Port Potager

In addition to a strong harvest of chicken heart hot peppers , we’re also enjoying a bumper crop of poblanos: (This isn’t even all of them.) These did really well for us this year, and we’ve been using them instead of bell peppers in our recipes all summer and fall. We had to bring them all in this week since we had a frost warning, though, so now we have piles of peppers to use. They’ll last for a while at room temperature, since they’re fairly tough, but to make sure we don’t lose any, we’ll have to roast and freeze them: These have been roasted in the broiler to char the skins. (They probably could be even blacker next time.) Once charred, you let them steam in a bag and then peel off the skins. Once prepped in the way, we can stack them in a freezer box and use them all winter long in recipes.  I used these four to make chiles rellenos. Since I am lazy, I didn’t batter and fry them, though. Instead, I put the cheese-stuffed peppers in a baking dish...

This year we planted a different variety of hot pepper: hinkelhatz. Hinkelhatz is German for "chicken heart," which describes the approximate shape and size of these peppers when they are ripe. The plants are prolific, and last weekend I harvested plenty from our second round of picking: The hinkelhatz are the small ones on the left; the big ones on the right are poblanos, which also did extremely well for us this year.  The first round of hinkelhatz peppers were sliced and pickled like jalapeños , and we plan to enjoy them on nachos all winter long. (Hopefully they’re not too spicy for that application — these are supposed to be several times hotter than jalapeños, but we’ve had such extremely spicy jalapeños in the past that I think we can handle it.) Now that we have a second batch, I blitzed that whole basket of mixed hot peppers above to make a new batch of homemade sriracha . We did this for the first time back in 2013, and it lasted pretty much fo...

We made our garden plan back in February, but I forgot to document it. I was reminded of this when we pulled out the plan to actually start planting. It hasn’t been warm — it’s snowing as I write this — but the ground has thawed and we can get started with our hardiest cool-weather plants. The leeks we ordered came in the mail, so we had to get them in the ground. We bought transplants instead of doing them from seed this year, and they are about as big around as a pencil — much bigger than the tiny strings we’ve managed to get starting them on our own. These are much easier to work with, and I’m certain they’ll have a better survival rate than our tiny seedlings, so this looks to be a good investment. Behind the cold frame you can see a few of last year’s leeks — these are the stragglers we haven’t harvested yet. Usually when we plant in March, we’re out of luck when it comes to compost. That’s because the City Yard doesn’t open until April and our pile is usually frozen....

It’s that time of year again! We’ve been a little slower than usual to get the garden plan done this winter, as we’ve been driven to distraction by current events . Still, we finally finished that work today, and leek and onion seeds have already been started. Here’s hoping that the spring will bring the goodness and light of things growing and being nurtured in your corner of the world, too. Starting in the center C, you can see dots that indicate the spots where PVC pipes will be inserted for pole beans. We’re doing the bean house again here! Around the outside is a traditional companion planting of squash and pumpkins.  Across the top of the top bed is a long row of trellises cucumbers, both pickling and slicing. We’re going all in on these this year, since last summer’s drought left us with just one  cucumber for the whole season. Behind the cucumbers will be bell peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, head lettuce, and a few succession plantings of cilantro. ...

Continuing with the garden plans for the spring, here is the swingset quadrant diagram: The full left side is the perennial asparagus bed, so no changes there. Ditto for the top, which is still grapes in the back and perennial herbs in the front. I may end up moving around some of the herbs once they come up in the spring and I see what's there. Anyway, the upper portion of the right side is mostly head lettuce, which will be shaded by a trellis of pickling cucumbers (on the long side) and slicing cucumbers (on the short side). The shade should help keep the lettuces from bolting in the summer heat, especially since the trellises are oriented to block out afternoon sun. The lower half has pole beans along the right side, which will vine their way up poles that arch over the center path. We did this in the past closer to the house, and it worked well to form a shady arbor to support all the beans — like the bean house , but over the path instead. The rest of the bed i...

A little over a week ago we had our first light frost, and I had to bring in all of our peppers . There were tons! (Okay, there were many pounds.) Instead of eating them green, we kept waiting for the them to ripen into their pretty colors. But when frost beat us to it, I had to bring in a lot all at once. Many of them have ripened to yellow and red on the counter, and we've been eating then just as fast as we can. Best use so far: Kirk made these excellent stuffed peppers in the crock pot. They are filled with rice, spicy Italian sausage, a bit of egg to hold it all together, and (of course) some more peppers. They were cooked in plain tomato sauce in the crock pot for several hours, and the result was really delicious. I think Kirk scooped up the remaining roasted pepper-flavored sauce to use later on some other Italian delight. Another major portion of the pepper harvest was our jalapeños and serranos: Kirk spent the evening last night slicing and dicing to...

Come, ye thankful people, come, Raise the song of harvest home! All is safely gathered in, Ere the winter storms begin... ~Henry Alford The forecast for tonight is for temperatures to drop down to 30 degrees, and the National Weather Service issued its official freeze warning. That meant that I spent about an hour and a half bringing in the last of our summer harvest. I picked all the tender things that just won't make it through any bit of frost: beans, peppers, eggplant, okra, and a last few lavender buds. Here's why it took so long: That is a whole lot of peppers! We didn't realize we had so many bell peppers because they're hard to see when they are still green, and we were kind of waiting for them to turn. But now we're out of time, and I guess smarter farmers would have been enjoying them all along as green peppers instead of waiting for them to turn yellow, orange, and red. We've had a few very sweet, colorful ones, but It's jus...