Stickman's 2014 Glog- That's all folks!

Hi All,
   I've got Manzanos sprouted and my Bhuts, Lotah Bih and Donne Sali seeds planted so it looks like time to leave 2103 behind and begin to concentrate on 2014. Last year I started some of my late-season varieties right after New Year's Day, but our season was too short to bring the pods to full ripeness so this year I started 2-3 weeks earlier.
 
Manzano seedlings...

 
Fruts and Bhuts ...

 
There are many more varieties yet to plant in the proper turn, and I have 4 overwintered pepper plants from 2013 that I'll report on later. Have a great weekend all!

 

[PaulG]

Nice, colorful mash, Rick!  Looks great.
 
The Bhuts did really well here here, as well, this year.  Lots of pods, and some
really A+ specimens for seed!  Can't wait to powder and blend some of these!
 
Hope Fall finds you and family well and happy, bro!

 

[stickman]

 
Heh, I know them. My maternal family is from Nova Scotia, and I moved out there for a year. Beautiful place. Boiling seafood on a fire in the Bay of Fundy and donairs, erh meh gawd

 
Hehe... S'right brother... you know it!
 

been a while. good to check back and see your season did great!

 
Hey G... glad you stopped in! Sorry to hear you've been getting whacked with rain the last month or so, but hope your pulls haven't suffered.

Nice, colorful mash, Rick!  Looks great.
 
The Bhuts did really well here here, as well, this year.  Lots of pods, and some
really A+ specimens for seed!  Can't wait to powder and blend some of these!
 
Hope Fall finds you and family well and happy, bro!

 
Sho' 'nuff brother.   I spent the day at my Mom's pruning her Apple trees today. We're all fine, but keeping busy getting ready for winter.
 
Glad to hear the Bhuts did really well for you too this year... they really are sunshine in a jar. Here's hoping you've got enough to get you through the gloomy days of Autumn into Winter.

 

[PaulG]

I think I can manage, brother  

 

[stickman]

I think I can manage, brother  

 
Ayuh...
 
I'm really happy with the size of the pods I'm getting on my OW Manzano! Not as prolific as yours Paul, but nice sized...

 
Have a great week all!

 

[PaulG]

Those look great, Rick!  Mine isn't all that prolific.  I will get less than a dozen pods.

 

[stickman]

Those look great, Rick!  Mine isn't all that prolific.  I will get less than a dozen pods.

 
Oh... looking at those healthy beasts in the greenhouse this spring I'd assumed you'd have more pods... I guess the Manzanos are pretty finicky when it comes to setting pods. I'll only have about a dozen between 2 plants myself. I've got enough together now to make some stuffed peppers...

Title: Rocoto Rellenos
Categories: Chilies, Beef, Cheese, Latino
Yield: 4 Servings

6 lg Fresh rocoto chilies
1/2 lb Ground beef
1/2 c Chopped onion
2 ts Roasted and ground peanuts
2 ts Raisins
1/2 c Chopped, cooked carrots
1 Hard-cooked egg; chopped
1/2 c Cooked peas
3 sm Potatoes; boiled and diced
1/4 c Milk
3 lg Eggs
1 c Mozzarella or Muenster
-cheese; grated
Salt & ground black pepper

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the top off each chile, remove the seeds and the
membranes and save the tops.

Brown the ground beef and onion in a skillet, breaking up
any large clumps of beef. Add the peanuts, raisins,
carrots, hard-cooked egg and peas and cook for 5 min.
Season to taste with salt and pepper. Fill each rocoto
with the meat mixture and cover with the rocoto tops.

Place the potatoes in a lightly greased pan and arrange
the filled rocotos on top. Beat the milk and eggs in a
separate bowl and pour over the rocotos. Sprinkle the
cheese around the rocotos and bake for 10 minutes.

Serves: 4-6

Heat Scale: Medium

From: Chile Pepper magazine; October 1996.
Have a great week all!

