Posts from — May 2011

My friend Karen surprised me last week with a gift. “I hope you haven’t planted all the spaces in your garden yet,” she said. I had to laugh because at that particular moment, absolutely NONE of my seedlings had found their way to the garden. Karen and I share a love of hot peppers. She presented me with two varieties I had not tried: Ghost and Lemon Pepper.

What Karen and I both love about certain hot peppers is that it only takes a couple to season a whole batch of chili or, in Karen’s case, salsa. Karen cans many quarts of salsa that she adapts as needed to the desired level of hotness.

We both also admire how attractive some hot peppers are. Habaneros for instance are every bit as attractive as the purely ornamental “Chinese Lantern.”

A few years back, Karen clued me into the Purira pepper. That summer our garden greenery was profusely dotted with bright spots of red, orange, and yellow, and our salsa was, well, a little hotter.

I’m looking forward to seeing what these gift plants bring to the garden.

Ghost, also known as the Bhut Jolokia, is a wickedly hot pepper, at one time the Guinness Book Record holder for hottest pepper (2007), although it turns out that “World’s Hottest Chili” is a controversial issue. Among its alleged non-culinary uses is as an ingredient in smoke bombs to keep wild elephants at bay.

Karen’s other gift was Lemon Drop pepper which hails from Peru. It is a vine like plant whose fruits are bright yellow when ripe.

“Where ever did you find these oddities?” I asked her.

“The Ann Arbor Farmers’ Market, of course!” was her reply– which is a reminder to explore with renewed curiosity what might have become a familiar spot to discover hidden treasures and find new plants to try.

The past weekend saw us dashing into the yard between the rains to be continue with the spring clean up. The weeds, of course, are almost the first plants coming up from the ground, but we also have impressive rhubarb, baby horseradish, some asparagus, lovage, and some herbs making a show. Leaf buds on the currants, the apple tree, and the roses assure us spring is coming, albeit slowly.

On Sunday, we indulged in a favorite motorized gardening past time: making leaf mulch. Last fall, the Leaf Thief bagged up most of our leaves as well as some of the neighbors’. We packed our leaves in those large paper lawn bags and stored them in the upper floor of our barn, where they became super dry over the winter. We brought the eight full bags down from the barn attic for a leaf shredding party.

We own a very fun, noisy, and handy tool handed down to us from friends who up-sized (Thanks, Gloria and John!)– an electric leaf shredder. Our model is actually called Leaf Shredder and is made by Craftsman. It’s a light-weight, easy to use tool that can sit on the ground or, even better, atop a plastic garbage can in which we store the extra mulch.

Jim did most of the shredding and therefore got covered with the most dust. Shredding leaves is a slightly messy enterprise, but leaf mulch is a lovely thing to have on hand for the garden so it’s very worthwhile. The shredded leaves help keep down the weeds but tend not to mat down as much as whole leaves do. The shredded leaves also give a more uniform, finished look to the beds. Like all organic matter, leaves add nutrients to the soil.

We did a quick weeding behind the rhubarb plants and applied a generous layer of leaf mulch. The rest of the mulch is stored in plastic cans until the weather warms and we can move on planting the rest of the garden.