Reheading cabbage - proof

Remember when I told you that if you cut off the head of your cabbage but left the plant in the ground that it will rehead? Remember?

And remember how you said to yourself, whatda know... but didn't really believe me? Or believed me but didn't bother to do it yourself?

Well check it out:



You should be able to see four or five mini-cabbages in this picture.

Here's a close up of one and my rather large, rather mannish hand.



Perfect little side dishes.

Links:

The before post

Overwintering hot peppers - sunny season closing

The hot pepper plants will need to come in out of the cold soon so I've dug them up and repotted them in a pot that gave room for their rootballs to expand. Despite this insult, they haven't so much as shaken off a leaf.


Caribbean red and fatali, both habaneros, I believe.

The fatali (with yellow fruit) is doing fabulous this year (year 2) and according to my neighbour is hot HOT HOT. How hot? Let's relive the conversation.

Me: "Do you like hot food?"

Neighbour: "Oh yeah, I love hot food."

Me: "I had quite the harvest of jalapenos this year."

Neighbour: "I don't find them too hot. Just a bit spicey."

Me: "I have a couple of really hot ones. A caribean red one and fatali."

Neighbour: "I've heard of that one."

Me: "Yeah? Want to try one?"

Neighbour: "Sure."

I go and get a fatali, gingerly, wrapping my shirt around it.

Me: "Here you go."

Neighbour: "Thanks." He starts to take a bite.

My face tenses but before I can say maybe you want to cook with it or something - too late.

Neighbour:"Oh yeah, it's hot. Woah. Yeah hot. Wow. That's hot. Ah. I have to go to the backyard now..."

So I guess it's hot.

Here are my jalapenos (also hot).


Jalapenos with stretch marks

My long red cayennes are also in their second year but the top halves have died off. You can see the small one in the foreground.


Hot peppers potted up for overwintering indoors, including long red cayenne.

Unlike the fatali, they were kept in irregularly watered pots all summer so I wonder if drought caused them to die back. Also, unlike the fatali that produced one crop, the cayennes produced several all summer. I'll re-pot them and see how they do this winter.

Links

Info on the Scoville Heat Scale for hot peppers

Sweet, sweet potato success for northern growers!

Unlike the unicorn, the bermuda triangle or the possiblity of sasqwatch in the woods, this is one tall tale, that I can verify to be true:

You can grow sweet potatoes in the north


Variety: Jeorgia Jet supplied by Mapple Farms.

Or, at least, you can grow 'em in Ottawa. Here's is my adventure, in pictures, complete with a sweet ending:

1. I received my much awaited for package of sweet potato slips in the mail from Mapple Farms. They were limp and sad, as expected, but I planted them with great hope in my pre-warmed bed with plastic mulch.

2. The cutworms got two of my plants. Bottomless plastic cups solved the problem.



3. They grew into nice little plants.



4. And grew.



5. Until they mulched their own garden bed. Good little sweeties.



6. Frost has been threatened on and off on the longterm forcast but nothing yet. I decide to harvest on September 14th.



7. Look at these beaties!



8. I was really surprised by the size and number of them. Notice the latex dripping out of this one.



9. This one wasn't so pretty but it was huge.



10. There was some pitch fork damage so I had to cook those up for dinner tonight (or at least that's the story I'm sticking too). Yum!



Now I just have to make sure that I cure them properly. My husband thinks it's unreasonable to keep the house at 80 degree celcius for 5 days. I've taken to wrapping a tray in a winter blanket (with a air vent), in a plastic laundry bag, with a frequently heated water bottle in a warm room. Let's hope that'll be enough. I'll let you know.

Spend Sweet Potato Vine:




Hortiphilia Fact

Sweet Potato Greens

According to Ken Allan's fabulous book on growing sweet potatoes, listed below, you can eat sweet potato greens though this will cut back on tuber production.


Heck, here's another one since it's been awhile.


Hortiphilia Fact

Make Sweet Potato Cuttings

Instead of composting your old vines, like me, take healthy cuttings from the tips of the vines and root them up in water (they may already have some roots on them if they were sprawling on the ground). Pot them up and plant them next year. This is a great idea for ornamental sweet potatoes too.



Links:

Sweet Potato book for northern growers
Mapple Farm: Supplier of Georgia Jet slips, and more.

