Pickled Jalapeno and Pickled Banana Peppers

The alternate title of this post? "An Ode to Our Pepper Plants."

It's those plants that have been producing like crazy, even as the tomato and cucumber plants took time to recuperate from a ferociously hot spell earlier this summer. Our pepper plants didn't seem fazed by it.

And so we've been taking those peppers, just banana and jalapenos, and using them in a couple of ways. We've cut them up and used them fresh, yes, but we've also pickled them.

Since this is our first year canning, we've chosen to use recipes instead of march out on our own. Next year, with a summer's work under our belts, we'll be able to adapt and wing it more.

Jalapenos, fresh from a waterbath canning.

We chose recipes from a canning book from Kerr, and they're straightforward. The banana peppers recipe involved a one-day brine before the canning process, while the jalapenos were topped with a mixture of vinegar, water, olive oil, salt and pickling spices.

What have you canned this summer?

Our Garden, Year 2, July Update

It's hard to believe we've had food growing in our garden for a month and a half now. But that's the truth. Our  garden has been yielding mixed results, but our containers are mostly doing well. Our zucchini plant produced its first this week.

The biggest story in our garden is the amount of weeds we have. Just terrible. We've done multiple weeding sessions and yet they continue to thrive. At some point, it might be reasonable to throw up our hands. Just not yet.

Here's some photos of where we're at with our garden, and of what we're eating.

Our tomato plants had early blight.

Thriving cilantro.

Container lettuce.

We still have tons to weed between pepper plants.

The cukes are crawling up.

Our Garden, Year 2, Update 1

Big Bertha peppers

It's June, which means gardening season is well underway. OK, maybe not well underway, especially given the weather in southeastern Wisconsin in 2011.

Anyway, we had neglected our garden well into April and were getting touch-and-go about tilling and planting. But one Sunday we managed to get up and tilled our garden (which we expanded by 2 feet lengthwise); bought our vegetable and herb plants at Papa Steinke's; bought hay and potted plant materials at Piala's Nursery; bought cinder blocks for rain barrels; planted herbs, vegetables and potted plants; and installed rain barrels.

Yeah, we were after tired that day.

So, what's in our garden this year? Here's what:

Our rain barrels

• zucchini
• red onions
• Bell Boy peppers
• Balencia peppers
• jalapeno peppers
• banana peppers
• Golden Summer peppers
• Big Bertha peppers
• Cherokee purple tomatoes
• Early Girl tomatoes
• Sunsugar cherry tomatoes
• Burpee Big Girl tomatoes
• Mountain Fresh tomatoes
• Azoychka tomatoes
• burpless cucumbers
• homemade pickle cucumbers

And our herbs are all in pots, unlike last year when we had some in the garden. Our herbs:

• mojito spearming
• chives
• dill
• cilantro
• parsley

What will you be harvesting this year?

Our Garden, Year 2

It's April now, so our garden plans are in full swing. We've already staked out the garden and put up some  fencing to keep the puppies out.

(Toward the end of last summer, Dezzy would constantly go in the garden, and it was tough to get him out. Also, it was difficult to mow around the garden since the tomato and cucumber plants grew outside of it.)

We plan to extend the garden two feet out on three sides. As far as our plans for what we're growing, they will be similar to what we grew last year. We want to grow our herbs and lettuce this year in containers, instead of in the garden. In addition, lettuce likely will be the only plant we'll start from seed.

What are your garden plans for this year? (And we'll leave you with a picture of our puppies, Ollie and Dezzy.)

Our First Garden, Update 12

Our garden is nearly dead, although we are now planning to harvest and dry the rest of our basil and parsley and dehydrate them in a dehydrator we received from my sister.

In addition, yesterday I harvested the coriander seeds from our cilantro plant. We'll probably save some for next year, but grind the rest up to use in cooking or other culinary applications (tea, maybe?).

And we still have a few things growing in our garden. Our green pepper plant has a few baby buds on it, and our poblano plant might have another one or two left in its life. But we'll see.

But we realized just recently that we did have a pest that affected our garden and really hampered it and our harvest. We were not able to tend to our garden as much when it came into our lives.

