Tag Archives: Garden

Ghost peppers

August 31, 2015Adventure, Awesome, Food, GardenGarden, Maybe I am glad it didn't stick with me too long, Peppers...or lava...you decide, Ring of Firewarren

A year or two ago, Isaac and a bunch of his buddies discovered hot peppers. They each grew various types and took them to school where they traded, challenged each other, did nerve damage to their tongues, etc…you know, guy stuff. Most of the guys had run of the mill peppers…habaneros, thai chili, cayennes, etc. To be sure, there are some good and hot peppers in that bunch and they were a lot of fun. This year, we decided to step it up a bit and planted ghost peppers, also known as bhut jolokia peppers. In 2007, it was rated as the world’s hottest pepper…a mere 401.5 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. For reference, a jalapeno pepper registers between 1000 and 4000 Scoville units. A freakin’ ghost pepper rates at 1,000,000 (1 million) Scoville units!

Anyhow, we grew a beautiful crop of ghost peppers this year. They grew nice tall plants and this week, started ripening into their beautiful red color. Isaac picked them on Sunday and ate the end off of one of them. We watched as his face turned red and he immediately had to get a tissue as his sinuses drained. He drank a ton of milk and had that goofy look on his face when you know you’ve made a mistake.

Not to be out done, I decided to step it up a notch. I chomped the remaining pepper, including the seeds, and within 10 seconds, knew that I had really screwed up. It took no time for my sinuses to clear and then my lips and tongue felt as if they were swelling…I imagine they probably were. I could feel it down my throat and all throughout my mouth and nose (watch the video link). Finally, and this is the best part, within 3-5 minutes, I had to deliver my supper to the porcelain altar. Luckily, my mouth was so hot that I couldn’t taste a thing!

A video of my reaction

So, if you find yourself in need of something stupid to do on a Sunday evening, find a ghost pepper and eat it all in one or two bites…it’s for the teenage boy in all of us!

By the way, Isaac took a few to school to share with his buddies…sharing is a good thing, right?

Great raspberry year!

August 3, 2015Awesome, Food, GardenGarden, I'd marry raspberries if polygamy were legal, Raspberries!warren

Probably my all-time favorite fruit is raspberries. As a kid, we had a patch in the yard where we could stroll by and get berries any time we wanted. Raspberries tend to get a little wild and spread like crazy. Of course, that makes them wonderful but they can be a bit much for a smaller yard.

Of course,w e have a smaller yard in Charleston so we were unsure whether we could have raspberries. At some point, I stopped caring whether a patch looked good or not so we planted a dozen or so starter canes and our patch was born. Actually, we started a patch of red raspberries and a patch of black raspberries and then we added another red patch. All of them have thrived and produce probably 25 pounds of berries per year.

We have made jellies and jams and syrups with them for several years, but Emily found recipes for black raspberry pie and for red raspberry muffins, both of which are to die for (yes, I said that).

We freeze a lot of the berries and use them as we need them. My word they are just like fresh and so much better than the flavorless ones that cost too much in the stores! Thank goodness for backyard raspberries!!!

By the way, here are the recipes for the pie and muffins…Emily found these somewhere on the Internet so these are not our own…

Black Raspberry pie

Backyard garden

July 22, 2015GardenFree food...from the ground!, Garden, No room for weeds!warren

A couple of years ago, we decided to convert a crummy section of our backyard into garden space. We used to have a gigantic garden but with all of our running around, we found that we could not adequately manage such a large plot. Still, we really liked having fresh vegetables to eat. And honestly, I really enjoy seeing stuff spout and grow regardless of whether it feeds me.

Anyhow, with chickens this year, we found that we had to fence off the garden area. I would love to have a really polished fenced in garden, but when it came down to it, I just needed my seedlings protected so we drove T-posts into the ground and hung welded-wire fence on that…done!

So, without chickens interrupting growth, you can see that our garden has gone nuts! We planted a few varieties of peppers, tomatoes, yellow squash, zukes, potatoes, green beans, onions and a few herbs. WV has had lots of rain this year so we haven’t watered a thing and it’s really doing great…in some ways, maybe too great. Stuff has grown together more than we expected so that’s not ideal but it it generating food!

