DesertChris' High Desert Extreme Gardening Glog

Devv · May 16, 2013

So what are your temps now?

Can't wait to see the rest :dance:

DesertChris · May 16, 2013

OK, last night, got home from the funeral, and realized I was starving....
So I was going to make a grilled cheese sandwich.
Then thought "hmmmm.... I could add some cooked chicken... oh and some smoked douglah powder"
Man was that the tastiest thing I have eaten all week.
After eating it, I immediately made another one...hahahaha

Harvested the garlic today...16 of them that we planted about a year ago...lol
These guys are huge!!!

Even used some for garlic bread with our pasta tonight

Here is a store bought garlic, next to one we grew

Devv said:
So what are your temps now?

Can't wait to see the rest

Temps....swinging from 80-100-80 over the next week.... plus big fire to the west of here, so it was super smokey skies yesterday.
Weird weather this week.

stc3248 · May 16, 2013

Hmmm...thanks for reminding me of my calorie restriction program you jerk! Now I am starving! Haha...nice looking garlic too! Gonna be a busy fire season! Glad you're near the air strip, but keep that gettaway bag handy anyway!

DesertChris · May 16, 2013

stc3248 said:
Hmmm...thanks for reminding me of my calorie restriction program you jerk! Now I am starving! Haha...nice looking garlic too! Gonna be a busy fire season! Glad you're near the air strip, but keep that gettaway bag handy anyway!

Hahaha, no problem

anything to help diet breaking!!

Yeah, if fire comes near here, I would turn on all garden irrigation, and fight it off with every hose I can find!!
Defend the peppers at all costs

Plus the house has fireproof roof, and fire sprinklers inside etc.... And surrounded by mostly sand....and a firehouse 1.5 miles away, and the fire airstrip 2 miles the other direction.
Yep, probably will get fires in all directions from here, but not close enough to get worried about.
But even if it does come close, the neighbors are ultra prepared, and even include us and our animals in their evacuation plans

They even briefed me on it all, so if they are at work, I could evacuate all their animals for them...lol

koskorgul · May 17, 2013

Stay safe out there Chris. Hope the fires burn out and dont make it to your peppers. Being in the middle of fire department and fire airstrip, I dont think you have anything wor worry about LOL. Always good to have an evac plan though.

RocketMan · May 17, 2013

Chris if you can try and hold off about 4 hours or so. Nothing like Chipotle's right on the vine

WalkGood · May 17, 2013

I ate before I came, hahahaha ... great foodie & love the garlic, I use a lot of fresh garlic in my dips along with the peppers but couldn't wait a year. Now that's starting to remind me of the pineapple wait time, hehe. Great update brethren ^_^

Devv · May 17, 2013

Sandwich looks good, another idea to try.

Are those regular garlic or Elephant garlic? Cuz they're huge!

When do you plant them? Mine have been in the ground since the fall equinox....I need to pull one up.

DesertChris · May 17, 2013

Devv said:
Sandwich looks good, another idea to try.

Are those regular garlic or Elephant garlic? Cuz they're huge!

When do you plant them? Mine have been in the ground since the fall equinox....I need to pull one up.

I'm not sure, but they do seem like elephant variety...They are definately huge...lol
My gal got some garlic at the farmers market last summer, slacked off on cooking with it, it started to sprout, so I planted them....probably in the late summer...I figure they are at about 9-10 months old.

RocketMan said:
Chris if you can try and hold off about 4 hours or so. Nothing like Chipotle's right on the vine

Ummmm... I think I will pass on the "vine chipotles"!!! hahaha

WalkGood said:
I ate before I came, hahahaha ... great foodie & love the garlic, I use a lot of fresh garlic in my dips along with the peppers but couldn't wait a year. Now that's starting to remind me of the pineapple wait time, hehe. Great update brethren ^_^

Yeah, it is a super long wait for garlic....I just had to forget about it, and let it grow... forever...

The sandwich was great. The next day, the boy said "will you make me one of those. I did. And he loved it too

DesertChris · May 17, 2013

OK, I have had seedlings pop up with 0,1,2 & 3 cotyledons....

This one is new for me...

A Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Satan's, with FOUR cots!!!!
Does that mean it will be twice as gnarly as a 2 cot one?? LOL

Devv · May 17, 2013

It might be! And it looks like it has a thick stem too.

Perhaps that's OW/cloning material there?

DesertChris · May 17, 2013

Devv said:
It might be! And it looks like it has a thick stem too.

Perhaps that's OW/cloning material there?

I had to go check, the stem is normal, but the cots are little, so it was an optical illusion.
I thinl I'll label it "Satan's 4 Cot"....

Oh.....Shane..... Dinner's in the oven

You would like this recipe....lol
Photos to come after it is cooked and eaten

OK, now that dinner has been eaten.... Here you go Shane...LOL

Ingredients:
Bread dough (1/2 white flour, 1/2 wheat pastry flour, salt, sugar, yeast, oil, water, minced fresh basil)
Pasta Sauce (made from garden stuff and frozen in the fall...thawed it and browned ground beef added)
Mozzarella
Red Jalapenos (frozen, from the garden last year)
Grated Garlic (harvested yesterday

)
Green Onions (from the garden)
Cooked Rotisserie Chicken (bought at Costco today)

And on mine, some Smoked Douglah Powder

Cooked at 425 for 17 minutes....sauce on top added before cooking, cheese on top added when 8 minutes left on cooking time.

stc3248 · May 17, 2013

Those look D-licious! Tomorrow is cheat day, and I just ate my not near as appetizing dinner, so I am good. Willing to bet your quad coty is a conjoined twin...each with two coty's...dshlogg had/has one going. You may not know for sure until true leaves form...Cool little plant!