Season Finale, an ongoing post

I'm not sure what's more attractive:

The fall flower fave's



or these gorgeous collards

Season closing part 1 - soil warming

What worked and what didn't in the veggie patch:







Eggplants and peppers were out of this world this year. Seriously, the eggplants performed like zucchini. And like those most notorious of vegetables, I felt like standing at the edge of the drive with armfuls saying, "please take some." Unfortunately, they also share the fact that not everyone is crazy about them (like me.)



Previous years, I have had adequate success with hot peppers but very poor luck with eggplants or sweet peppers.



I have now learned to use a technique called soil warming. This involves covering the soil with clear plastic about 2 weeks or more before planting - I use vapour barrier - and cutting holes in to plant. Seriously, the contrast is between getting a couple mishapen fruit to huge, healthy plants loaded with fruit. This year was not more ideal than most either. It was all down to this fantastic techique. See my demonstration earlier in the year.



Thanks again Ken Allan

The 'other' edible relatives of the tomato

So most of us veggie gardeners already know that potatoes, eggplants and peppers are related to the glorious tomato but these are just the frequently talked about relatives.

The tomato has other family members rarely mentioned in dinner table conversation.

Let me introduce you to some of them:


Tomatillo plant


This is the tomatillo. Best known as an ingredient in salsa verde. Used thus, it is wonderful but I also like to eat them out of hand when the husks turn yellow. They have a fleshy fruity taste with an edge of tartness that is difficult to describe. The green tomatillo, in my garden, doesn't need supplemental watering and grows in an open but sprawling habit.

Ground cherries are also grow in a papery packaging. They are delicious little berries used fresh, in perserves or even pies. I grew Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry this year and found that it was an extremely prostrate plant, one could even describe it as a ground cover. The yellow berries are eaten when completely ripe. This is when they turn bright yellow and fall off the plant. You can store them in their husks for a perid of time (the amount differs depending on what you read) but let's say a couple weeks.

Lastly, we have sunberries (not garden huckleberries). Perhaps the most contraversial family member. Why did I specify that they were not garden huckleberries? I suspect that would require an entire post to explain but in short:

Luther Burbank bred the sunberry in the early 1900s but critics charged him with re-introducing the garden huckleberry. I don't have experience with the latter but understand that it is only palatable after lots of sugar has been added. However, sunberries are very tasty eaten right off the plant. Here's my problem with them. Everyone warns you to only eat the ripe berries. The unripe ones and all other parts of the plant are poisonness (you shouldn't eat potato fruit or tomato leaves or... this family only gives certain parts up for consumption). Well, I have two small children who routinely eat green tomatoes and strawberries so shouting at them every time they are near the sunberry patch to only eat the purple ones is a bit exhausting. My youngest did eat a couple green ones and seemed completely unaffected by the way.

Also they are a bit time consuming to harvest because but no more so than blueberries. On the plus side, they are early and productive. Oh and they taste great in apple crumble.


Links

How to make ground cherry pie

Mapple Farms, my supplier of sunberry and tomatillo, as well as rare tubers including short season sweet potato.



Join

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

How to grow a cabbage as big as your head

Or at least as big as my niece's head.

1. Start way too optimistically early - like March, under lights.

2. Transplant in a 18 inch square space, ammended by half frozen manure, when you are still getting snowstorms even though you know that you should wait until it is reliably 7C outside at night or warmer (but not too warm).

3. Cover with little cloches and fret alot.

4. Figure there's no way these guys are going to make it and start another batch in April. Pretend you planned this.

5. Forget to water a lot.

6. Pick off cabbage worms, or better yet, do a little science project by bringing them indoors to watch them turn into butteflies. Lots of fun though releasing them does add to the pest population.

7. Wonder, when you get around to weeding, if they will ever be ready

8. Harvest first and second crop (both survived) and wonder in amazement that it actually worked again!

9. Be grateful for the joys of gardening.



This cabbage has no lingering doubt when the spammers make comments about its size. Those holes on the outer leaves (the inner leaves were unblemished) are caused by an assortment of catepillars and slugs. But they left sooo much cabbage, I can't really complain.

Wait you really want to know how to grow great cabbages?

Veggie Gardening Tips is a blog full of great information about organic vegetable gardening and he's written a post to answer just this question!

Join

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.