I found this guy roaming around also. He has enjoyed the garden as well and somehow, has avoided the chickens. As it turns out, we discovered that the chickens like Japanese beetles that have taken up residence on the raspberry plants by the house more than any other thing I have ever tried to feed them. I hate those beetles so am happy to pick them off by the dozens to feed them as a treat!

Growing time

May 29, 2015Food, Garden, WVGarden, It's food...coming from the ground!, Playing in the dirt!warren

It’s that time of year again…stuff is growing…including my aching back and sunburned neck…but that’s a good thing too I guess. It’s great to be outside and doing stuff. We put the main garden in on Mother’s Day weekend when our chance of frost is gone. What may be more exciting though, I think, is that I got sorghum in the ground again and that it should grow. We planted it at Emily’s grand’s house where we used to do the bulk of our gardening. It’s too big a plot for us to garden in right now but will be perfect for a good sorghum crop.

I tilled a bunch of the land and we planted every sorghum seed I had. We first did sorghum a few years ago. Year 1 was great. Year 2 was a total flop…so bad we didn’t harvest a single cane. I expect that this year we will do well. We planted in good soil with appropriate spacing, etc. It’s a good bit of work processing sorghum and the end result yields not a lot of sorghum syrup but it is so cool to be a part of this old-timey process…kinda the same way I feel about beekeeping. It’s a great family time and, in both cases, the end result is literally finger-licking-good!

I didn’t get many pics of our work but Emily, Abigail and Emily’s Dad planted at the end of a long day’s work tilling and mowing and weeding.

The other big thing that is growing now is our raspberry patches! There are tons of berries on the plants and, after we got fencing in place, they are remaining there not being eaten by the chickens. I think raspberries are my favorite berry and possibly my favorite fruit. It’s hard to beat being able to eat out of your own yard!

We’re in the green

September 22, 2014Canning, GardenCanning, Garden, If I was to be reincarnated as a vegetable I'd want to be a green bean!warren

We plant a garden every year…some years it’s good, some years we look forward to the next year. We used to plant a large garden at Emily’s grandparents’ house. With all the running around we do, it became unmanageable. We still love fresh food and you can’t beat the price (although, building up the garden area ain’t cheap…though that was our decision).

So, we built a few raised beds in our back yard and planted them full of stuff. We started with the largest area built from old railroad ties. We filled it with peppers, broccoli, onions, tomatoes and potatoes. About midway through the summer, we added two 8-foot beds to the mix. You see, we didn’t have any green beans and we absolutely love home-grown green beans. I think the most we ever canned was 70 quarts one year. That might have been a bit much but we really enjoy beans.

Anyhow, with our decision not to plant a garden at Emily’s grands’ place, we were sort of without when it came to beans…on a chance, we decided to plant green beans in July, hoping to have a small crop by frost. We harvested a bunch of beans yesterday and had more than a small crop. Although not a 70-quart crop, we canned 20 pints last night!

Green beans - before and after canning — Green beans – before and after canning

Next year, we will be ready to plant an early spring crop as well as a July crop, hoping to double our return! It’s so cool that two small rows of seed can make us a bunch of food that we will enjoy until next year!The best part is that they were canned within a few hours of being picked…hard to get any fresher than that!

Taters and maters

August 8, 2014Canning, Food, GardenCanning, Garden, I say "taters and maters" in my best Slingblade accent...try it!warren

I just like saying that title…it is like so many words or combinations….it’s just a fun thing to say. What words do you have like that…stuff that’s just fun to say?

Anyhow, I’ve long posted on gardening endeavors so this is in that tradition. We have a little habit of planting too much and then filling our kitchen full of food that we can never hope to eat before it goes bad. We go a little pioneer (or more like early 20th century) on it and can everything!

