This is my favorite time of year- and for the first time, I have a bumper crop of heirloom hot peppers! But first, a few other pictures.

This is my little tomato plant that could.  It had been completely snapped off by rabbits- and I mean completely.  The stem was snapped at the soil line- and had completely vanished.  I wrote it off, but a few days later saw a tiny bit of new growth and decided to see what it could do.  This thing has about a dozen tomatoes growing on it now, and also plenty of blossoms.

These are my scarlet runner beans.  It took a little bit of a cool snap for them to really take off, but now they’re growing like crazy and looking beautiful.   (That’s the neighbors corn patch behind the fence.)

This amused me.  It’s a little late for a melon to actually grow and become ripe before it frosts, but it’s the first one to do so.  These melon plants have really taken over the bed…note to self: give melons their own bed if you really want to grow them.

And now for some peppers.  So far, I am beyond pleased with the peppers I got  from Seed Savers Exchange.  Their flavors have been good, and they definitely have a bit of heat to them.  This first picture is of the Bulgarian Carrot pepper.  I haven’t tried this one yet, as they’ve just begun the process of turning orange this week.

This next one is the Maule’s Red Hot.  These definitely have some heat, and made some spectacular first batches of salsa.  SSE recommends them for drying or for making hot pepper sauce.  I’m thinking about that- I certainly have enough peppers to do so with this year.

We haven’t tried this one yet either.  This is Joe’s Round, and these peppers are surprisingly tiny!  They are literally less than an inch round.  SSE says these are very hot, so I’m not sure what I’ll do with them.  There’s enough here I could probably pickle a jar, but we’ll see.

Next is the Hinkelhatz.  This one resembles an habanero in shape, but not heat.  SSE lists it as simply hot- we haven’t tried this one yet either.

I didn’t take pictures of my Aji Crystal as I picked the biggest ones for salsa making already.  I picked them at their yellow stage- and they were AMAZING.  They had great flavor, quite a bit of heat, and the salsa made with them is really fruity and wonderful.

The Georgia Flames are just beginning to turn red, and the Cascabellas really want to be used or pickled too.   My jalapeno is doing well, as are the serranos.  The plant we’ve been affectionately calling “Mutant Pepper” I think I’ve determined to be an Anaheim pepper.  My peppers started blushing orange in the middles, and looked more like Anaheims than Banana Peppers.  The only heat in my peppers were in the seeds and membranes- once removed they were like sweet peppers, and made a nice mild salsa for the kids.

I’m about due for another update!

We’ve been enjoying bits of this and bits of that out of the garden.  We’ve had salad a few times, plenty of lettuce on sandwiches, and we’ve all had at least one of the Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes.

I just spent the last few hours weeding and tending to the tomatoes, and thought it would be a great time to snap a few pictures.

We have cucumbers!  I am hopeful that the yellow tint of this guy means he’s my Poona Kheera- because there are definitely a few of them.  This is my favorite cucumber, sweet, crispy, and delightful!  There are a few other cucumbers ripening up as well.  Can’t wait for the first taste!

My Purple Russians gave me a scare when I discovered some Blossom End Rot the other day.  So far though, it seems to be limited to just two of the fruit, and as they grow, the spots are not, so I think it’s just a fluke.  One of these tomatoes is massive- you can kind of see it in the back.

Here’s a Lemon Drop getting ready to fully ripen.  I have two of these plants in the garden- I hope they are tasty!

And here’s the mutant pepper plant.  I’ve already decided I want to save seed- and I haven’t even tasted the peppers yet.  This little plant is just quite abundant, and that makes me happy.

The next two pictures are of my Maule’s Red Hot pepper plants.  The curling of the peppers are unique to me- I can’t wait until they turn red- they are going to be very pretty to look at.

I have plenty of serranos- and in fact, I have no shortage of hot peppers at all.  Salsa making is going to be wonderful this year with all these delicious specimens to add to salsa!

And then a few more tomatoes.  Some Green Zebras because I love them.  I know a lot of people just don’t like them, but I love the grassy/citrus flavor they have, I love the way they look, and I love how they always, always produce tomatoes- even under the harshest conditions.

And finally, just because Minnesota has already been eating his, here is a picture of my very green Black Cherry tomatoes.  There are quite a few on the plant, so I can’t wait for them to ripen!

Overall, the garden is doing well.  I think we’ve learned a lesson though about using the free compost from our city… namely, that it’s not so great.  The city makes the compost from yard waste that people drop off- and apparently, they don’t get it hot enough, because we have so many weeds!  I am certain the abundance of quack grass and purslane and dozens of other weeds is from this compost.  The quantity of weeds is directly proportionate to how much compost went in each bed.  So the bed that has a ton of compost has a ton of weeds.  The bed that got very little compost has very little weeds.

Fortunately, we have our own compost going, and it’s looking fabulous already.  We’re also NOT putting the weeds into the compost bin- those will get taken to the city waste site for their compost.

Another lesson learned or remembered: I don’t really like Mesclun salad mixes.  Every year I plant them, and then every year I’m disappointed.  I don’t care for a lot of the bitter greens that are mixed in, and it just isn’t my go-to for salad.  Also, because they grow so close together, as they grow, the underneath becomes prime real estate for slugs, so I think I’m just not going there anymore.  I’ll just plant regular old romaine type lettuces and be happy.

Also, no arugula.  Ever. Oh my, all this time I’ve felt like I’ve really been missing out on this wonderful green that all the chefs use and everyone raves about.  Yuck! I did not like it at all, so I will not be growing it again.  It may be that if it’s grown in cooler weather it’s more tasty, but I happily ripped this bitter invader out of the garden today.

Mizuna is a winner though.  This lighter mustard green is delicious and seemingly doesn’t ever plan on bolting.