Tomato Time

 Striped Cavern Tomato

Mutant Striped Cavern

As promised, here's the tomato update. Most of our plants are producing fruit and we are waiting patiently for their true colors to show. Above is the Striped Cavern which I believe will prove to be a really fun tomato to cook with. When mature it should be red with yellow stripes. It's oddly shaped similar to a bell pepper and it's pretty much hollow inside (thus the name). There is a pod of seeds that can easily be removed like a bell pepper. I think it would be great to stuff and bake or fill with a cold salad. They're suppose to keep for a while in the fridge.

Ty's Taxi Tomato

Ty's Taxi was my first to show fruit and I can't wait for them to turn yellow.

Bonito Ojo Tomato

The Bonito Ojo is a thin skinned tomato that comes from Chile. The plants have lots of fruit growing in every direction.

Yellow Pear Tomato

Oh Yellow Pear, you're so pretty and dainty. Why won't you turn yellow? My tomato loving Mother is only here a few days!

I realize that all these green tomatoes are just causing a lot of wishful thinking. I might just save the rest of the tomato postings until they start displaying their colors. Then I'll show them in their different stages. Well, I've mentioned four types-only 9 more to go! I hope you are all enjoying the fruits of your labor.

Pickling the Peppers

First pickling attempt

Yesterday was my first time pickling and I wanted to keep it simple. The peppers are preserved in vinegar with a bit of salt. We added flavoring to some with the addition of peppercorns, fresh garlic, and bay. We also are testing multiple vinegar types to see which are our favorite mixes with the different peppers (I think I'll always love plain white vinegar the best though). They're all made a little differently to test the varying results. Truth is, I could screw these all up and still have plenty more peppers to experiment with. Sauces are next on the list. I'm drying a few pounds of cayenne to try and make my own powder. I will report back on that after I buy my face mask.

In the garden the young pepper plants have been producing fruit and I'm so antsy to taste some of these heirloom and unusual varieties. 

Hinklehatz pepper

The Hinklehatz or Chicken Heart is an heirloom cultivated by the Pennsylvania Deutsch for over 150 years. So far it seems to be a prolific little producer (almost 20 peppers on a plant barely a foot and a half tall)! They will ripen to colors of red and yellow. These should make an excellent pepper vinegar.

Sheepnose Pimento

Have you ever grown pimento peppers? Yeah, me neither. These heirlooms were maintained by the Rini family of Ohio, and I'm happy to have the chance to grow them. I'm told they're juicy and sweet and very flavorful. They are so big and meaty on my little plant, but it's holding up just fine. The long fall harvest should be excellent. I also plan to overwinter some of my best pepper plants. I'd like to compare the production levels between a 1 year old plant and the newly started ones come springtime. I will definitely save the Bird Peppers and try to find a good place on the farm to let them establish themselves more permanently.

Cyklon pepper

The Cyklon is a hot pepper from Poland. It's ease of drying makes it an integral part of the Polish spice industry.

Rooster Spur

This rare pepper seed was supplied to Seed Savers Exchange by Virgil T. Ainsworth of Laurel, Mississippi. The Rooster Spur was grown in his family for more than 100 years. I read an article in the NY Times from 1982 about this pepper and the Rooster Pepper Sausage made from it. I thought it was rather interesting and funny. It's a short article you can find here.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/23/us/rooster-spur-pepper-scarcer-than-hen-s-teeth.html

I will be doing my best to post pictures of all the peppers as they mature. My new pictures are all of young green peppers at the moment but the color changes are coming and they're lovely to observe. I'm not sure how I'll keep up considering I still have about 20 more varieties to report on!  


Upcoming posts will include a tomato breakdown: pictures and descriptions of our 13 varieties of tomatoes. Also, there will be a thrilling post about the gourds we're growing. Oh, come on, you know you can't wait for that one! Alright, go grow something y'all!

Pepper Harvest

Last week's pepper harvest has had us scrambling to pickle and make sauces. There must have been about 15-20 pounds of peppers and it's already time to pick again! These are jalapeno, serrano, habanero and cayenne. We have a whole new batch of peppers that are starting to produce (about 20 varieties) and I am so excited to see the results. We've got some really interesting varieties of sweet and hot peppers from all over the world which I will post pics and descriptions of soon. Sometimes I think I'd just like to be a pepper farmer as they are my favorite veggie.
The tomatoes are setting fruit. Thankfully the weather has been just mild enough to allow this. I have 13 varieties of tomato, many of them heirlooms. It should be interesting to see how they all fair in this Central Texas heat! Updates coming soon!

Good Night Sun

From morning till night and then some. This is exhausting but satisfying work.
The amazing sunsets are a nice bonus.