OK, so he's not a pest. But because of the timing of getting Dezzy, our Westie pup, we didn't have as much time to devote daily to keeping up our garden. Cherry tomatoes went unharvested and then became inedible. Our zucchini and cucumber plants died quickly without daily watering. (They were also nearing the end of their production, so they might not have had much left to give anyway.)

Still, the potential of our first garden got away from us. But we still had a good harvest, which included tons of lettuce, way so long ago.

And we're looking forward to next year, when we'll expand slightly, weed and rototill better initially, and lay down hay right away.

But we like what we got in return for the decline of our first garden.

Our First Garden, Update 11

It's nearly the end of our season and our garden has been decreasing its output lately. The star of our garden this year was undoubtedly our zucchini plant, which produced tons of zucchini -- a lot of the monster variety because we often neglected to look low enough to find them. What's left in our fridge:

Also, our cucumber plant produced a lot, and we used nearly all of those after being cut up and eaten with homemade veggie dip.

Our tomatoes have been the biggest disappointment. We had eight plants: two heirloom Brandywines, two cherries, a Big Boy, a Pink Lady, a Roma and one other slicing tomato. But only the Brandywines and cherries have been a success.

The Romas have been making a comeback, but even some of them, plus all of the other tomato plants, contracted a disease some time this summer. Nearly all of the Big Boys, Pink Ladies and the other tomato have been unusable.

Other than that, we got a few green peppers (some more ready to be picked soon), a couple of poblanos (I was disappointed and was hoping more would come so I could make stuffed poblanos), tons of basil and parsley, some cilantro, three great rows of lettuce, a couple of jalapenos, and some other herbs. It seems like a lot when listed like that, but seeing how much of our garden was taken up with those now-diseased tomato plants makes us a bit unhappy. 

Still, to be sure, this was our first garden, and we are expanding it next year. We'll also set it up differently, making sure we have a bit more room between plants.

Also, don't forget to enter our Natural Ovens Bakery giveaway, which runs until Sept. 3. Head over to that post to comment to enter!

Our First Garden, Update 10 (What a Mess Edition)

We're back after taking a bit of an unannounced break And we're here with an update on our garden, which is really become a big, well, mess.

But I mean that word in a good way.

You see, we followed directions and planted our plants at the high end of the space between them and other plants. Only it wasn't enough. Our zucchini plant has become a massive monstrosity that has threatened a hostile takeover of our heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers and, over the weekend, basil. We have arms of the cucumber plant stretched underneath zucchini leaves.

As I said, it's a mess. But we've harvested about about 6 to 8 zucchini and the same number of cucumbers. And just recently (tonight, that is; picture below) did we harvest a tomato. We even recently took a jalapeno out a day or two too soon just so we didn't have to run to the store.

But all of our tomato plants have fruit; it's just a matter of them ripening now. Our cherry plants:

• Roma
• Super Sweet 100 Cherry
• Sweet 100 Cherry
• Celebrity
• Big Boy
• Pink Girl
• Brandywine heirloom (2 of them!)

So I don't think we have too many days ahead of us when harvesting is not an option. And that's such a good thing.

Our First Garden, Update 9

It's been a little bit since we posted about our garden. Namely that's because all of our first batch of lettuce has been harvested and none of the other plants (except for herbs in containers and our garden) are ready to be picked.

But we have had some of our plants thrive (all of our garden right now was started with seedlings). For one, our zucchini plant has been growing to massive proportions (with cucumber in the lower-left corner and brandywine heirloom tomato in the upper right):

We have 8 tomato plants. Our 2 heirlooms were started after the other 6. Of those 6, one failed for a bit, and is now recovering. Of the rest, 2 or 3 are really going gangbusters. They're starting to look really tall and pretty.

Oh, well, hello 'maters. Come on in whenever you're ready.

Our First Garden, Update 8 (First Harvest Edition)

Last Friday was time. Time to harvest, that is. And even though the only food ready to be harvested was our lettuces, it was still a grand time. Our first successful food-growing process that we started from seeds. We took a reusable bag out to our garden and filled it nearly half full with lettuce (enough to fill 4 gallon-sized zip-top bags).