It seems like we can never start the canning process before 10pm though. Anyone who has ever canned knows that starting that late has its good and its bad aspects…it’s usually cooler later at night and canning makes things in the house pretty hot. Canning also sometimes takes a long time so starting late might mean sleep deprivation. In our case, we just never have time before 10pm so heat has nothing to do with it.

Getting ready to can some hot garden mix

Anyhow, the other night, we started spaghetti sauce at around 10. Spaghetti sauce is a great way to use up a lot of tomatoes…our recipe calls for 30 pounds at a time. We add spices and veggies and meat and ~~fungus~~ mushrooms. Adding those things means we have to pressure can and boil the living fire out of the jars. Tomatoes alone are pretty acidic so any nasties can usually be killed with straight-up boiling and letting the acids do their work. Adding the other stuff prevents that so pressure canning is necessary…pressure canning simply allows the temp to get a lot higher. Our recipe calls for the canner to stay at temp for 1 hour. Talk about a late night! We did clear out most of our tomatoes though and we will have lovely vittles this winter when spaghetti will taste especially awesome!

Some of this year's potatoes — Some of this year’s first crop of potatoes

Speaking of awesome, home-grown veggies are usually in the own league compared to store bought. I think the biggest difference comes in potatoes. Taters are easy to grow and are just so much more tender and smooth to me when I grow them. It’s striking and makes it well worth the work of digging the tubers. This year, we planted one crop which we harvested in July. We turned right around and planted another crop which appears to be doing very well! I love the idea of two tater crops this year! We usually plant once and take what we get, but the taters were just too good to pass it up!

What the heck is this…redux

July 25, 2014Garden, NatureGarden, Nature, Something bugging you?, The things nightmares are made ofwarren

Way back in 2008 (that’s 6 years ago…seems like last year), I was digging potatoes and found a big brown wormy thingamabob…I asked, what the heck is this? Someone answered it was a tomato hornworm. We often plant tomatoes and potatoes and sometimes they are fairly close together…no big deal.

I thought it was weird the other day, however, when I dug this year’s potatoes and found another big ugly brown larval whatchamacallit. Granted, the potatoes are near the tomatoes again this year, but maybe tomato hornworms which eat tomato plants like to grow up near taters rather than maters.

Hornworm pupa video — Click to see the video

Just like last time, I decided to pick this guy up and torment the kids with it. Emily is desensitized enough that she doesn’t even flinch around me any more but the kids are still subject to my weirdness. I probably should have mashed this one since they ruin tomatoes, but I do not often mess with much of anything if it isn’t directly necessary. It took brazillions of years to evolve the way it did; why should I mess with mother-nature?

Making sorghum – Part 1

October 14, 2013Food, Garden, LandGarden, I'm hot sticky sweet from my head to my feet...literally, Sorghumwarren

I am far too excited to write only one post about how the sorghum harvest went this year so please humor me and allow me to write two posts. You may recall that on a wild hair (or two hairs actually), I ended up buying two cane mills and planting sorghum this spring. The sorghum grew and I finally got around to fixing up one of the two mills. My brother and I finally harvested it last weekend.

Cutting sorghum cane — A start on cutting the sorghum cane

But let me back up. The sorghum grew pretty well once it started growing. I planted a patch around 50’x50′ and it produced a lot of nice canes and beautiful red seed heads. But, of course, time got in the way and it did what sorghum does when you ignore it and don’t harvest when it needs to be harvested. It fell over (which is called lodging). I have read where it might be caused by a number of things but in the end, it adds difficulty to harvesting mechanically and may ruin the canes even if they can be harvested.

Harvesting sorghum cane — We both enjoyed drinking sweet juice from the canes

Luckily, we got into the field pretty quickly after it started so all of the canes were in good shape although we lost all of the seeds that I otherwise had planned to save and grind into sorghum flour. So, next year I will try to beat the lodging and save the seeds.

So, my brother and I took turns swinging the machete to cut the stalks at the ground while the other stripped leaves from the cane. The leaves aren’t harmful to the sorghum exactly but apparently they add a bitter taste to the finished sorghum syrup. I suppose we spent an hour or two harvesting the patch. It seemed like a small job but it turned out to be a lot more work than we expected. It’s also sticky and dirty work as the sugar content of sorghum cane is pretty high.