 

[PaulG]

 
Oh... looking at those healthy beasts in the greenhouse this spring I'd assumed you'd have more pods... I guess the Manzanos are pretty finicky when it comes to setting pods. I'll only have about a dozen between 2 plants myself. I've got enough together now to make some stuffed peppers...

Title: Rocoto Rellenos
Categories: Chilies, Beef, Cheese, Latino
Yield: 4 Servings

6 lg Fresh rocoto chilies
1/2 lb Ground beef
1/2 c Chopped onion
2 ts Roasted and ground peanuts
2 ts Raisins
1/2 c Chopped, cooked carrots
1 Hard-cooked egg; chopped
1/2 c Cooked peas
3 sm Potatoes; boiled and diced
1/4 c Milk
3 lg Eggs
1 c Mozzarella or Muenster
-cheese; grated
Salt & ground black pepper

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the top off each chile, remove the seeds and the
membranes and save the tops.

Brown the ground beef and onion in a skillet, breaking up
any large clumps of beef. Add the peanuts, raisins,
carrots, hard-cooked egg and peas and cook for 5 min.
Season to taste with salt and pepper. Fill each rocoto
with the meat mixture and cover with the rocoto tops.

Place the potatoes in a lightly greased pan and arrange
the filled rocotos on top. Beat the milk and eggs in a
separate bowl and pour over the rocotos. Sprinkle the
cheese around the rocotos and bake for 10 minutes.

Serves: 4-6

Heat Scale: Medium

From: Chile Pepper magazine; October 1996.
Have a great week all!

Dude, that sounds awesome.  Our peruvian friend makes some
awesome stuffed Manzanos very similar to those.  Bon Appetit!

 

[stickman]

Dude, that sounds awesome.  Our peruvian friend makes some
awesome stuffed Manzanos very similar to those.  Bon Appetit!

 
Very cool Paul! Would they be willing to share their recipe?
 
I've been advocating companion planting along with the chiles we all know and love, and today I found this article from Chile Pepper magazine on the subject...
http://www.chilepepper.com/2011/features/pepper-patch-companion-crops
My wife and I have been starting to talk about how to set up the garden next year, and we've decided to plant fewer chiles and more veggies. Why not... I have enough dried, bagged pods, powder and bottled sauces put away that I won't need to grow as many. This gives me ideas for how to lay everything out next spring.

 

[Devv]

I bookmarked that Rick, thanks for posting. I've been using Marigolds for quite some time but the other recommendations are killer.
 
Nice Manzano harvest!  They hate it at my place, I guess it's just too hot.
 
I have one left that's viable.
 
So how did the stuffed pepper recipe come out? I have a recipe for a red sauce based stuffed pepper. We use one Bell and the rest are Pob's. It's one of those dishes where I always overeat

 

[stickman]

I bookmarked that Rick, thanks for posting. I've been using Marigolds for quite some time but the other recommendations are killer.
 
Nice Manzano harvest!  They hate it at my place, I guess it's just too hot.
 
I have one left that's viable.
 
So how did the stuffed pepper recipe come out? I have a recipe for a red sauce based stuffed pepper. We use one Bell and the rest are Pob's. It's one of those dishes where I always overeat

 
Cheers Scott! It looked like a really good resource, and I was glad to find out that planting beans and cabbage together with chiles works out. Especially the beans... 'cause it's nice to plant things next to them that build up the soil. Okra's such a spindly plant, it's hard to believe that it would provide much shade for the chiles, but maybe it has to be sown fairly thickly? I bet it'd do well for you down in Tejas.      Spicy gumbo and okra pickles would be a good thing.
 
I'm still waiting for a couple more Manzanos to ripen before I stuff and cook them, and when it's cool outside it feels like they do it agonizingly slowly...
 
Ta all!

 

[Sawyer]

Great recipe, Rick.  Thanks for posting.  I don't have any Rocotos (I did get blooms this year!), but I bet it works with any decent stuffing pepper.
 