Spankyscolts · May 18, 2013

Daa..ammm!! That Chicken grilled cheese thingy with Douglah powder made my mouth water!! I gotta make one of those !! HUGE GARLIC !! I'm growing it for the first time this year. Good luck on your grow !!

DesertChris · May 18, 2013

stc3248 said:
Those look D-licious! Tomorrow is cheat day, and I just ate my not near as appetizing dinner, so I am good. Willing to bet your quad coty is a conjoined twin...each with two coty's...dshlogg had/has one going. You may not know for sure until true leaves form...Cool little plant!

Well, I hope you get something tasty tomorrow! Calorie restriction sucks!

Hmmmm.... Conjoined twin would be sweet! I have an ajijoe mystery hot set of twins, 2 separate plants that grew out of one seed.
The stem on this one looks normal, but the 4 cots is different. When true leaves come in, what do they look like on conjoined twins?
Do they have 2 sets of first leaves, and 2 growth nodes?

Spankyscolts said:
Daa..ammm!! That Chicken grilled cheese thingy with Douglah powder made my mouth water!! I gotta make one of those !! HUGE GARLIC !! I'm growing it for the first time this year. Good luck on your grow !!

The grilled cheese creation was awesome. I highly recommend trying it!! My boy loved it too

The garlic is crazy....this was my first time growing it.
The long time it takes is surely a test in patience!!

I might take one of them and use the cloves to start more for next year....maybe... if we don't eat it first...lol

StupidJerk · May 18, 2013

The sheer volume of plants you are growing is so impressive. Are you going to end up selling them at the farmers markets? You are going to have so much more than you could possibly use, although I would probably do the same thing if I had the space. It's going to be very cool to see all of those plants create a jungle.<br /><br />Have you ever thought about using a top mulch? There probably isn't much available up there to use, but it might help during the extreme heat and conserved some water. It would definitely keep that soil fertile for a lot longer.

DesertChris · May 18, 2013

StupidJerk said:
The sheer volume of plants you are growing is so impressive. Are you going to end up selling them at the farmers markets? You are going to have so much more than you could possibly use, although I would probably do the same thing if I had the space. It's going to be very cool to see all of those plants create a jungle.<br /><br />Have you ever thought about using a top mulch? There probably isn't much available up there to use, but it might help during the extreme heat and conserved some water. It would definitely keep that soil fertile for a lot longer.

It will be a bit nicer when they start growing faster!! The vast majority are little guys right now.

The local area was talking about a small farmers market a few blocks from here on saturdays, but when they went from $5-$10 per day, to $10 and 10% of your sales, I laughed and decided right then that I could set up in the driveway for free, and sell off some of the surplus.
Also, an indian market said they would buy bhuts from me if I grow them

The main plan is to sell enough to maybe recoup some of the garden expenses, and freeze as much as possible. Also dry most of the harvested hotter stuff, and make flakes and powders.

Oh, and eat.as many fresh peppers as I can

Mulch.... I looked into it, but the asking price was ridiculous!
Hopefully i'll figure out something, but i'll have to change my irrigation if I do... the mulch would clog up the ditches...
The cheapest way may be straw ($6 a bale), but with the wind, I don't know....
I just might have to add more manure next year...and perhaps a legume cover crop this winter.

Yep, watering gets crazy in the summer...have to do it twice a day when it gets really hot.

You are right about way more than I could possibly use...lol
Last year I had maybe 50 plants, and the freezer is still loaded with peppers...
This year we have more than 24 times that many plants...hahahaha

At least I will see which varieties grow well here, and of those, which ones we like to eat the most.
So next year I can focus on less varieties/strains...maybe

stc3248 · May 18, 2013

Yeah...two nodes, two sets of true leaves then two stems from there on up...if its a single plant it'll just have one node.

Devv · May 18, 2013

I guess that's a chicken Calzone? It sure looks good!

I've gotten quite a bit of good cooking ideas from everyone this year.

I've been mulling the mulch idea too, the county offers it for free. While it would certainly help water consumption...My concerns are about the ditch watering, as it is the larger pieces of the bio char always wind up in the down hill portions of my ditches. In large garden it would be hard, I would want to scape it into a pile at the end of season as it's slow to decompose and would tie up nitrogen, this would be much easier to do with smaller plots. Hay and newspaper would be a better choice for me but it also poses problems. One is it's hard to find hay that's not coastal here, one would never want to use coastal, if it has seeds, you're introducing a real invader. Everywhere I've set a coastal round bale for the cattle has sparked a circle of coastal growth. I'm considering using hay grazer (sudan) if I can get it. But once used I would expect to be forced to use it every year, because it will seed too, and in my experience it will grow along side the plants..

I'd love to hear more ideas on this subject..

WalkGood · May 18, 2013

Chris, fantastic looking dinner … reminds me of our empanadas but we don’t top with cheese but rather use it inside the empanada. Killer looking scorpion seedling can’t wait to see that one grow up, have a great weekend mon!