Chile Garden 2025

 Well, here we go again, more tilling required...  This time I found a Chile called Hot Burrito Pepper?  Supposed to be "Jalapeno like"...  Well, Hmmm...

I got a pair of those, and they are the healthiest plants I have ever seen at a retail shop.  Then Also I have all the staple Chiles Jalapeno, Habanero, and Cayenne.  I have some more room, so I'll probably get some more.

I have this area isolated for Chile plants.  Then I grow other things around the yard.  You can see the Nunion Cluster on the right.  Look at the Chile Garden from a different perspective.

There are a lot of plants that are evergreen like this Oregano Patch.  Its out of control right now.

 In this shot is Sage, and Lemon Balm (Mint).  The Sage overwinters fairly well, and the Lemon Balm is perennial, so it will die back, and launch again in the spring.  When I say launch I mean it, the Lemon Balm is one of the most invasive plants in my garden.  Right behind the Ruellias, and the Trumpet Vine.

Then there are some volunteer plants that are neat to see.  This one is a Redbud, spawned by our Sunrise Redbud maybe?

Here is wide angle shot from the South by the Greenhouse.

And a Wide Angle shot from the Garage...

Spring Cleanup after the Prairie-Cane

 The other part of the Prairie-Cane damage was the Oak Tree in back.  This tree has had two high velocity wind breakage events over the last year.  First was May 28, 2024.  This was the incident that looked like the Oak Tree exploded.  There were bits of Oak Tree everywhere.  I clean up this mess while the roof construction was happening.  But there were still a lot of limbs in a pile by the garden.

  Then this last storm broke the Oak Tree some more.  Not as bad this time, but still made a big mess.  The remaining Oak Tree seems to be OK.  It is growing, although it is a bit sparse looking.  I have an ample supply of Oak for the Smoker, more on that later.

This has been a work in progress for 4 weeks.  I'm mainly working on this on the weekends.  I was ready to go Saturday, but we had heavy rain, and the ground was saturated.  Sunday was a little dryer, so I started moving things around.  There was another storm involved here, three years ago, March 2022.  That storm snapped one of the Cedar Trees in back.  I saved a lot of the Cedar with intentions of crafting something out of it, but it sat there in the yard.  So a lot of the wood has mushrooms growing on it, and it is time to move all of this stuff out, so I can work on the garden...

  I have a new spot for the smoker wood storage, under the eaves of the house.  Here it should get far less direct water.  The other location on the patio was directly exposed to rain.  Speaking of sawed wood, my chainsaw has been a tremendous help cleaning up the back yard.  Twin Oaks Solutions was here a few weeks ago.  They have a chipper, and could have cleaned this up that same day.  But the great idea was that I could get a heap of smoker wood from those Oak branches, and that worked.

But there is a lot of scraps too.  Most of the scrap pile is the Cedar from 3 years ago.  The chainsaw was something I picked up free, broken.  My favorite, LOL!  So, anyway it has ongoing issues.  Everything on this saw was in a thoroughly used, and perhaps abused state.  So I gotta work on it frequently.  So, in the middle of this process it wasn't cutting the Oak very well.  I got to looking at the chain, and the teeth were a mess, some broken.  I decided to put a new chain on it, and it made a tremendous difference.  I ran through the rest of the limbs in a couple hours.

 Now the backyard and the garden are limb free.  The smoker wood is on the smoker wood rack.  The scrap wood is out on the front curb.  The leaves are the remaining mass of the cleanup and I use that as mulch everywhere.  Like on the spots where I had logs sitting around, when you move the logs it leaves exposed Texas clay soil, so I put down a layer of mulch over it.  There were many spots after the cleanup that needed covering.

 Another cleanup item is replacing the tree that was destroyed.  Well that is not a quick fix kind of thing.  I do want another large shade tree there, but I need to let the ground in that spot recover.  Time will let the ground break down the old tree roots, and then we can install a new tree in a couple years.  In the meantime we have Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree.  I guess it is our temporary fill in tree.  It held the space when the other Bradford Pear spontaneously died.  I guess it was maybe in 2020 when that one died, and we put Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree in its spot until we planted the Red Oak in April 2023.

 Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree is over 6 feet tall, and its living mainly in a 5 gallon nursery pot.  When I put it somewhere for a long period of time it will stretch it roots into the surrounding ground a little.  I probably should find a permanent spot for it eventually.  But for now it is back in the front yard.  