Also, nice article on companion planting.  I'm fairly happy with my developing system of using native plants intercropped with peppers.  Wild bean (Strophostyles helvola) provides nitrogen, but primarily helps support the pepper plants and reduces limb breakage.  It can also provide some shade, but for the most part my peppers have outgrown the beans.  Chickweed and yellow wood sorrel provide ground cover to cool the soil and suppress weed germination.  (Though the peppers are doing a stand up job of that on their own.)  I'll add purslane next year.  One good thing about the natives is they reseed themselves and even where I don't want them, they're certainly less of a problem than the usual weeds.  I think I'll try some random okra and sunflower plants next year.  Definitely going to make more use of marigolds and other repellent/attractant plants.
 
I grew (purple) sweet potatoes and okra together this year and that works well.  Animals have decimated both, so I haven't harvested much, but I can tell the pairing works well.  I found some studies indicating you get more total production from each for a given area, compared to planting half as much space to a monoculture of each (same total area).  I was hoping to make some dill-pickled okra, but haven't had enough harvest yet to bother.  Maybe now with the woodchuck gone and the deer temporarily absent, I'll get enough before frost.
 
I also tried a variant of the three sisters, planting corn, black-eye peas and watermelon together.  The corn and peas did well, but I planted everything too densely and the watermelon got shaded out.

 

[stickman]

Great recipe, Rick.  Thanks for posting.  I don't have any Rocotos (I did get blooms this year!), but I bet it works with any decent stuffing pepper.
 
Also, nice article on companion planting.  I'm fairly happy with my developing system of using native plants intercropped with peppers.  Wild bean (Strophostyles helvola) provides nitrogen, but primarily helps support the pepper plants and reduces limb breakage.  It can also provide some shade, but for the most part my peppers have outgrown the beans.  Chickweed and yellow wood sorrel provide ground cover to cool the soil and suppress weed germination.  (Though the peppers are doing a stand up job of that on their own.)  I'll add purslane next year.  One good thing about the natives is they reseed themselves and even where I don't want them, they're certainly less of a problem than the usual weeds.  I think I'll try some random okra and sunflower plants next year.  Definitely going to make more use of marigolds and other repellent/attractant plants.
 
I grew (purple) sweet potatoes and okra together this year and that works well.  Animals have decimated both, so I haven't harvested much, but I can tell the pairing works well.  I found some studies indicating you get more total production from each for a given area, compared to planting half as much space to a monoculture of each (same total area).  I was hoping to make some dill-pickled okra, but haven't had enough harvest yet to bother.  Maybe now with the woodchuck gone and the deer temporarily absent, I'll get enough before frost.
 
I also tried a variant of the three sisters, planting corn, black-eye peas and watermelon together.  The corn and peas did well, but I planted everything too densely and the watermelon got shaded out.

 
Yeah... every climate has its own ways... interesting how things differ down your way from how they are here John. I promise you that if you start taking potshots at the deer with a firelock, they'll make themselves scarce... as long as you don't have any neighbors close enough to take offense.   Good luck with the okra and purple sweet potatoes!
 
Made up another 2 quarts of hot sauce after work today with a quarter-peck of yellow peaches, a quart of MoA pods, 4 large cloves of garlic, 2 bunches of culantro, 2 cups of mango nectar, 1.5 tsp kosher salt, 2 tsp ground dry mustard, 20 allspice berries and half a nutmeg (ground), half a cup of brown sugar, half a cup of white vinegar and another quarter-cup of bottled lime juice. The Scotch Bonnet pods were already cut in half lengthways, seeded and frozen. I scalded, peeled, removed the pits and chopped the peaches, processed them in a food processor with the garlic, culantro and pepper pods. stirred in the rest of the ingredients and simmered for 10 minutes. Ran the hot sauce through a blender in batches and strained through a fine-mesh sieve before putting up in yogurt tubs and freezing. I figure I'll keep a quart at a time in the 'fridge to fill a squeeze bottle with... I've got 4 quarts in the freezer to draw from. I also keep a squeeze bottle of red sauce in the 'fridge made from Guajillo chiles, onion, garlic, tomatoes, cumin and a touch of oregano.