We tied the canes into my brother’s trailer and hit the road to my parents’ house around 4pm…their place is around 6 hours away so we rode sticky and sweaty and dirty and had a long day. The plan had always been to harvest and process the cane at our place so we could have an old fashioned neighborhood pressing party like they used to do a hundred years ago. We ran out of time though so decided to have a pressing party at my childhood home where we were planning to visit anyhow. Still, I was on the edge of giddy as I had my first crop of sorghum cane harvested!

I’ll write more in my next post about pressing and cooking the syrup that was in the cane. Harvesting, it turns out, was the easy part!

My cane mill/sorghum stuff

Garden whoopee

July 19, 2013Food, Garden, NatureGarden, Garden whoopee, veggies are awesome!warren

I remember watching the Newlywed Game when I was a kid. I guess it was in syndication when I saw it but we watched regularly, and I really enjoyed it for some reason. The couples were funny and spontaneous and innocent. It was a different sort of tv I guess. Anyhow, Bob Eubanks invariably asked the newlywed couple some question about their “whoopee” habits. I guess I was young and dumb but I knew what they meant but sort of didn’t either…know what I mean.?

That phrase has sort of always stuck with me as catchy phrases about sex tend to do. So, when I spied some critters “making whoopee” in my garden the other day, I decided that I had better grab a few snapshots (does anyone use that word either?) and call it a new hobby.

We built a raised bed and planted a lot of different things in the garden this summer. It’s somewhere around 4 ‘x 20’. I love that it is convenient and I barely have to bend over to work it. I basically planted it square-foot-garden style so I have quite a number of plants in that space. Perfect space for insect exhibitionists to show off their style!

The good thing is that the plant whoopee that’s been going on in my garden is also paying off. Insects aren’t the only things reproducing. We planted broccoli, Brussels sprouts, jalapeno and bell peppers, onions, cucumbers, zucchini and tomatoes and they are all doing great! We still have plenty of blooms on things so there is more fruit yet to come!

I am still not sure I understand what Bob Eubanks was talking about but I do know that this sort of garden whoopee is always welcome and I don’t feel the least bit bad taking pictures of the whole thing!

A quick yard-garden broccoli update

June 5, 2013GardenGarden, It's food...coming from the ground!warren

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we converted a bit of yard-space into raised beds for growing food. We got everything in the ground and it has pretty much all “taken”. If you have never tried, stuff grown in your own garden is far superior to food you buy in a store. I don’t know if it is due to the extra talking-to gardeners give their plants or if it is the extra-special compost we add, but homegrown veggies are just the best!

Broccoli and tomatoes and Brussels sprouts and peppers growing!

Perhaps my favorite garden veggie and the one that is most distinct in taste from what you buy in the store is that magnificent little delicacy most people call broccoli. Raw broccoli is better, cooked broccoli is better, and deep-fried broccoli is better! It is sort of magical as it grows. The plant first sets really nice leaves that are a little hard to distinguish from cabbage or Brussels sprouts (my second favorite veggie!) or cauliflower. So, if you garden like I do, sometimes it is a bit of a mystery which plant is which as they become jumbled in the frenzy to get stuff planted. But one day as you check your garden, you notice a little green bush growing in the center of the stalk of leaves. It quickly grows into a little broccoli head and then that grows and grows and before you know it, you have a magical head of broccoli!

A baby broccoli growing!

I was so pleased to see the first few heads present themselves and now they are growing like mad. In a few weeks I will take the first heads from the garden and we will make entire meals of broccoli! The coolest thing is that when you cut one head, two more come to replace it. Broccoli keeps making heads to replace the ones that were removed. The plants looks a little Frankensteinish after a cutting or two so, to preserve my children’s sanity, I don’t cut too many heads before we retire the plant to the compost pile in the sky. Until then, however, we delight in the glories of home-grown broccoli!

My Home Among The Hills

Life in WV!