Harvesting PeppersHarvesting Peppers: How do you know when peppers are ready to be picked? It depends on the pepper, it's good to look at the average harvest time of the pepper you are growing. Next, look at the color, most peppers go through a color change as they ripen. Many peppers turn from green to red, or other colors such as darker or light green, yellow, orange, and chocolate. Read up on the variety you are growing to make sure you pick them at a good ripened stage. For example, our Easter Peppers...
White Green Chile RecipeHere's a great white chile recipe that uses the amazing flavors of roasted green chile from the garden! During harvest season, we also throw in a few apples if we have an abundance of them, it's a nice way to use up some apples, thickens and adds a hint of sweetness to the chile. White Green Chile Recipe: • 3-4 Cups of white beans, cooked (canned or cooked fresh) • 1 Cup cooked, chopped chicken • 3 cups chicken stock (or bone broth/vegetable broth) • 2 diced potatoes • 1-2+ App...
New Mexico Red Chile Sauce with Fresh Red ChileFresh red chile is a delicacy and is hard to find at supermarkets as it is very perishable. Grow your own red chile for a little taste of heaven in late summer! New Mexico Red Chile Saucewith Fresh Red Chile INGREDIENTS fresh roasted red chile, peeled, de-seeded and chopped (however many you have on hand) 1-3+ Garlic cloves to taste, peeled 1 Tablespoon of Chopped Onion Salt to taste (1/2 teaspoon) Dash of Cumin, Oregano 1 tablespoon of Honey (optional) 1 Tablespoon of Peanut or Light Ol...
Homegrown Sambal Oelek RecipeHomegrown Sambal Oelek Recipe This delicious spicy condiment is delicious on everything from stir fries to soups to sandwiches or even just with some crackers or chips. Kick it up a notch with hotter peppers, and feel free to mix and match hot peppers for a deeper range of flavor. We like to use whatever hot peppers we have on hand! INGREDIENTS 1 pound of homegrown red chile, washed & de-stemmed(use any kind of red chile you are growing, such as Cayenne peppers, Goat Horn peppers, ripe ...
Best Pepper SeedsWe love getting notes and photos from our happy customers! Here's some photos from Bill in Wisconsin, who wrote: “The Best Seeds! Here's an update. Incredible Wisconsin grow this year! This system took me months to plan and put in place and worth every minute.” Wow, what an amazing pepper garden, Bill! Looks like you're making all sorts of deliciousness with your hot peppers. Thanks for sharing!Check out Bill's photos below: We love hearing your stories and seeing phot...
Best Tomato CagesWhat are the Best Tomato Cages?Sturdy ones. We like using the sturdier thick cages, but they're a little harder to find. If you grow tomatoes, they're probably one of your favorite crops, like ours, and you want to ensure that the plants are healthy and supported so you get a great harvest. What kind of Tomato supports do you use?Those darned flimsy wire "tomato cages" that are sold at hardware stores are useless once a tomato plant gets large, as you can see in these photo...
Ornamental Pepper RecipesCan you eat your ornamental peppers?Of course you can! They are usually quite hot, so add them with caution, add a little a time and taste-test your recipe until you get to the desired heat. Ornamental peppers are usually quite a bit hotter than your average Jalapeño, so unless you like it wicked hot, add in small doses until it's just right. Here are some of our favorite salsa recipes to use up your ornamental pepper harvest at the end of the season: Ornamental Peppers Salsa Recip...
Harvest RecipesWe sure do love harvest season!Here are some of our favorite recipes to use up your harvest: Salsa Recipes:Carolina Reaper Salsa Recipe »Trinidad Scorpion Salsa Recipe »Vinegar Pepper Sauce Recipe »Ghost Pepper Salsa Recipe »Orange Salsa Recipe »Tomatillo Salsa Recipe »Hatch Chile Salsa Recipe » No-Peel Salsa Recipe »Green Tomato Salsa Recipe »Salsa Macha Recipe » Chile Pepper Recipes for Stews, Casseroles & Side Dishes:Green Chile Stew Recipe »Hatch Green Chile Gravy Recip...
How to Roast ChileHow to Roast Chile Do you grow green chile seeds? Then you probably will have a great chile harvest to roast. Here's our top tips on roasting chile at home: Use your Oven to Roast Chile:Set your broiler to 425°F, use a metal cookie sheet and arrange your chile pods on the sheet in a single layer. Some people opt to lightly coat chile with olive oil and line your pan with foil, but you don't have to do this, it's optional. We have an old pan we use to roast chiles so we sk...
