Sari's Garden 2006, a bit about 2007 and 2008 dreams

[JohnF]

We had a quite cool summer but ,amazingly, have not yet had a frost either!

[svalli]

Wisconsin showed again its predictably unpredictable autumn weather. On last weekend and on Monday we still had +30°C and high humidity and even during night it did not drop below +20°C. Tuesday was pleasant +20°C day and after that it has barely got to +10°C with nights being around +5°C.  We went again from air conditioning to heating in one day.

Next two nights we have frost warnings, so I picked all peppers and the ripening tomatoes tonight.


Top ones are Anaheim peppers; we had eaten all ripe ones already, so that's why there are no red ones. The brown looking ones have just started to turn to red from green. This variety is very sweet when ripe and really mildly hot and quite prolific, all those peppers came from one plant which has already produced ripe ones. I saved seeds from this even it may have been a hybrid.

Pile on the right is Sweet Italians. It also is a very productive and good tasting variety. I will definitely grow it in future. It has the same sweet taste as Jimmy Nardello, but this one was more productive and the shape makes these easier to cut.

Tomatoes are Pink Brandywines and German Queens. Both of them produced this year quite well and I got much bigger and better Brandywines than on previous years. This year the tomatoes were not so crowded and I planted them late, so one or the other (or both) may have made the difference.

This was not the greatest harvest for me, but quite good considering how few plants I had and I did not really have time to take care of them.

[svalli]

The first frost did not come over a week ago, like predicted, but now the weather is really cooling again. This morning the thermometer was showing just 3°C outside. The Dark-eyed juncos have returned to our yard, which is one of the signs of colder weather being here soon. These small birds are also called snow-birds, since they are here only for the winter and move up north to nest when spring comes. During the years I have learned to read the signs of nature here in Wisconsin and even we are eagerly waiting to move back to Finland it is sad to leave the place which has been our home for so long.

I do still have few green jalapenos in the garden, which I will pick tonight and I will move the potted chilies to garage for the night. Habanero is still doing well and is ripening more pods, Tabasco has dropped a lot of leaves, but it has still new buds forming, so it could maybe survive one more year, if I could keep it.

I picked some tomatoes from garden this morning for lunch and found out that they do taste like the ones from grocery store. It must be the cold night affecting. The ones which were picked week ago tasted much better. If tomatoes should not be refrigerated, because it changes the taste, same must apply to cold nights.

[svalli]

Season 2007 is now finally over; I dumped the last plants to compost yesterday. I had kept three pots in garage, where the last orange habaneros and tabasco were ripening. In same wide pot as the habanero I had a cubanelle and it had started to form new peppers. Tepin had a lot of tiny buds on it, but none had yet opened.

I do not know anyone around here who would have wanted to overwinter the plants, so I was forced to throw them out to the cold. It was kinda sad, but hopefully I can soon start new plants in a new place. If my new Harbor Freight 10x12 greenhouse fits on our new yard, the season 2008 looks promising.

[svalli]

We are now happily in Finland in our new home. First overseas containers arrived last week and I got my seeds. I have about 95 tomato and 125 pepper varieties with all sorts of other vegetable and herb seeds. I should start first peppers as soon as we have unpacked most of the moving boxes, but it is quite difficult to determine what to grow this year. I may grow mostly ornamentals and annuums, which will have time to produce before fall. I will also try few smaller chinenses and baccatums as houseplants and in patio containers.

There is a lot of things to do, I will start a new garden diary as soon as I am ready to start serious gardening.