Gardening Time is NOW

[Charlie Prime]

Friends the time to start your garden is NOW. Fresh food without chemicals that increase your independence is a big part of The Good Life.

Burpee provides this handy planting calendar. Enter your zip code, and it will tell you the best day to poke your seed into Mother Earth...

Growing Calendar - Burpee's Home Garden Advice, When to Grow, Sow, Plant and Harvest atBurpee.com

Freezing rain at my house today, but next week is the time to start soil preparation for my March 15th planting date. If anyone knows of good garden design software, please let me know.

This year I intend to buy an electric tiller. I borrowed an electric tiller and found it superior for my application.

 

[mike]

I spent this weekend making zuchini pickles from my patch, as well as red grapefruit marmelaide. I also picked up some end of season mangos and strawberrys very cheap, so i put down a dozen jars of strawberry jam, and a half dozen of mango chutney.
I need a machete to get into the hothouse this month, its just gone off on there

 

[stonehart]

Just harvested my Garlic ... I smell like a french kitchen right now..

 

[mike]

I went mad with chilli's this year

I have 10 large plants in the vegie cage (we have to cage our patch because the birds and possums etc will rip us off)
I have another half dozen plants in the hothouse, and another dozen up one side of the hothouse as well as another 10 in the kitchen herb garden by the front door. these are your regular small hot ones, but we also got our hands on some scorpion chilli seeds

Just looking at this pic makes my face sweat, i kid you not. i'm actually sweating (i have a pavlovs dog reaction to chilli, just looking at or thinking about them and i sweat)

These are supposedly the hottest in the world,

The heat level in Scoville heat units for the Trinidad Scorpion Chilli Butch T. is an amazing 1,463,700 Scoville Heat Units

They reckon these can kill you if you eat too many of them

 

[stonehart]

I went mad with chilli's this year

I have 10 large plants in the vegie cage (we have to cage our patch because the birds and possums etc will rip us off)
I have another half dozen plants in the hothouse, and another dozen up one side of the hothouse as well as another 10 in the kitchen herb garden by the front door. these are your regular small hot ones, but we also got our hands on some scorpion chilli seeds

Just looking at this pic makes my face sweat, i kid you not. i'm actually sweating (i have a pavlovs dog reaction to chilli, just looking at or thinking about them and i sweat)

These are supposedly the hottest in the world,

The heat level in Scoville heat units for the Trinidad Scorpion Chilli Butch T. is an amazing 1,463,700 Scoville Heat Units

Holy Sh** nice work!

I only grew six chilly plants this year and a handful of bell peppers since the past season was so bad.. but as Murphy Law would dictate it has been just the right season for growing this year... what do you do?
Mild chilly for me I am not as insane my friend

 

[mike]

I started the seeds nice and early in the hothouse, and planted out once they got to a decent size. although the ones that i kept in the HH are still the most advanced

You can see mine just starting to ripen now, odd plant its looks nothing like the regular chilli ,(plant to the left) much broader leaves and the fruit is odd too, not the bullet shape you get with a regular thai hot chilli.

Im a little nervous about them to be honest.

I use the normal thai style ones in one of two sauces i keep in the fridge at all times. One is just soy sauce and lime juice in equal parts with minced garlic and chilli. The other is finely grated ginger and spring onions which is mixed with some pink himilayan rock salt and then scalded with hot peanut oil.

Fairly common asian condiments which i add to noodles etc

 

[stonehart]

I want your growing climate!!!!!

On a serious note I am not growing all that much this year as we are moving house as soon as we find the right one to buy.
It has to have good large grounds, good soil is a plus but I can always fix that.

About to retire out of front line sound engineering and teach it to students instead.... Had enough lol

 

[pixelsmith]

It is -16 F or -26.6 C here today.. I am not starting my garden other than planning what to plant in the spring.

 

[stonehart]

It is -16 F or -26.6 C here today.. I am not starting my garden other than planning what to plant in the spring.

Hells teeth that is bloody cold.... so much for global warming eh?

