Oh, dear, it’s been over a MONTH since I posted here! I can’t believe it. My only excuse is that I’ve been busy gestating. Our baby is now officially three days overdue, actually.

There hasn’t been much action out in the garden since early autumn. My husband, Graham, helped me out a lot this year in getting things cleaned up out back. We actually managed to clip back all of the perennials and he helped me pull the finished plants from the vegetable garden after we harvested the tomatoes.

This year we didn’t keep all of our harvest to ourselves, preferring to keep things simple and give a lot of it away to friends and family members. (Although we did, of course, manage to roast several big baskets of tomatoes and froze four large ziplock bags of roasted tomato sauce.) Our next-door-neighbour traded us some nice little potatoes that he grew for some of our tomatoes, too.

Baskets of homegrown tomatoes, peppers and eggplant for our friends and family.

That little veggie trade had me thinking, actually, that since there are three of us now in a row on my street who grow vegetables, we should try to co-ordinate a little bit, and share our harvest.  We could collectively grow more food than we could individually.  I’ll have to give this some thought over the winter!

But now here it is, late November, and it’s been an unseasonably mild autumn this year, for which I’m grateful. Now there is the potential for snow flurries this coming week, the same week our new family member is expected to arrive (we have an induction scheduled for Monday).

I hope that although we’ll be busy with the new baby, I’ll have more time in general to devote to writing online over the coming year. We’ll be sure to post when the baby comes!

I bought several varieties of peppers for the garden this year, and of course when it came time to harvest them, I didn’t remember which ones I planted where. This isn’t usually a problem because although peppers are similar, at maturity they are different enough to be able to identify. However, I think I bought mild AND hot banana peppers which was just silly of me. You know what this means, don’t you? Yes, we had to taste the pepper in order to know which one was ready for harvesting first. I was the guinea pig. And yes, these are hot!

Graham and I threw one on the barbeque to roast it and mellow out its flavours, chopped it up and ate it on some nachos we had for dinner that night.

The temperature here today in Bomwmanville is 38 C (100 F). In October. On Thanksgiving. It’s a new heat record. I usually have some gardening to do on Thanksgiving Monday, but never before has it been this hot. Canadian Thanksgiving is a harvest celebration, and today I celebrate the amazing harvest I have been blessed with in my gardens this year.

I harvested this basket of goodies from the back yard yesterday. The red peppers are mostly Fish peppers, a hot Jamaican heirloom. I think I’ll pickle them whole. The rest of the peppers are jalapeno, both red and green.

Yesterday we went over to the community plot and harvested the rest of the tomatoes. We have four grocery bags filled with them, which means more roasting this week. I honestly think I harvested three or four bushels of tomatoes from the plot this year. Crazy! I also cut the sunflowers that were in bloom there. The largest one had been snapped off over the garden fence by someone who either really loved the flower or really hated it. Either way, I didn’t want to lose the rest of the blooms to strange hands, so I brought them home and they grace my dining room table. Here you can see how morning glories were growing up the sunflower stalks. I let the vines be, and I think they add something pretty to the arrangement.

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends.

Today the humidity has returned to this part of Ontario in a major way. Even though today is a statutory holiday, Graham is outside in the yard working hard at building cupboards for my mom’s kitchen in our basement.

Today is the kind of day we like to leisurely snack, and now that tomato and pepper season is pretty much upon us, I can quickly scrape together some yummy things for us to graze on, like fresh salsa.

To make fresh salsa, you will need tomatoes and peppers, any kind or colour. I like to use a variety because I like my salsa to be pretty. I like to use a spicy pepper because Graham likes his salsa HOT. You’ll also need an onion, lemon or lime juice (lime is preferable but today I only have a lemon in the house) and salt and pepper to taste. If you like cilantro, or have it growing in your garden, it’s great to add to a fresh salsa. I hate the stuff, though, so I don’t use it. The recipe is slightly different each time I make this. Today I used one each of Golden Marconi and Purple Beauty peppers, two Oxhearts and one Paul Robeson tomato, half a white onion, salt, pepper and the juice of half a lemon.

Simply chop everything up (wear latex gloves when cutting up hot peppers or risk burning your hands), toss in a bowl to combine and wash your hands thoroughly to prevent the condition I call “hot pepper eyes of fire”. Allow the flavours to mellow together for an hour or so. Even if you can’t wait that long, this will still be tasty. We eat it with multigrain corn tortilla chips.

If you’ve followed me over here from my old Wordpress URL, thanks for coming along! I’m pleased to be here at my own “.ca” address. The gardening season in Ontario is just getting started. I hope you’ll update your bookmarks and blogrolls and stick around all summer. I will be updating the extensive list of Durham Region gardening clubs and other links shortly, as they were lost in the theme change.

In seed news, all of my tomato and cabbage seedlings are doing very well. They took about 5 days to sprout, and I set them all under the grow light in the basement. None of the peppers, however, have sprouted, yet. It’s only been four days since I seeded them, which means I am being impatient. A heat mat won’t make them sprout magically overnight! I’m just anxious to see that little green loop emerging from the soil. I’ll be glad when I can get these trays out of my dining room, too, but it’s the warmest room in the house, perfect for germinating peppers.

Today I seeded my peppers. If other years have been years of tomatoes, this is the year of the pepper.

Cayenne (2)
Fish (4)
Golden Marconi (2)
Red Rocoto (3)
Rainbow (4)
Burpee Jalapeno (8)
Chocolate Beauty (4)
Eggplant (3) (obviously not a pepper)

Oops, I just realized I have already done 4 golden marconis, so I’ll have some extra to give away. I hope the random rainbow peppers produce some purple or orange varieties. This flat is sitting on the heat mat I got yesterday. It’s 13 C outside, so I’m heading out to clean up the side beds.

Thank you, MeMeMosa of YGG, for arranging to swap some Golden Marconi, Red Rocoto (I’ll try to ignore the fact that this one’s botanical name is Capiscum pubescens because of what it reminds me of) and Chinese Five Colour pepper seeds for some Lemon Gem Marigold, Tangerine Gem Marigold, and Edamame seeds.

Thank you to “rohai” for answering my post on YGG requesting some interesting varieties of pepper seeds. We’ve agreed to trade some of my red zebra and cherokee purple tomatoes for her Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian, early hybrid jalapeno and mixed coloured peppers.

This is, after all, the season for seed swaps and trades.

I’ve listed my trade list here on Playing in the Dirt. The link is on the left sidebar, entitled “Seed Inventory“. I’ve included a photo of the mature plant wherever possible. Feel free to browse and suggest a trade if something interests you!