The view of the front yard from the second floor balcony.
It took us a bit to get the hang of dehydrating, but I think we’ve finally got it down. For the most part, when your veggies or fruit feel crisp with a bit of leathery give they are done. Once they cool down they’ll harden a bit more. It’s like an optical illusion.
We’ve been drying our cayennes in a Salton food dehydrator at 50ºC for around 8 hours. Some recipes call for a higher temperature for a shorter period of time, but I find lower for longer works better.
We pickled our hungarian hot wax banana peppers!
We used this recipe - http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2008/10/pickled-hungarian-wax-peppers.html - but swapped the pickling salt with sea salt and the mustard seeds with dill. We also through a few cayennes in because our banana peppers were definitely lacking in spice this year (bummer)…(that’s right I’m bringing back ‘bummer’).
I pruned my plants. You should too.
Pruning is good because it directs all the plants energy to growing the healthy and productive parts instead of trying to fix damaged and unproductive parts.
Every week or so I snip off any damaged leaves, blossoms that didn’t get pollinated, and any leaves that start to grow at the base of the plant (those leaves are inefficient sun gatherers and won’t lead to any fruit).
Johan's Garden Update
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To all you doubting Debbies out there…the majority of the tomato plants I gave away are doing amazingly, so plant that in your garden and eat it! Johan’s are by far some of the best I’ve seen.
- Photos by Johan
