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Better than store bought... and you know their parents. :D

BTW, regarding crosses. For several years, I grew all of the caged peppers in the same area, separated by just 36 inches. I assumed that by excluding insects, there was no danger of crossing. Years later, when growing that seed for renewal, that assumption was proven wrong. Half of the 10 cages...

In my experience, pepper flowers (or at least those belonging to C. annuum) are self-pollinating, and don't need insects. They might not need much if any stimulation to set either. When growing peppers for seed, I enclose the plants in plastic cages (covered by the lightest grade of spun...

There are 2 possible sources of Oregon-specific growing info that might be of help; Seed Ambassador Project. (can't verify if they are still active, no recent posts on their website.) Peace Seedlings (formerly Dr. Alan Kapular's 'Peace Seeds'.) One question to consider is what kind of beans...

Those dried garlic 'chips' store for years in zip lock bags. They can easily be ground in a blender, for fresh garlic powder on demand. I like to grind them lightly, sift out the powder, and put the larger pieces in a spare pepper mill. Fresh ground garlic is as wonderful as fresh ground black...

Started the garlic dehydration a few days ago. Special Idaho was losing its clove skins & keeps poorly, so it goes first. I'm tracking the % of dry matter for each variety, so will weigh before & after dehydration. Special Idaho, peeled & sliced. 4 trays, 56 ounces total. Special Idaho...

Beautiful. If the yield is decent & the DTM short enough, I'd be tempted to squeeze it into one of my grow outs. Unfortunately, given that my garden is shrinking, I'd probably have to drop something to make room for it. :(

Oh and BTW, handling large amounts of raw garlic (such as when peeling for dehydration) requires thick gloves too. I wore thin gloves one year, and the garlic burn was so bad that some of the skin on my fingers peeled. And you definitely DO NOT want to dehydrate garlic indoors. I do that in my...

Oooops... :somad:hit I think everyone who handles hot peppers or their seeds has done that at least once. Sometimes even apparently mild peppers can give you eye burn. The capsaicin can even penetrate cheap rubber gloves (I use at least 5 mil thickness). Once you have "hot hands", you can...

C'mon, you know you really just want to plant more beans there. :D

In my experience, hot peppers get milder in cooler conditions. I've taken advantage of that for years by picking a medium-hot pepper (Pizza pepper) green, just before frost. The peppers become nearly heat-free (especially if the seeds & placenta are removed) and are wonderful eaten raw.

Agreed. I was fortunate that when my basement was being worked on, the excavator agreed to dig up several stumps for free while he was on break.

Too much work for this old man. I'd rather wait until after a rain, and run a weed burner down the fence line while the seedlings are still small & easily killed. The neighbor's silver maple deposits a lot of seeds when the wind is just right (or just wrong?) and when they come up, it takes me...

Well, it's Fall, so almost full sun now. No tree leaves (and I had already cut down most of the trees shading the garden anyway). The Fall phenotype certainly could suppress Fall/Winter weeds in mild climates. Here, they don't normally get as robust as they are this year... we are nearly 6...

IMO vegetables that every gardener should try at least once, are things like shelly beans. Those are sold seldom if at all, and can be an incredibly rewarding crop. Limas or pole shellies for hot climates... runner beans, favas, or bush shellies for cooler or shorter seasons. "Giant Red Tarka"...

Plants in pants. :lol:

When my garlic collection was much larger (36 varieties) German Red was one of the ones I grew. Sad to say, it was not very productive for me. I never had a chance to rate its flavor... providing samples for local chefs to evaluate was planned, but I lost the entire collection before that could...

A little off topic... but when I lived in San Jose in the 80's, I once got a traffic ticket for my lead foot. I was offered traffic school, as an alternative to stricter punishment, and had to choose from available training sites. Unfortunately, I confused Los Gatos with Gilroy - which was over...

I was able to finish weeding & prepping the garlic bed today, and planted 30 each of the 5 varieties in my previous posts. Couldn't put the hay mulch on the bed though (ran out of time) so that will have to wait. A good soaking rain tonight is watering it in.

I grew Argentinian White last year, started indoors as transplants. they grew well under LED shop lights. They flowered early (most directly below the main stem) about 30 days after transplant. the yield was surprisingly decent.