The Year of the pepper

Had a lot of success this year with pepper plants. Seen at the very top was a Dancing spirit pepper mild in spicyness but tasty to add to meals. Below that is a Jamaican Scotch Bonnet pepper. Spicy and sweet. A friend wanted to grow these and was intrigued by their color.

And finally in the last shot it's a menagerie of peppers I picked from the deck garden. The little tiny bell looking peppers are Hungarian Cheese peppers. Another tasty and mild easy to grow pepper. In fact it's almost December and they are still producing.

I took a different approach this to pepper and tomato growing. All my plants were in pots. This was for a couple of reasons. One to keep them from pests. I had a heck of a bout with gophers in my garden earlier this year and wanted my stuff to survive. The pots offered the roots protection needed. Also the portability of them helped when the light was questionable.

I also was able to expand to my elevated deck in my backyard that gets much better sun with no shadows and a glass pane window blocking the west winds. It has been a hot spot for growing this year.

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Pest Control. My methods of extermination.(Gophers mainly)

So if you've seen some of my past posts you know that I've had encounters with possums and raccoons in my backyard garden. I've trapped 3 raccoons and eliminated 2 possums but gophers had been a problem in the past I wasn't really willing to tackle. At least until recently. The gophers in my backyard alley were ruining plants and soil everywhere. I'd had enough. So after some serious research I chose my weapon. A Victor Black Box Gopher trap. The amazon reviews were great and it was under $15. Now as you see the trap here it's set and ready to go. You would just point that end (the open end) towards an open tunnel. It works like a reverse mouse trap, instead of pinning a rodent down it pulls them up and pins them to the roof of the trap. The trigger is that coat hanger looking metal piece in the middle. It packs quite a punch when triggered. Now you can't just look for an open hole and stick it in front of it. I watched YouTube for about an ho...

Purple Tomatillo

So I am hoping I see a lot more of these purple balls. This is a purple variety of tomatillo I have growing. I have had success in the past with the green variety but never to many purple ones. All that I had never really produced fruit until this year. Plant still looks healthy too. Here is another tomatillo variety the green type. It's grows very wildly and stretches well beyond its roots. This one is in a pot that you can barely see in this photo. Another angle The fruit grow into what looks like Chinese lanterns hanging on the branches. They start small and eventually outgrow their paper wrapping. They often have a sticky sap on the outside of the fruit as well. It tastes a bit between a cross of pepper and tomato. Great for salsa. I even have some growing from seeds deposited from tiny fruit from last season. Always cool when nature does the work for ya!

Grapevine reaching out for support

So my grapevine is reaching out for support. I've tried to weave this vine into my fence but there are places where its just reached beyond for more. So i think I might try to build somekind of support structure into the alley. Maybe a simple pole or piece of wood to create a natural grapevine arch. My strategy has been to weave each independent vine into others to create a super vine that can still reach out and support itself. Sort of looks like an elephant.

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