Cedar Kitteh Fortress

 Or I could have called this Doggo can't keep his nose out of stuff that is not his.  Harley is an eating machine.  That includes raw food directly in the garden, Turkey Gibblets on the cutting board, and now anything that is for the Kitteh.  Well, anyway the next version of the Kitteh Fortress is a Cedar Chest.  We have had it around the house a long time as a decorative piece.  Time to make it functional.

 Hungry Hungry Doggos...  So the Cedar Chest was maybe a rustic storage piece for bedding.  We have had Eucalyptus branches in it while it sat in the corner.  So, we're going to convert it into a Kitteh Fortress.  First we need completely covert access for the Kitteh.  I don't want Doggo to see into it, or stick his nose into it.

 So I made a strategic opening in the back of the chest.  Kitteh like to be around, or under the couch in the living room.  The back of the chest will be toward the back of the couch.  A feature on this chest is that it has a hinged top which is relatively heavy, and flush with the sides.  If the top was to overhang the sides, then Doggo would be able to open the top with his nose.

 

The chest is made from Cedar Planks, and it is frameless, so I needed to add a couple support pieces inside where I cut the access port.  I did this cut with the oscillating saw so it is a nice cut.  This piece is a good example of clean aged Cedar.  It is a lot nicer looking than the salvage Cedar which comes from old fence panels.
 

Then we'll need to stock the Kitteh Fortress with provisions that Harley doesn't get.  But he wants.

You can see by what he did to the Cardboard Kitteh Fort.  I knew that one wouldn't last long...

 He crushed the top inward, not even needing to climb into the box because he can just bend over and get the wet Cat food.  I was suspicious of him getting in there when the top was pushed in a little.  A bigger clue was that the wet food was completely gone.  Kitteh never eats all of it at once, LOL!

 

A rare look at Kitteh.  She is plotting Harley's demise as she stares off into the distance...

Nunion Cluster

 I've had a little cluster of Onions growing in my garden over the last few years.  I let grow and die back naturally to see what the cluster would do on its own.  I think I like it.  Not as edible food, but just a plant to be in the garden.  It kind of looks like Mondo Grass, but smells like Onions...

 

Prairie-Cane

 Otherwise possibly known as The Wrath of the Plains have become a thing in Texas.  I have noticed this phenomena over the past four years or so.  In the Springtime we have exceptionally high velocity, straight line winds that break large trees mainly.  The smaller trees are more flexible, and bend with the wind.  But those crusty, old, large trees don't move as good, and snap.  This years causality  is the last Bradfod Pear Tree.  It was usually stunning in the Springtime.

 

For a week or ten days it was covered with perfect white blossoms that looked like Popcorn.  We had two of these in front until 2021.  This one was budding, and fixing to Pop when the Prairie-Cane got it, and snapped it off at the trunk.  The wind was reportedly 85 mph.
 

The wind was extremely loud that morning so there was noise coming from every direction.  The doggy door was blown horizontal, and the wind coming in the doggy door blew leaves all the way across the living room.  It was also dark, maybe about 5:30 AM, so I couldn't really see what was outside until sunrise.  We went out the front door for our walk a little later, and found this (above).

 The new roof fared well.  The wind was directly from the west and pushed the tree due east.  So the tree fell almost completely in the yard (above).  It didn't hit the house, and its also not on the sidewalk, or in the street.  That is a pretty lucky shot for a Prairie-Cane, this is usually much more messy.  If I was to compare this to what happened to my Oak Tree in back last year.  It was like the Oak Tree exploded, and there were little bits of Oak Tree everywhere.

OK, well, maybe no more Bradford Pears.  This could have been a serious liability if it happened in the daytime.  I should make a Chile Garden in that spot because it has light all day long.  Ooo... Tomatoes...
 

Trimming the Giant Live Oak Tree

 When you are good at growing plants there is a problem that arises.  Suppose one of those plants is a giant tree species?  Then it gets really big, bigger than the yard big...  OMG...  My pruning shears can't do that...  I have tree tools also, and they also can't do that...

This is the Live Oak in the back is after I called Daniel at Twin Oak Solutions.  This Live Oak is approximately 40 feet tall and is beyond my capabilities to trim correctly.  Twin Oak Solutions has all the correct tools to do a job like this.  Here is the way it looked before the trim...

We also had them Bob the Crepe Myrtles, and now we have the Lollipop Trees by the patio.  These Crepe Myrtles make a huge mess every year with both the leaves, and white flowers, our Summer Snow.