And that was just a little bit more than 1/3 of the lettuce we planted. We'll be harvesting the remainder of the second row today and the third row should be finished in the next week, too.

We -- and families and friends -- have been eating the lettuce as we've had company at our house almost every night since then. This, this is a feeling a couple could get used to.

Our First Garden, Update 7 (RIP Edition)

This past weekend, we introduced several new plants to our garden, which before had just featured lettuce and mesclun. Most of them were introduced to us via the West Allis Farmers Market, but the hot peppers we started from seedlings. We have tomatoes in the back, green peppers, poblanos, cucumbers and more.

Unfortunately, some of our seedlings suffered during the warm weather this weekend, and it's fair to say a lot of them won't make it. At least our lettuce seedlings are thriving -- it's almost time to harvest them.

Our First Garden, Update 6

Mid-week and our lettuces are starting to really bloom, this after Melissa poured some dried blood fertilizer over the seeds a few days ago. Man, that really helped. These are all 2 to 3 inches in diameter, and they're feeding like crazy.

This weekend is the weedout, when we'll pare down the grasses and other vegetation growing in the garden. And we'll hopefully plant the tomatoes and peppers this weekend.

Our container plants, meanwhile, have been going well -- mint, chives, rosemary. But our cinnamon basil, which doesn't look like it's long for the world, isn't faring as well. Maybe some dried blood would help ...

Our First Garden, Update 5

It's been quite a while since we mentioned our garden. And it's been going well. We still have our pepper and tomato seedlings fighting it out inside. We'll be planting those soon in the next couple of weeks.

However, we have had our lettuce seedlings planted out in the garden, and those are starting to show some obvious signs of life as they near their time for picking, which is still about 6 weeks away. The picture above shows only a part of our garden (there's another chuck to the right of the biggest line of lettuce), and you can see that the lettuces have varying degrees of fruition, although they were planted at the same time.

Yep, we'll be eating a lot of mesclun salads, it looks like.

Our First Garden, Update 4

Yeah, it's just a slab of ground now. But in a few short weeks (if not sooner), this patch of newly tilled yard will be the home of Our First Garden.

But as you can see, it still needs a lot more work. Since this picture was taken over the weekend, Melissa has raked the tilled dirt and planted three rows of lettuce seeds. She left space around the edge where we plan to plant some of our hot pepper seedlings that we have published about earlier (they were some of the seeds we started inside).

We also have some fencing to purchase or build, as our neighborhood has a fair amount of rabbits, squirrels and other garden-hating varmints. Assuming the weather doesn't rain us out, that will be our weekend project.

P.S. I apparently had a touchy publish post trigger finger today. Sorry if your RSS feed was saturated with two A Duo of Chefs posts. I assure you, there was only one today.

Our First Garden, Update 3

Well, so we didn't exactly get around to blogging this weekend like we had hoped to do. Oops.

What happened? Well, we had grandiose plans that included tons of yardwork by picking up areas where trees once stood and by planting grass seed in their place. That took quite a lot of time and effort this weekend. And we almost got to rototilling the garden. Almost.

And while we're still not quite yet at the stage to plant outside, we have some tomato seedlings that are flourishing. And our pepper seedlings, which had not sprouted as fast as the tomato ones, have shown signs of life, emerging in the past week. Melissa weeded out the secondary and tertiary plants in each section to give the dominant seedling as much nutrition as possible.

Our First Garden, Update 2

It's been about 10 days now since we started our seedlings, and as you can see, our tomato plants have been growing like gangbusters. Our pepper plants? Well, let's just say they're a little bit standoffish.

You can see in the photo above that one pepper sprout is pushing through and we're hoping the rest will be following shortly.

Our First Garden, Update 1

Well, last week we both had some time off, so Melissa used part of her time to plant our vegetable seeds in some containers. Right now we have them inside collecting sunlight from southern exposure.

We have tomatoes, hot peppers and more planted, with plans for more (see this post) as spring and summer progress. There will be more garden updates from us. We'll let you know if our ambitious garden plans pan out.