Weeding Time and Chile Update

I can't remember the last time that I weeded my salsa garden. It was time. A few weeds had taken hold inside the cinderblocks. They all came out easily due to the weed barrier under my cinders and the bed. I pulled out most of the wandering jew vines coming through the fence. Now that my garden is two cinders high, the vines are having a tougher time getting into my patch. I don't think that anything will stop those blasted vines short of a nuclear attack, but at least the double high cinderblocks makes it easier to keep them at bay. I got them out of my rose garden too.

I checked over the chile plants. I'm concerned that I haven't had a single full sized bell as yet. It is July, I should be having bells by now! I also do not remember having so many insect chewed pods before. I am starting to get healthy and tasty pods from the plants this past week, so at least I'm starting to see some production in my garden.

The "pepperoncini" that had the strange colored pods got a closer look. I have now determined that the plant simply was not a pepperoncini pepper, but a strange dark jalapeño type chile. I removed the entire plant from the bed. I also noted that one of my cherry bomb plants is sporting jalapeño style pods. It is definitely not a cherry bomb. I didn't plant any jalapeños this year and am starting to regret that I didn't...so that one can remain. For now.

Something that was a pleasant surprise was my fish pepper. The leaves are starting to turn a molted white. At first I thought that the plant was sick, but then I remember reading that both the leaves and the peppers have white markings. This one is going to be very interesting to see. I can't wait to try one of the pods in my cooking.

On the tomato front, the two plants are setting MANY tomatoes. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them all. I'm hoping that I will have enough ripe ones to serve at our BBQ next week. I always like to include some of my garden produce at my parties so that our friends can enjoy some of the organic food that we grow. Next year, I think that one tomato plant might be more than enough to feed my family.