Mango Salsa Recipe
I am starting to get some cherry tomatoes turning red but not enough to make salsa so yet again so I decided to make some Mango Salsa. It is great to eat on tortilla chips the same you would for regular salsa or black bean corn salsa. One of my favorite things to do with is as a topping to blackened salmon (salmon grilled with dusting of Cajun seasoning)
CVG Mango Salsa Recipe
- 3 mangos
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 small onion
- green onion
- 5 sprigs of cilantro
- juice of one lemon (or lime)
- 1 jalapeno pepper (seeded)
- sugar
Directions: Finely chop 1 mango (or blend in blender/food processor) this will create a base for the salsa. Coarsely chop remaining mangos, onion, and green onions to have more defined texture and add to bowl. Finely chop garlic, cilantro, and seeded jalapeno pepper and add to mixture. Squeeze in juice of lemon into bowl and mix thoroughly. Let sit for 10 minutes and add sugar until salsa does not have a spicy aftertaste (normally 2-3 teaspoons)
Now if you really like the spice you can leave the seeds in and/or skip the sugar but for the blackened salmon it give a good contrast to the spicy meat and people just are not usually expecting fruit to be spicy.
I can proudly say with the exception of mangos, lemons, and sugar the remaining ingredients came right out of my garden.
Tags: cheap, cilantro, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, led, pepper plants, salsa garden, tomato plants, vegetables
Black Bean and Corn Salsa Recipe
15.3 years ago corn, peppers, recipe, salsa
My jalapeños peppers have been growing like crazy and I have had to start harvest to prevent the plants from stop producing. Given my tomatoes are still green I have been itching to do something with them, I decided to make some corn salsa. Given I couldn’t find a recipe that matched the ingredients I had on hand I decided to make my own.
CVG Black Bean and Corn Salsa Recipe
- 2 ears of corn (1-1/2 cups frozen corn)
- 1 small onion (chopped)
- 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
- 1/4 cup sliced green onions
- 2-3 cloves of garlic (chopped)
- 1/4 cup white vinegar
- 3 T sugar
- 1 chopped seeded jalapeño
- 1 chopped unseeded jalapeño
- 1-1/2 cups black beans (canned)
Directions: Cook corn for 2 minutes in boiling water and submerge in ice cold ice water. This helps stop the corn from cooking any more and also make handling while cutting the kernels a little more pleasant. Cut off kernels and add to bowl. Chop/slice remaining ingredients and add to bowl, stir, and refrigerate and serve chilled.
If you like your salsa a little spicier leave both pepper seeded.
Tags: cilantro, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, led, outdoor plants, pepper plants, salsa garden, tomato plants
How to fertilize/side dress tomatoes/peppers in your garden
15.3 years ago alfalfa pellets, compost, fertilizer, peppers, tomato
When your fruiting plants are flowering and bearing fruit this is a good time to give them a little extra boost. Though you don’t want to throw any old fertilizer at them at this point. You want them to get the nutrients they need to produce high yields of produce, though you don’t want to shock them with an abundance of nitrogen to stimulate new vegetative growth when you would rather the plant expend its energy making you food.
The solution to this problem is to provide your plants with a low dose of balanced fertilizer. I couple of my favorites are compost and alfalfa pellets applied every couple weeks while the plants are blooming/fruiting. This ensures the plants have all the nutrients they be lacking without throwing the plant into a growth spurt.
If you have a little extra time take the compost and add some water and let it sit in the sun for several hours and water or spray onto the foliage for a great dose of compost tea.
If you forgot to apply a little bone meal when you planted your peppers/tomatoes this is also a good time to sprinkle a handful under your plants and work into the couple inches of soil to provide your plants with a boost of phosphorous and also a little calcium to help prevent blossom end rot.
Hopefully with these tips you can help your green tomatoes turn into bright delicious red tomatoes.
If you want to learn more about the chemistry of organic fertilizers I have a whole post on that subject
Tags: alfalfa pellets, cheap, compost, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, pepper plants, tomato plants, vegetables
Winner of $100 Gift Certificate from Home Depot
15.5 years ago contest, free, Home Depot
There were so many great entries I couldn’t just pick one and with no budget to select multiple I settled using random.org.
