Th peppers are using the heat wave to ripen and more compost delivered

Even though all the summer veggies enjoy growing when it is hot, peppers take a few more higher temperature days to start ripening.

After the first heat wave we had at the start of July all the peppers sped up their ripening by a massive amount and our harvests have increased dramatically.

We can have the first tomatoes in late May and even Basil in early May with simple adjustments like putting row cover over the plants to keep them slightly warmer when the nights are still a little too cold for them.

For peppers they can’t be pushed much earlier without having a really warm May and June. The key for them is to reduce the amount of sun damage that the peppers get which means we can put a shade cloth over them to reduce the amount of sun that hits them.

This is the first year we have put the peppers under a shade cloth and it has reduced some of the sun damage we had last year although there are likely a few reasons why there is less sun damage so far.

This past week was the first week we harvested all of our varieties of peppers. The shishitos are the perfect pepper for a little snack blistering them in oil and then eating them hot with some more oil and salt.

The lunchbox or snacking peppers have the sweetness to eat raw and can also be cooked and mixed into a dish.

We grow some bell peppers that are great for stuffing or use in any dish along with gypsy peppers which are a fantastic all-around orange pepper. The corno di toro pepper we grow is mostly used as a frying pepper but can also be used as a replacement for any other pepper in a dish.

Compared to last year the pepper plants all look much happier and have way more peppers on them. Adding compost before we planted likely made a significant difference along with healthier transplants but also the area we planted them in this year could just have more nutrients in it than last year’s area.

We just did a round of soil tests but the area we get the samples for each of the four tests we did is much larger than the area one crop is in.

It is great to know more information about the soil and see if there are nutrients that need to addressed sooner than others.

Yesterday we received another delivery of compost that we will be spreading on the areas we are planting the fall crops.

The 24.5 tons of organic compost we got is from the same place as the previous delivery and most of the field it will go on did not receive any in the spring as it was not planted with anything.

A good amount of it will be spread in the coming weeks with our first transplanting and direct seeding going into the field in about a month.