Zucchini: The most abundant crop!It's open season for zucchini! Do you grow the infamous Black Beauty Zucchini summer squash? Black Beauty produces a huge crop of tender zucchini squash during the summer. Harvest zucchini squash when the fruits are small. This will result in a more tender and flavorful squash. Easy to grow and a great choice for the beginner gardener. These are one of the first of the summer vegetables to harvest, and one of the last – they just keep coming all summer long! And, they're super fas...
Edible Ornamental PeppersEdible Ornamental Peppers These NuMex Easter peppers are absolutely gorgeous in pastel! We'll be making room for these in the garden every year from here on out. They look stunning in containers! Did you know that ornamental peppers are edible? Yes, ornamental peppers like these Easter Peppers are edible! They make great hot pepper flakes when dried after fully mature, or thrown anytime into salsa to kick up the heat. You can also use them to make fermented hot sauce recipes. Many of ...
No-Peel Tomato Sauce RecipeYes, you can leave skin on tomatoes when making sauce! Just use a food processor to transform whole tomatoes into sauce. This saves lots of time from having to boil the tomatoes first to loosen the skin enough to peel. We also figure keeping the skins on retains all the vitamins and minerals that the skin contains. The main reason people peel tomatoes for sauce is that if not processed, then you get little curled up skins in your sauce. But a food processor grinds them all up and even makes a...
Best Salt Substitute: Hot Peppers!Watching your salt intake? One of our favorite ways to spice up a dish without salt is none other than hot peppers! Any spicy peppers are a great way to get your tastebuds excited about anything you eat. We love growing hot peppers and then drying them and crushing into hot pepper flakes or powder so that we can sprinkle flavor on anything including sandwiches, soups, tacos, burritos, wraps, burgers, pizza, you name it!! Clean Salt-Substitute: The great thing about hot pepper flakes is that ...
Ornamental Pepper: NuMex EasterThe Ornamental Pepper NuMex Easter is gorgeous in pastels! Also great for drying at the end of the season for use as hot pepper flakes or to add to salsa. Beautiful and delicious! View more of our Ornamental Peppers » Ornamental Peppers are not only beautiful, they are quite prolific! And, contrary to popular belief, you can eat ornamental peppers! They are perfect peppers for making hot sauces, pepper flakes or powder, or to use in any recipes such as for salsa.
Why are my pepper plants so small?We have this question quite often: Why are my pepper plants so small? There is a number of reasons that your peppers may not be growing larger. TOO BRIGHT LED LIGHTS Recently, we had an experience (see the sad & small pepper plants above) where we had placed a super bright 100W Sansi Floodlight above our transplanted seedlings about 8" away. Sadly, it was TOO bright – if we had it farther away, such as a couple feet, the seedlings may have been fine. But, since they were fairly clo...
Harvest vegetables at the right timeKnowing when to harvest vegetables will help you get the best quality vegetables from your garden. Many gardeners allow produce to pass their prime when vegetables are less tender and more fibrous. Below is a guideline to help you determine the best time to harvest vegetables. Pepper and tomatoes are listed first with the Get Real Vegetables information below that. Peppers (bell and chile) can be harvested in three stages. Mature green: Pepper is firm and fully sized. The fruit color is...
Guajillo Chile - Which kind are used for Mole?Here's a question we recently had about Guajillo chile: Question about the guajillo pepper seeds: The site says these are one of the most common dried peppers in Mexico, but I was reading the Peppers of America book by Maricel Presilla from one of your earlier posts and she refers to the guajillo as the dried form of the mirasol chile. I noticed your mirasol pepper description doesn't mention anything about this. What are y'all's thoughts on this nomenclature discrepancy? Two ...
Free Seeds for Lettuce!NOTE: This offer is expired, stay tuned and signup for our newsletter for future deals.Now through June 30, 2021, you can get Free Seeds for Lettuce from Sandia Seed with the purchase of any of our Get Real Gardening vegetable seeds. We will add a free seed packet of our delicious Little Gem Lettuce in with any vegetable seeds in our Get Real Gardening collection. Looking for more more seed deals? Check out our Discount Seeds » Chef's love Little Gem Lettuce as it is a cross between ...
Padron Pepper Seeds ReviewWe were happy to get this beautiful shot of Padrón peppers from one of our happy seed customers, here's what Sam had to say: Greetings to the folks at the Sandia Seed Company!I recently purchased a packet of your padrón seeds. I also happened to get my San Diego garden started early this year as well. As a result I have already had two batches of blackened padróns with coarse sea salt as appetizers for meals. You are receiving a photo of the 2nd batch; ... We all know the first ones di...
How to Make Lettuce Last LongerCRISPY LETTUCE TIPThe secret to crispy lettuce from your garden:If you harvest lettuce from your garden, you may wonder how to make lettuce last longer. Well, here’s the trick to keep it crispy in your fridge for days! No more wilted lettuce.How to preserve lettuce from the garden: Immediately after picking, soak your freshly picked greens in cold water for 20-30 minutes to "crisp" them up for storing longer in the fridge. This will prevent wilting of your lettuces and other greens...