And the winner is lucky number commenter 33…Chandra. Please send us a email using the “Contact” link at the top of the page within 72 hours otherwise I will select another random commenter.
We have partnered with The Home Depot Garden Club to offer a $100 Home Depot Gift certificate to a lucky reader.
To enter the contest is simple, just respond with a comment on how you would spend $100 at Home Depot with a home/gardening project and we will pick our favorite and send you out a gift certificate.
If you don’t have any ideas, here are some things I would do with the money (unfortunately I am not eligible) that may would help:
- Create a nice cold frame to extend my growing season
- Add drip irrigation to my garden which I neglect to water
- Install a rain barrel (they have complete kits there)
- New and improved grow box
- Shelves and lighting for seedlings next season
- Summer vegetable plants (peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) for those I was a little too ambitious with earlier this season.
None of these sound good to you? Feel free to check out some of the DIY Projects at The Home Depot Garden Club or many of their content and tools on their site.
Entry Deadline: 5/21/09 12:00 PM (Pacific)
Tags: garden seeds, growbox, led, outdoor plants, pepper plants, tomato plants, vegetables
Make your own upside down tomato planter
15.6 years ago cheap, peppers, tomato
Every time my daughter sees the upside down tomato planter (Topsy Turvy
Though this has been commercialized recently, the concept growing plants upside down is not a new one. Many people have been growing plants like tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets or hanging baskets for decades. Not having any spare bucket or hanging basket to sacrifice I went with my daughters suggestion and used a 2 liter bottle.
Materials required for you upside down tomato planter
- Empty 2-liter bottle
- Eye bolt with washer
- Duct tape, contact paper, or spray paint
- Drill or hot nail
Step 1 — Create access hole
Make a hole on the side of bottle, this has two purposes: it allows adding soil much easier and also provides an convenient way to water your plant. I used a 2-inch hole cutter, though you may also carefully cut a hole with a knife.
Step 2 — Add the hanger
By design 2-liter bottles are extra thick in on the bottom immediate center which will make a perfect place to hang it. I used a drill of the same diameter as the eye bolt. This allowed me to thread the bolt right into the bottle, which was pretty strong it itself. Though expecting a great harvest, I also added a bolt to prevent the discovery of my plant on the ground after having a hard fall.
Step 3 — Covering your planter
Roots can be damaged if exposed to light for long periods of time so you need to cover your planter. You should consider color depending on where you live. In colder regions a darker color will help keep the soil warm on cool mornings, though in hotter climates a dark color could fry the plant. I would recommend a medium to light green color for moderate heat absorption and little more aesthetically pleasing in the garden. Not having any paint I used good ole duct tape. Wrapping around the entire bottle (even covering the access hole.
I then cut an X through the access hole and bent the corners in to soften the rough edges caused by cutting the hole.
Step 4 — Decorate (optional unless you have kids)
We used permanent markers to personalize both of my daughters upside down tomato planters.
This completes the construction of your upside down tomato planter. I will admit the first design flaw of this planter is its size. It will be fine for root growth but it can dry out very quickly. In response to this water retention was my primary concern when deciding on medium to fill the planters with.
I chose 2 parts (peat moss or coconut coir okay substitutes) , 1 part perlite, and 1 part Groden granulates. WonderSoil
To give the plants a good head start I also mixed in a couple of tablespoons of bone meal and tablespoon of balanced organic fertilizer. Add some water until the mix has the consistency of a wrung out sponge .
Lastly I used my tomato plants from my hydroponic experiment and carefully fed the roots into the now bottom opening of the bottle. We then added our soil mix until it reached the bottom of the access hole. Given the plants had a well established root system just the friction and weight of the soil is enough to keep the plant from falling out
Even though the medium retains water well the plants should be watered every day to the point until some water comes out the bottom. Within 24 hours we can already see the leaves turning over to face the sun.
You can also try other heat loving plants such as peppers, cucumbers, and zucchini. So if you every wanted to try growing plants upside down with the directions above you can have your own for less than $0.50.
If you want something a little more aesthetically pleasing there is always the commercial option, this one from Gardener’s Supply seems much more sturdy than the ones I have seen on TV:
UPDATE: 05/24/09
It has finally started to get a little warmer at night in my garden so seems like a good time for a little update on the upside down tomato planter. I wish I could give a direct comparison of the growth of these plants with plants a planted at the same time in the ground though unfortunately we had a light freeze that killed them off. Interesting enough both plants in the upside down tomato planter survived and even are showing some small blossoms.