The part of their service that I really like is the cleanup.  They bring a Chipper along with them, and mulch all the trimmings.  This machine is a Turbo Diesel Chipper, very loud.  But it reduces a massive stack of branches into a pile of mulch in very little time.

They are happy to leave a pile of mulch for you as well.  I'm still using the mulch from the Maple Tree they took out last year.  Here the Stump Grinder is reducing the Maple Tree Stump into a pile of mulch that got used all over the yard.  Mulch is an important part of keeping your white dog white...

They have trimmed every tree in our yard now.  Here is a before and after comparison of the Bradford Pear tree in front.  Periodically trees need to be pruned like this.  I have an example, the Pistache Tree, in front is doing a lot better since we pruned it last year.  This year it produced more growth, and looks healthier than it ever has.

Luminance Hot Sauce

 The Autumn is the right time for making Hot Sauce.  I have been doing this annually for some time, maybe about five years.  I've been growing Chiles for about 26 years, but didn't start making Hot Sauce until more recently.  Before I was pickling, drying, and smoke drying the Chiles.

So, what I have learned about Hot Sauce is that the best Hot Sauce is Fermented.  The flavor can not be mimicked by any other process.  And there are many other processes.  Hot Sauce is all about flavor, and not just heat.  Now don't get me wrong, I want the heat, but I don't want all heat, and no flavor.  There are specific components to the flavor that are critical to a good Hot Sauce.  Acidity, Salinity, Smokiness, Hotness, Sweetness, Savoriness, and Viscosity are all important attributes in a good Hot Sauce.

So, back to fermented Chiles for a moment.  I'm using a 9 oz. bottle of Carolina Reaper Mash from Pepper Joe's for this batch of Hot Sauce.  Then I'll dilute the Chiles with Tomatoes with a 3:1 ratio.  This does reduce the heat a bit, but adds volume, and flavor.  The Tomatoes are the San Marzano variety, that already have Basil, and (a little) Garlic adding to the flavor.  Right after saying that I am going to add a whole head of Garlic.

Starting off here we almost have a Italian Pasta Sauce.  Maybe its a little Garlicky.  We'll throw this in a pan, and cook it a little to cook the sharpness out of the Garlic.  When you cook Garlic it gets sweet.  Wut?  Sweetness in the Hot Sauce?  Yeah, more flavor.

At this point, before adding the Chile Mash, taste it for salinity.  I add extra salt to this.  Remember were making Hot Sauce, not Marinara.  The Hot Sauce will only be used a drop at a time, or maybe a couple drops, so the Salt needs to stand out.  I'll cook this until the Garlic is soft, and then everybody into the Choppa.

That is a 64 oz. pitcher, and we have about 30 oz. of Tomato Sauce in it.  Then I'll add the Chile Mash, and 8 oz. of Vinegar to start.  As the mixture is blending I am looking for viscosity.  The Hot Sauce is distributed in Woozy Bottles that have a Dripper Top, so you want the Hot Sauce viscosity to be light enough that it can flow through the Dripper Top.  The finish on the sauce has to be right so it can flow through the Dripper Top.  I use the Vinegar to "thin" the sauce to produce the correct viscosity for the Dripper Top.  The Hot Sauce is tuned to the delivery device.

The Hot Sauce has to be completely liquefied also.  Chunks of Tomato, or Garlic are not compatible with the Dripper Top.  There is a lot to this process simply concerning the delivery of the Hot Sauce.  The flavor is the most important attribute, but getting the Hot Sauce to the food is almost equally important.  I run the blender on high for an extended period until the Hot Sauce has a silky smoothness.

Then, finally we are bottling the Hot Sauce.  This batch yielded around 44 oz., or 8.66, 5 oz. bottles.  The yield per batch is fluid depending on the taste, and viscosity factors.  So, I get a varying number of bottles from each batch.  The bottles are washed, and sterilizer immediately before filling in a parallel operation.  We fill the bottle, clean up the top, apply the Dripper Top, and then the Lid...  Finished, right?  No, gotta haz label...

Having a cool label on your Hot Sauce makes it a little better.  And you can add all the statistical stuff people want to see, like the Scoville rating.  The people that have been willing to try this seem to like it well.  It has an extremely hot front, but also well rounded flavor, and doesn't linger too long.  The acidity, and salinity are pronounced.  One friend said the Vinegar finds you first, but the Chile soon makes you forget about it.  I think this batch turned out well.  Oh, look at that, time to go eat some delicious nom nomz...