Harvesting Peppers
Harvesting Peppers: How do you know when peppers are ready to be picked? It depends on the pepper, it's good to look at the average harvest time of the pepper you are growing. Next, look at the color, most peppers go through a color change as they ripen. Many peppers turn from green to red, or other colors such as darker or light green, yellow, orange, and chocolate. Read up on the variety you are growing to make sure you pick them at a good ripened stage. For example, our Easter Peppers...
White Green Chile Recipe
Here's a great white chile recipe that uses the amazing flavors of roasted green chile from the garden! During harvest season, we also throw in a few apples if we have an abundance of them, it's a nice way to use up some apples, thickens and adds a hint of sweetness to the chile. White Green Chile Recipe: • 3-4 Cups of white beans, cooked (canned or cooked fresh) • 1 Cup cooked, chopped chicken • 3 cups chicken stock (or bone broth/vegetable broth) • 2 diced potatoes • 1-2+ App...
New Mexico Red Chile Sauce with Fresh Red Chile
Fresh red chile is a delicacy and is hard to find at supermarkets as it is very perishable. Grow your own red chile for a little taste of heaven in late summer! New Mexico Red Chile Saucewith Fresh Red Chile INGREDIENTS fresh roasted red chile, peeled, de-seeded and chopped (however many you have on hand) 1-3+ Garlic cloves to taste, peeled 1 Tablespoon of Chopped Onion Salt to taste (1/2 teaspoon) Dash of Cumin, Oregano 1 tablespoon of Honey (optional) 1 Tablespoon of Peanut or Light Ol...
Homegrown Sambal Oelek Recipe
Homegrown Sambal Oelek Recipe This delicious spicy condiment is delicious on everything from stir fries to soups to sandwiches or even just with some crackers or chips. Kick it up a notch with hotter peppers, and feel free to mix and match hot peppers for a deeper range of flavor. We like to use whatever hot peppers we have on hand! INGREDIENTS 1 pound of homegrown red chile, washed & de-stemmed(use any kind of red chile you are growing, such as Cayenne peppers, Goat Horn peppers, ripe ...
Best Pepper Seeds
We love getting notes and photos from our happy customers! Here's some photos from Bill in Wisconsin, who wrote: “The Best Seeds! Here's an update. Incredible Wisconsin grow this year! This system took me months to plan and put in place and worth every minute.” Wow, what an amazing pepper garden, Bill! Looks like you're making all sorts of deliciousness with your hot peppers. Thanks for sharing!Check out Bill's photos below: We love hearing your stories and seeing phot...
Best Tomato Cages
What are the Best Tomato Cages?Sturdy ones. We like using the sturdier thick cages, but they're a little harder to find. If you grow tomatoes, they're probably one of your favorite crops, like ours, and you want to ensure that the plants are healthy and supported so you get a great harvest. What kind of Tomato supports do you use?Those darned flimsy wire "tomato cages" that are sold at hardware stores are useless once a tomato plant gets large, as you can see in these photo...
Ornamental Pepper Recipes
Can you eat your ornamental peppers?Of course you can! They are usually quite hot, so add them with caution, add a little a time and taste-test your recipe until you get to the desired heat. Ornamental peppers are usually quite a bit hotter than your average Jalapeño, so unless you like it wicked hot, add in small doses until it's just right. Here are some of our favorite salsa recipes to use up your ornamental pepper harvest at the end of the season: Ornamental Peppers Salsa Recip...
Harvest Recipes
We sure do love harvest season!Here are some of our favorite recipes to use up your harvest: Salsa Recipes:Carolina Reaper Salsa Recipe »Trinidad Scorpion Salsa Recipe »Vinegar Pepper Sauce Recipe »Ghost Pepper Salsa Recipe »Orange Salsa Recipe »Tomatillo Salsa Recipe »Hatch Chile Salsa Recipe » No-Peel Salsa Recipe »Green Tomato Salsa Recipe »Salsa Macha Recipe » Chile Pepper Recipes for Stews, Casseroles & Side Dishes:Green Chile Stew Recipe »Hatch Green Chile Gravy Recip...
How to Roast Chile
How to Roast Chile Do you grow green chile seeds? Then you probably will have a great chile harvest to roast. Here's our top tips on roasting chile at home: Use your Oven to Roast Chile:Set your broiler to 425°F, use a metal cookie sheet and arrange your chile pods on the sheet in a single layer. Some people opt to lightly coat chile with olive oil and line your pan with foil, but you don't have to do this, it's optional. We have an old pan we use to roast chiles so we sk...