Now as part of my pepper planting experiment, I also put a pepper plant in an upside down tomato planter with much less exciting success. Just to test if my super paranoid water retention worries had any backing I simply filled this one with regular potting mix. And the plant dried out very quickly which shows in the following results.
Given these results I am going to stick with my 2 parts WonderSoil
Tags: cheap, led, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, pepper plants, tomato plants, upside down tomato planter, vegetables
Growing peppers at high latitudes
15.6 years ago hydroponics, indoor growbox, peppers
Here in the Seattle area we are, as you say, latitudelly challenged. We are fortunately to have the Pacific Ocean to give us mild winters and summers though our distance from the equator provides our plants with less intense light and a relatively short growing season for summer crops. One in particular difficult summer crop are peppers.
This is important because one of the major exports of my garden are the ingredients to allow me to make homemade garden salsa (tomatoes, garlic, onions, cilantro, jalapeño peppers) Al ingredients come from my garden (except for jalapeño peppers) This year I am determined to fix this.
I have a couple strategies for doing this, the first is to “start early” pepper plants require 80-110 days from seedling to harvest, timing is everything. Given our late winters here over the past couple years, I don’t really have much of a cushion here and would also be nice if the peppers were ripe when the tomatoes are getting red as well. To get a head start many weeks ago I planted several jalapeño pepper seeds and they currently are turning into some great looking pepper plants in my grow box. As they have grown I have potted them up to encourage them to continue to grow vigorously.
Not wanting to put my eggs peppers in one basket, I have decided to try a few different techniques in case one completely fails I hopefully have a couple backups:
- Grow pepper plant in grow box in WonderSoil
- Grow pepper plant hydroponically using a Grodan Gro-Blocks
- Grow pepper plant in the ground beside my tomatoes
- Grow pepper plant in large pot in sunniest location
I honestly can not really predict the outcome of this experiment. The grow box as the advantage of accurate temperature control but the CFLs though work great can’t compare to full sun. On the other hand outdoors has the great light intensity of the actual sun though given the pepper plants can stop growing lacking 60 degree nights and at least 70 degrees during day. Given we don’t have too many nights greater than 60 degrees the grow box might have a chance.
UPDATE — 05/25/2009
Plant grown in WonderSoil in grow box at temperature controlled to remain above 60 degrees at night and a high of 80 during the day. This is amazing results compared to the 2.5 inch plants I started with less than a month ago.
Plant grown hydroponically using a Grodan Gro-Blocks also in temperature controlled grow box.
Plant grow in actual dirt outside in good light
Plant grown in pot outside…well this one is already out after some high winds and cold mornings this one was looking pretty bad to I brought to the infirmary (the grow box) to bring it back to life, which seems to have done wonders.
The obvious winner at this point is the pepper plant in WonderSoil in the grow box, though I have noticed some recent growth in the outdoor plant now the weather has started warming up, so might be some time for Mother Nature to redeem itself. Overall I have been very impressed with the results of the grow box but still need to see if I can get flowers and fruit…until the next update…
UPDATE — 06/20/2009
We were blessed with some warm weather so the outdoor potted plant has been doing great blossoming and almost a dozen of good sized peppers growing.
I have seen plenty of blossoms on the pepper plants in the grow box though I have not have and fruit set. I have two theories what is causing this, first is we have hat some hot weather with the garage getting over 85 degrees even with best exhaust and airflow it was hard to keep the temperature from exceeding 90 degrees which causes the blossoms to drop. The second reason is I have been attempting to hand pollinate the flowers with the absence of some nice bees to do the work for me. I have been using a fine paintbrush without much luck. Switching to having better airflow and using a Q-Tip to simulate a bees bottom.
The plant I had in the ground eventually got overtaken by a pumpkin plant which I removed and moved to the grow box given it had not shown any significant signs of growth since I transplanted it there.
Right now seems the best method is grow the pepper plant to about 18 inches and just let mother nature take care of things at that point.
Tags: cheap, cilantro, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, growbox, led, outdoor plants, pepper plants, salsa garden, tomato plants, vegetables