 

[pixelsmith]

I better not go there. Someone will tattle on me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[stonehart]

I better not go there. Someone will tattle on me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

lol peace man it won't be me I can tell you that for sure.

anyway keep warm ... I am trying to keep cool as we are having one of those Canterbury summers we get every few years.
Even if it is overcast the humidity is through the roof and the temp never really drops below 14c over night but tends to stay up in the 20's. Very good telegraph cucumber season but the corn is not to happy about the humidity (strain I have is used to the dry Canterbury summers). Tomatoes are enjoying it but I have to keep a very close eye for black spot as this is the perfect conditions for it.

 

[mike]

Well my first scorpion ripened yesterday.

So, i cut a tiny bit of the flesh off, about half the size of a matchhead. Two chews and i had to spit it out.
The next few hours were very unpleasant. My lips burned so hot i was in severe pain. I accidentily touched my forehead and even though i had washed my hands in soap and water twice, was subjected to hours of burning in the spots i touched.

Frankly im not sure what possible culinary use this thing has. Its just too hot

Red hot chilli pepper Scorpion is so potent it burns through testers’ gloves | Metro News

 

[stonehart]

Well my first scorpion ripened yesterday.

So, i cut a tiny bit of the flesh off, about half the size of a matchhead. Two chews and i had to spit it out.
The next few hours were very unpleasant. My lips burned so hot i was in severe pain. I accidentily touched my forehead and even though i had washed my hands in soap and water twice, was subjected to hours of burning in the spots i touched.

Frankly im not sure what possible culinary use this thing has. Its just too hot

Red hot chilli pepper Scorpion is so potent it burns through testers’ gloves | Metro News

Pest spray my friend.. even the insects and possums are not mad enough to eat them I bet.

 

[mike]

That did cross my mind, but i reckon these would kill the plants, i could load up a waterpistol with the juice and it would be as good as a comercial pepper spray. But since pepper spray is illegal here (only the Police have it) I'd likely be comitting an offence.

I will likely just have to dry them and use the powder in very small doses, but as i said a half matchhead of the flesh was too much.

But i'm no longer skeptical of the warning that i got when given the seeds that "these can kill you"

Unlike the Vindaloo beast in red dwarf, it was NOT vulnerable to Lager, though i valiantly threw a battalions worth of it at the situation

 

[Burnt State]

Here's hoping we can get a garden update for summer 2015. I know we all have different growing seasons as the forum is global but i thought it would be interesting to catch up with others no matter what harvest state your garden is in. My recent morning ritual has been to go out to pick berries as my son apparently has a mortal fear of spiders while the teen daughter has a mortal fear of waking up before 10AM. This has been an exceptional year for raspberries and the yards are loaded with them where i live. This year we got a third raspberry strain added to the yard thanks to a friendly feathered gardener - you keep shitting around the place my bird friends for your seed distribution is the best! I also have a few alpine strawberries that grow wild and some red currant bushes that are re-establishing themselves but their berries are in short supply. I have seen chickadees going after the black raspberries and perhaps they are taking the currants as well. Everyone in the family loves a different berry with their morning ablutions and whatever's left gets frozen.

 

[technomage]

That's great. I would love to have some successful blueberries and strawberries. I planted a couple of blueberry plants a couple of years ago and one died and the other may still be alive but hasn't done much since last year, where I saw about 5 blueberries.

 

[Burnt State]

That's great. I would love to have some successful blueberries and strawberries. I planted a couple of blueberry plants a couple of years ago and one died and the other may still be alive but hasn't done much since last year, where I saw about 5 blueberries.

To keep blueberries alive in my yard i built a large above ground frame with old cedar rails and lined the bottom with plastic to stop them from getting contaminated by the large black walnut that grows next door whose root juglone toxicity kills blueberries, tomatoes, and many other important trees, including fruit bearing ones. The blueberries have flourished in this pen that i cover with netting during the ripening season to keep birds from stripping them as they strip all the amelanchier trees in the yards nearby. This has been a very successful approach - i keep the soil nicely acidic and have let the occasional tomato, squash or beans grow inside there while the bushes are still young. This has been the first year of good blueberry productions for one of the strains but the other cultivar grew tall and only produced one small clutch of berries. So Duke and Northland have done very well while the North American native and Bluecrop showed little - this is three years after the initial planting. We keep eating them - nothing to freeze here.

 

[technomage]

That's great!

I did add sulfur initially to acidify the soil, but no further maintenance was done, which is probably why I wasn't successful.