Philly area heirloom. To quote from SSE:
Nineteenth century African American heirloom first offered by William Woys Weaver in the 1995 SSE Yearbook. Weaver’s grandfather received the seeds in the 1940s from Horace Pippin of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Two-foot tall plants have beautiful variegated foliage; 3" long fruits are striped and colorful. Traditionally used in oyster and crab houses around Chesapeake Bay. 80 days from transplant. MEDIUM HOT.

I can't wait to see how they work for pepper jelly...

 

[Ridgerunner]

It will be interesting to see what color the fish peppers wind up. I did a quick search and it said they could be different colors when ripe: green, orange, brown, white, or red. I only make sweet pepper jelly, not hot, and have come to prefer the yellow peppers just for the color of the jelly. You may wind up with something really interesting.

 

[hosspak]

It will be interesting to see what color the fish peppers wind up. I did a quick search and it said they could be different colors when ripe: green, orange, brown, white, or red. I only make sweet pepper jelly, not hot, and have come to prefer the yellow peppers just for the color of the jelly. You may wind up with something really interesting.

Oh, habanero, and serrano jelly is amazing... only red and yellow veggies for the habanero and green and yellow for the serrano.... never stays on the shelf, just like the berry jellies...

 

[hosspak]

If anyone is interested, Waste Management is putting on seminars showing how to compost. Here is the link with the upcoming dates;
http://www.rivcowm.org/opencms/recycling/composting.html#schedule

 

[the1honeycomb]

we are all addicted to gardening here!! and proud of it!!! I know you'll sharing and adding your 2 cents like the rest of us1! I'm in NC and say WELCOME!!

 

[baymule]

If anyone is interested, Waste Management is putting on seminars showing how to compost. Here is the link with the upcoming dates;
http://www.rivcowm.org/opencms/recycling/composting.html#schedule

That is very encouraging that a trash company would do something like this. There is no telling how much that gets thrown away that could be composted. Nothing here goes to waste, it goes through the chicken pen. What they don't eat, they scratch and poop on and give me lovely compost.

 

[hosspak]

Hey garden heads..... all of my onion sets (planted 8 weeks ago) have all sprouted flowers. I think I read to remove the flowers so all the energy goes into making the fruit. So I did remove all the flowers.... Right or wrong???? When should the bulbs start to fatten up?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Darn the rotten luck. You did right to take the flowers off. All they do is waste energy. But be careful not to harm the leaves.

Some years I get a whole lot more that bolt than others. The onion bulb part that you want is made by the leaves. Each leave sticking up will mean another layer on the bulb. Lots of healthy leaves usually means a pretty good onion bulb. Can you tell if the onions have already bulbed up?

What happens when they bolt is that the stem the flowers are on sends a hard unusable stem all the way down into the bulb. Those bulbs won't store well. If you had some that bolted, I'd say use those first, but all yours bolted.

I don't know how much more the bulbs are going to grow but watch them to make sure they have not finished. When it looks like they are done, you might be better off harvesting them, then cutting out that hard stem, chopping the onions, and freezing them. That way you will have chopped onions ready to use. They store a long time frozen. When mine freeze they freeze in a solid lump, but I keep a hammer handy just outside my mud room door and have a 2x4 top to a shelving system. It works pretty well to hit that frozen bag of onions with the flat of the side of the hammer on top of that 2x4 to break them apart so you can use only how much onions you want.