On Thursday the mail carrier shows up in my driveway. He’s driving an old Taurus station wagon and I get the impression he never quite got back from Woodstock. But a nice guy anyway, and he has the dehydrator. I’m not going to try to figure out the journey, it’s here and it works. I like this dehyrator. It has a temperature control and thermostat, so the temperature can be tuned for herbs, vegetables or jerky. I first dried some Brandywine tomatoes, a slicing tomato. The dried tomatoes are good in an omelette.
After the tomatoes I dried some sweet peppers. The paprika peppers have been outstanding this year, large and abundant. I bought the plant at the Bloomington farmers market. There’s a Marconi on the left, two Cubanelles in the center and the paprikas at a right angle. To give you an idea of their size those are 2x4's. The paprikas were sliced in halves and the seeds removed, the larger peppers were quartered, before they went in the dehydrator. Guess I’ll try to grind up the paprikas, or just cut them really fine, once they are dry.
And here’s a pic of pimento peppers. Beautiful heart-shaped peppers, sweet with a thick wall. To me they are like the best bell pepper ever. I like them with cucumbers and tomatoes and some Ranch dressing. It’s been a great summer for peppers. I’m going to try pickling some hot peppers soon, on a day when the windows can stay open.
Growing butternut squash and bean together on a trellis just did not work. The squash plant was suppressed and the beans were hard to find in all that foliage. I pulled the beans several weeks ago. The squash had been setting flowers but the newly formed squash always died off, apparently because not enough nutrients were directed into them. I’m sure they were pollinated because there is a healthy bumblebee population here. Now that the squash bugs are mostly under control the plant has been setting new squash and they are growing. So it looks like I’ll get some more butternuts if we don’t have an early frost. Here's a green one alongside some mature butternuts.
I picked two of the butternuts that were on a dead vine. I'm thinking about drying the smaller one as a candy. Time to do a little research on the Net.
Totals for the week:
Tomato 4 lb 15 oz; Eggplant 1 lb 10 oz; Hot pepper 6 oz; Sweet pepper 4 lb 1 oz; Snap Beans 2 lb 2 oz; Okra 6 oz; Butternut squash 4 lb 5 oz.
Yearly total 146 lbs.
5 comments:
Those peppers look great. I'm still waiting for ripe peppers but I have some green ones on the plants.
The dehydrator looks good. I am planning on drying some tomatoes, assuming I get some ripe ones!
It sounds like the dehydrator may have had a "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" kind of journey to get to you, but at least it made it!
Those ripe peppers look gorgeous and I am jealous of the butternut squash because mine are just now getting some real growth on after being totally stalled out by our unusually cool summer for so long - and there is virtually no chance I will get any matured fruits off of them before the cold and heavy fall rains arrive.
I am always confused when I track the statuses of my packages... but I don't ask questions so long as they end up in my hands!
I need to get my hands on a dehydrator, and your photos are tempting me into purchasing one sooner rather than later.
Wow, those pimento peppers look awesome. I'm definitely going to have to grow some next year, just to try them out!
I've been growing some peppers for paprika too. I was drying them yesterday. When I get a chance I want to powder them if I can figure out how to do it.
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