Monday August 25

It's been a slow week compared to recent weeks.  For days there was hardly any sunshine, just lots of rain and clouds, and the plants did not produce much.  Today there is ample sun and photosynthesis should be underway once again.  I got one squash, which is the last one from the plant, now in the compost bin, and a few beans.

Some okra and one small eggplant.  The okra are Red Burgundy, Millionaire, and Silver Queen.  Both okra and eggplant have been slow this year.  They like it hot.

What I did get was enough salsa ingredients.  Well almost enough - I had to buy two pounds of Roma tomatoes and some Jalapenos to make a batch.  All I can say is it's a good thing that most of the tomatoes came out of the garden because the supermarket tomatoes have no flavor.  These are the Pompeii tomatoes.  They were combined with the store-bought and some Carmello slicing tomatoes.

Now I'm going to show off.  There is nothing like a variety of peppers that are ripe and red.  From left to right the plants are Ancho, Joe Parker New Mexico, and Marconi.  There's a few ripe Serranos higher up.

Here's a shot from another angle.  On the left is a Bullhorn pepper.

These are the peppers that were picked for the salsa. The two peppers on the right are Bullhorn, the other three are Marconi.  I grilled the sweet peppers, deskinned and deseeded them and blended them with the tomatoes.  I found that the Bullhorns deskin easily while the Marconis are difficult.  Both taste great, sweet and rich.

This is the result - 7 pints canned with a 1/2 pint for the refrigerator.

Not such a great week, still 12 pounds came out of the garden, over 220 pounds for the year, over 30 pounds more than last year at this point.  To see what other people grow head on over to http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/