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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2021 20:06:58 GMT -6
But it's okay to fondle and drool over produce at the box stores.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 29, 2021 21:50:59 GMT -6
Yeah, right?
I don't get it. Them's the rules though.This was what my stand looked like back in 2019, before the covid restrictions. I just let my customers pick through the boxes and take out what they want, then I weigh it up at the other end of the tables. I think I had a hundred pounds on display there that day and another 60 pounds or so in the back of the truck.
My boxes are made of standard lumber. The shallow boxes are 24" x 12" made from 2 x 6 planks with a 1 x 12 bottom.
The deeps are the same size but made from all 1 x 12 stock. The deeps hold 20 pounds each.
It takes me from 6:00 am until 11:00 am to pick a hundred pounds by myself, so I do a lot of picking at night with a headlamp on in order to have nice crispy pods by opening time at 8:00 am Saturday mornings. Sometimes, I have so much okra that I have to pick all day long, plus into the night as well.
We have a Wednesday evening market from 4:00 pm until 8:00 pm. I pick in the early morning for that market, but by 4:00 pm it's so hot out that it's really hard on the veggies to leave them exposed in the boxes.
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Post by macmex on Apr 4, 2022 12:10:22 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum shared some shishito pepper seed with me last fall and I have started some for the 2022 growing season. I WILL find a way to isolate! (and save seed)
I started the seed sprouting on March 18. It appears that more are still sprouting, probably due to temperature fluctuation in the greenhouse.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Apr 6, 2022 10:37:44 GMT -6
That’s great, Macmex. I’m looking forward to growing more shishitos this year. We really enjoyed them as a side dish and occasionally as an ingredient in other recipes. I started mine a while back and potted them up a couple of weeks ago. They’ve been staying outside 24/7, but I just moved them back inside this morning as we are having some high winds blowing a cold front in. It’s still warm today, but I figured I’d get the peppers, eggplant, and sweet potatoes back inside since it’s going to drop to the 40’s and possibly even 30’s at night this week. It was 97 yesterday. My tomatoes in the garden are even just starting to flower. I sure hope the forecast for 38 is wrong. The four peppers on the top right of this picture are shishitos. I’ve read that topping plants that grow small peppers can be helpful for increasing the strength and productivity of the pepper. I’m not sure I need to increase productivity on these, but it might be interesting to top two and leave two whole to see what happens.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Apr 10, 2022 15:18:15 GMT -6
I planted out a few varieties of peppers yesterday, shishito included. I ended up with more onions than I expected this winter (the company inadvertently sent too few and then sent extra replacements to compensate), so the peppers are kind of crammed into spaces where I pulled a few green onions. The weather is supposed to be pretty warm from here on out, and I wanted to get these growing their roots into the soil. I was pleased that they seemed to handle the transplanting pretty well despite the fact that I did it during the heat of the day yesterday. (It’s the time of year that Live Oaks shed their leaves, and this particular garden is covered in the beds and the pathways with live oak leaves right now. I figure it’s mulch I didn’t have to spread.)
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 10, 2022 22:26:42 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum,
You sound like me today, searching out every spare hidey-hole I could find in order to dig in another onion set in the leave-litter that is my garden fence.
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Post by chrysanthemum on May 29, 2022 15:27:33 GMT -6
I harvested just a handful of Shishito peppers yesterday to add to a salad. My nine-year-old daughter watered the garden for me yesterday morning so that I could work on a different project, and she was distressed that she accidentally broke off a pepper branch. I told her that I break plants, too, and there was no harm done. It was just pruning. We were having a lettuce salad with our dinner, and so I picked a few more peppers to help fill out the toppings (onion, tomatoes, our first cucumber, and a few shishitos). It has been a somewhat discouraging gardening season with the heat and not great success with some crops, so it was nice to have a little harvest from the “backyard grocery store” to enjoy at the end of a long day’s work. (The lettuce came from the actual grocery store because it’s too hot to grow it outside here right now. I am just getting started with a plan to try it again inside, though. It may be too hot inside, too, though.)
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 5, 2022 6:35:08 GMT -6
macmex, I was thinking of you and your Shishitos the other day. How are they coming along? I have four plants in the garden, and we just harvested enough to make a small side dish of peppers to go along with pizza over the weekend. The plants are producing smaller peppers and fewer than last year. I figure it’s because of the heat and drought this year, but it was still really nice to get that little treat with our meal.
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Post by macmex on Jul 6, 2022 13:29:57 GMT -6
Last I looked they were doing okay. I'll try and get to them this afternoon and check for a better report. Thanks for asking!
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Post by macmex on Jul 20, 2022 6:19:19 GMT -6
A frustration for me this year is that I have so much on my plate, taking care of myself, that I struggle to do much in the garden. It's taken a couple weeks to get out to my shishito peppers and even examine them. Two days ago I managed to water them real well. Last night, before bed time, I got in there and weeded them. I was pleasantly surprised to find them alive and doing reasonably well.
The best plant had obviously managed to compete with the weeds. It's loaded and looks bushy and vigorous.
A couple of the other plants were looking spindly. Yet, they were alive and healthy. I weeded them all and left the patch looking pretty good.
We've been blessed on our place, this summer. Surrounded by so many grasshoppers we have a lot, but not hordes. The few things I've gotten planted have survived, in spite of much neglect.
In a couple key areas, even if I can't do much, I do water. Regularly I notice frogs and toads hanging out in these places. I have spring peepers which actually climb into my water buckets and then, like little skinny dippers, caught in the act, they race out of there and hide in the weeds when I come by. I also have lots of leopard frogs. They hide in the thick foliage of my sweet potato vines, enjoying the drip irrigation. I bet the frogs and toads are helping a lot with the grasshoppers. I've seen more toads than ever before too. I have to be careful not to step on them when I do chores before dawn.
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Post by woodeye on Jul 20, 2022 6:58:29 GMT -6
Your pepper plants look fantastic! Good that you have lots of happy frogs and toads too...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 20, 2022 12:47:15 GMT -6
macmex, those are looking great! I’ve been babying mine, and they are maybe fuller, but they’re not bearing too much these days. I had enough peppers to top one pizza last week, and today I had just four for a salad. The plants do have some flowers, but I think the heat is just keeping everything from producing as it should.
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Post by macmex on Jul 20, 2022 12:50:45 GMT -6
I look forward to eating some but more than that, I want to save enough seed for a BIG planting of Shishito in 2023! I could see my wife and I eating these about like we would sauteed green beans
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 20, 2022 12:57:51 GMT -6
We love eating them sautéed in a little oil with nothing more than salt on top. They make a great side dish (or they did last year when we had enough to do that). I think the plants can hang on for a good while longer, so I hope to have big harvests when the weather cools down.
That would be awesome if you got a great crop of seed. I would think you would be able to harvest some for eating, and they would produce again pretty quickly, unless your weather is predicted to stay insanely hot for a while. Last year we harvested regularly for months. I think it was end of September that I let my isolated plant go for seed (but then I forgot to harvest seeds and cooked up a whole bunch of red pods by mistake at one point, I think. They were yummy.)
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Post by macmex on Jul 20, 2022 14:01:07 GMT -6
That's good to know. I will probably pick some for us to try. My wife and daughter (the one who lives by us) have never tasted them. Our other daughter is the one who introduced me to Shishito peppers while I was visiting her in Alaska about a year and a half ago.
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