 

[Devv]

Sounds like it's going to be a nice hot sauce Rick!
 
Getting decent Peaches around here is tough, they're usually picked too soon and ripen mealy. Which is why we planted so many Peach trees. A Peach based sauce sounds fantastic.

 

[Sawyer]

 
Yeah... every climate has its own ways... interesting how things differ down your way from how they are here John. I promise you that if you start taking potshots at the deer with a firelock, they'll make themselves scarce... as long as you don't have any neighbors close enough to take offense.   Good luck with the okra and purple sweet potatoes!

 
Neighbors are an issue.  I'm outside city limits, so legally I can shoot, but I have to be very aware of line of fire.  Probably would use a shotgun w/ buckshot, though bow season is open now, and that would be even less disruptive.  On the other hand, I haven't seen any evidence of the deer in a couple of weeks, so maybe she moved on, or someone else took care of the problem. 

 

[stickman]

Sounds like it's going to be a nice hot sauce Rick!
 
Getting decent Peaches around here is tough, they're usually picked too soon and ripen mealy. Which is why we planted so many Peach trees. A Peach based sauce sounds fantastic.

 
OK... I'll get a bottle on the way to you. Think you'd be interested in any BOC, Naga King and Kurtovska Kapija seeds as well?
 

 
Neighbors are an issue.  I'm outside city limits, so legally I can shoot, but I have to be very aware of line of fire.  Probably would use a shotgun w/ buckshot, though bow season is open now, and that would be even less disruptive.  On the other hand, I haven't seen any evidence of the deer in a couple of weeks, so maybe she moved on, or someone else took care of the problem. 

 
Yep... what they don't hear can't hurt you. A bow would be the weapon of choice for dealing with vermin when you have neighbors opposed to hunting, or at least discharge of firearms within a mile of their place. Deer may not be incredibly smart, but they sure know when it's hunting season... that alone may account for their absence from your garden, but at least it keeps them out of your beans and greens.

 

[Devv]

Well thanks Rick!
 
I have the remainder of the Kurtovska Kapija seeds you sent last fall and saved seeds as well this season, but would love to try the others.
 
Any seeds on your wish list? I haven't compiled a list yet, in fact I'm still labeling and packaging them. I know the White Bhut is a keeper as well as the Jimmy Nardello and Billy Biker Jal. And then there's the Bishops Crown. I could go on

 

[stickman]

Well thanks Rick!
 
I have the remainder of the Kurtovska Kapija seeds you sent last fall and saved seeds as well this season, but would love to try the others.
 
Any seeds on your wish list? I haven't compiled a list yet, in fact I'm still labeling and packaging them. I know the White Bhut is a keeper as well as the Jimmy Nardello and Billy Biker Jal. And then there's the Bishops Crown. I could go on

 
I'm good Scott.   I'll throw in some BOC and Naga King seeds then, and get 'em in the mail tomorrow.  Cheers buddy!

 

[stickman]

Meh... the postal orifice was closed here yesterday... I'll get your sfrb in the mail tomorrow Scott.
 
We've got a frost warning here for tonight, and the way it feels this morning, I believe it. I have to work until 2:30 today, but when I get home I'll pull up and hang the Annuums and Fruts down cellar to finish ripening and set up a low row cover over the Bhuts in the raised bed behind the house.  I gave away the Wild Texas Pequins and one of the MoAs, and found a place to OW the other two. The Manzanos can take a light frost, so I'll leave them out for another week or two before potting them up. Looks like this is the last flurry of activity before the season ends here.
 
On a side note... I pulled all the Kurtovska Kapijas of any size at my Mom's yesterday, and ended up with roughly three 5 gallon pails of pods that average about a half a pound each. We'll see how many pods finish ripening in the next week, and then it'll be time to make Ajvar!

 
Have a great rest of the weekend all!

 

[Devv]

Beautiful peppers Rick!
 
My first few were the largest, then the heat set in and they were half that size. But they still eat!

 

[randyp]

       We are in the Mad Rush to get every last bit out of our bounty.Looks like your well on your way Rick..