Peppers

This weekend I prepped 11 8'x4' beds for veggies. To get the beds ready for planting I first covered them in red plastic to keep down the weeds. Next, I used bricks to hold down the plastic. Then, I cut holes in the plastic for planting. I put compost in each hole and mixed it in with soil from the bed. In most of them I planted six varieties of chilis. In one I put Asian eggplant, in another bush beans and basil in another. In the last bed I put beets and lettuce. Next week, I'll add some organic fertilizer to each plant to give them a boost.

We grow a wide variety of chilis at One Love Farm. Cayenne and Hot Portugual for chili powder. Red and green bell peppers for roasting and salads. Padron for frying and jalapeno for pickling. Peppers like well drained soil and hot summers. That's why they do so well in the southwest United States and Mexico. But, we do have long enough summers in Rhode Island to still get some good peppers. You just need to make sure they get water full sun and water during periods of low rainfall. With that, you'll get tons of fruit to enjoy from August until frost kills back the plants.

For chilis that you want to dry, you can pick the fruit and air dry them in a cool, dark place (like a basement). They will dry in a few weeks. Or, you can put them in the oven on a cookie sheet. The temp of the oven should be its lowest setting and the chilis will be dry in a few hours. At One Love Farm, we use a dehydrador to dry our chilis.

Sweet peppers can be preserved by freezing, but I find the texture rubbery when thawed. Generally, I will preserve and can the peppers in vinegar and store them in jars in the basement. But, truth be told, nothing beats a fresh pepper, picked in the warm summer sun.

Columbine

Columbine is a woodland flowering plant, so it likes some degree of shade. We grow Columbine near the foot of the berm where they get some shade from the house and white pines.

Mountain Laurel

Mountain Laurel is a shrub in the blueberry family. It grows throughout the eastern United States. When we built the berm behind the house several years ago, we ancored the top of it with Mountain Laurel and White Pine. The Mountain Laurel prevents erosion on the berm, adds to the privacy and in the late spring, flowers.

Cucumbers

Cucumbers are a wonderfully versatile vegetable. Of course they are great in salads, but I also like them peeled with fruit like watermelon. Or you can slice cukes into rounds and dip in hummus. Karen also likes to put sliced cucumbers in a pitcher of water for a cucumber taste in water.

Cucumbers like rich soil, with some liquid organic fertilizer every three weeks or so. I like to trellis cucumbers to allow the vines to climb up rather that on the ground. There are two advantages to this method of planting. First, it gets the fruit off the ground, which keeps them from yellowing and rotting. Second, it saves space in the garden. By growing the vines horizontally rather than vertically, you can fit more plants into each square foot of the garden. More plants means more cucumbers. And more cucumbers means more cucumber salads.

Herbs

We grow lots of herbs at One Love Farm. Lots and lots of herbs. You can click on links to posts about Cilantro, Sage, Parsley, Chives, Chamomile, and Thyme. With so many uses for herbs, they are very rewarding to grow. For instance, we use dry Sage as a seasoning, fresh Sage with Carrots and Pasta, and even as an incense. We also use dried herbs in our Chili Powder.

This year, in addition to the herbs listed above, we're going to grow a bunch of Dill. We planted 150 Strawberry plants this spring. But, it will take a full years for the plants to establish themselves and spread. Until then, I have some extra space between the rows. I'm going to use that space to tuck in Dill and Parsley. We will use the herbs both fresh and dried.

Arugula

Back on May 8th, I posted about how well the arugula was doing at One Love Farm. Here is a link to that post. I harvested a bunch of arugula and enjoyed it in salad, on pizza and in risotto. And, I sold a lot of arugula at the Richmond Farmers' Market. But I still have a bunch left over.

So, in addition to wonderful fresh arugula salad for lunch, I'm also going to make my favorite arugula dish this week.

Just boil some dry penne in salt water. While waiting for the water to boil, mince a couple cloves of garlic in a wooden bowl. Add several handfuls of arugla to the garlic in the bowl. After the pasta has cooked, drain the water and reserve a half cup or so of the pasta water. Add the (very) hot pasta to the bowl and add olive oil. Mix well, allowing the pasta to wilt the arugula and cook the garlic. Add a little of the reserved water to moisten the mixture, if needed. You can top the pasta with grated cheese or cayanne pepper to taste.

Now, if you look carefully at the picture above, you can see some green shoots rising above the arugula leaves. When there is warm weather, the arugula easily bolts. That means the plant is starting to produce seeds. The stalk will erupt in a few days with white flowers. Thoese flowers become a seed pod which will make new arugula plants next year. The thing is, when the arugula goes to seed, the arugula gets even more of its distinctive peppery flavor. If you allow the arugula to go a few more weeks, it will become stonger and bitter. That is why it is good that I harvested all of the arugula to use up this week, before that happens.

Tomatoes

Yesterday, Karen and I put down red plastic mulch for our tomatoes. Studies have shown that using plastic mulch increases tomoato production, which is something I can surely support. The theory goes that the red mulch reflects a useful red color frequency back to the plant which allows for more production.

My opinion is that the majority of the reason for the increased production is that the mulch warms the soil, giving the plant a jumpstart. I know this is true because I use black plastic between some of my rows and the different in temperature on the black plastic and on the grass a few feet away is significant during a sunny day.

But, if the the only reason for the increased production in tomtato plants was the heating of the soil, then black plastic should show the same increase as the red plastic, right? Well, not quite. The red showed a little more than the other colors meaning that the reflecting of the red light frequncy is the reason for the increased prodution, or the red plastic heats the soil more than other colors or some other reason is at work.

Whatever the reason, we laid down the red plastic for the benefit of warming the soil, for the hope of increased production and, most importantly, to keep the weeds down.

Today, Karen and I planted 125 tomoato plants. I am growning six varieties of mostly heirloom tomatoes. Valencia, an orange tomato, will be the first to be ready to harvest, hopefully sometime in July.

Karen and I added compost and organic fertilizer to each hole before planting each tomato. One tip when planting tomoatoes is to plant them deep. The tomato will send out roots along the length of it's stem if it is buried. This will allow for a deeper and stronger root system. The deeper the roots, the further underground the plant can draw water, allowing it to flourish. Just be sure to remove the leaves on the lower part of the stem.

I have experimented with lots of different kind of tomoato supports and found the good old fashioned bamboo stake to do the best job. But, hammering 125 bamboo stakes into the ground is certainly a job that will tire out your shoulder.