Zucchini: The most abundant crop!
It's open season for zucchini! Do you grow the infamous Black Beauty Zucchini summer squash? Black Beauty produces a huge crop of tender zucchini squash during the summer. Harvest zucchini squash when the fruits are small. This will result in a more tender and flavorful squash. Easy to grow and a great choice for the beginner gardener. These are one of the first of the summer vegetables to harvest, and one of the last – they just keep coming all summer long! And, they're super fas...
Edible Ornamental Peppers
Edible Ornamental Peppers These NuMex Easter peppers are absolutely gorgeous in pastel! We'll be making room for these in the garden every year from here on out. They look stunning in containers! Did you know that ornamental peppers are edible? Yes, ornamental peppers like these Easter Peppers are edible! They make great hot pepper flakes when dried after fully mature, or thrown anytime into salsa to kick up the heat. You can also use them to make fermented hot sauce recipes. Many of ...
No-Peel Tomato Sauce Recipe
Yes, you can leave skin on tomatoes when making sauce! Just use a food processor to transform whole tomatoes into sauce. This saves lots of time from having to boil the tomatoes first to loosen the skin enough to peel. We also figure keeping the skins on retains all the vitamins and minerals that the skin contains. The main reason people peel tomatoes for sauce is that if not processed, then you get little curled up skins in your sauce. But a food processor grinds them all up and even makes a...
Best Salt Substitute: Hot Peppers!
Watching your salt intake? One of our favorite ways to spice up a dish without salt is none other than hot peppers! Any spicy peppers are a great way to get your tastebuds excited about anything you eat. We love growing hot peppers and then drying them and crushing into hot pepper flakes or powder so that we can sprinkle flavor on anything including sandwiches, soups, tacos, burritos, wraps, burgers, pizza, you name it!! Clean Salt-Substitute: The great thing about hot pepper flakes is that ...
Ornamental Pepper: NuMex Easter
The Ornamental Pepper NuMex Easter is gorgeous in pastels! Also great for drying at the end of the season for use as hot pepper flakes or to add to salsa. Beautiful and delicious! View more of our Ornamental Peppers » Ornamental Peppers are not only beautiful, they are quite prolific! And, contrary to popular belief, you can eat ornamental peppers! They are perfect peppers for making hot sauces, pepper flakes or powder, or to use in any recipes such as for salsa.
Why are my pepper plants so small?
We have this question quite often: Why are my pepper plants so small? There is a number of reasons that your peppers may not be growing larger. TOO BRIGHT LED LIGHTS Recently, we had an experience (see the sad & small pepper plants above) where we had placed a super bright 100W Sansi Floodlight above our transplanted seedlings about 8" away. Sadly, it was TOO bright – if we had it farther away, such as a couple feet, the seedlings may have been fine. But, since they were fairly clo...
Harvest vegetables at the right time
Knowing when to harvest vegetables will help you get the best quality vegetables from your garden. Many gardeners allow produce to pass their prime when vegetables are less tender and more fibrous. Below is a guideline to help you determine the best time to harvest vegetables. Pepper and tomatoes are listed first with the Get Real Vegetables information below that. Peppers (bell and chile) can be harvested in three stages. Mature green: Pepper is firm and fully sized. The fruit color is...
Guajillo Chile - Which kind are used for Mole?
Here's a question we recently had about Guajillo chile: Question about the guajillo pepper seeds: The site says these are one of the most common dried peppers in Mexico, but I was reading the Peppers of America book by Maricel Presilla from one of your earlier posts and she refers to the guajillo as the dried form of the mirasol chile. I noticed your mirasol pepper description doesn't mention anything about this. What are y'all's thoughts on this nomenclature discrepancy? Two ...
Free Seeds for Lettuce!
NOTE: This offer is expired, stay tuned and signup for our newsletter for future deals.Now through June 30, 2021, you can get Free Seeds for Lettuce from Sandia Seed with the purchase of any of our Get Real Gardening vegetable seeds. We will add a free seed packet of our delicious Little Gem Lettuce in with any vegetable seeds in our Get Real Gardening collection. Looking for more more seed deals? Check out our Discount Seeds » Chef's love Little Gem Lettuce as it is a cross between ...
Padron Pepper Seeds Review
We were happy to get this beautiful shot of Padrón peppers from one of our happy seed customers, here's what Sam had to say: Greetings to the folks at the Sandia Seed Company!I recently purchased a packet of your padrón seeds. I also happened to get my San Diego garden started early this year as well. As a result I have already had two batches of blackened padróns with coarse sea salt as appetizers for meals. You are receiving a photo of the 2nd batch; ... We all know the first ones di...
How to Make Lettuce Last Longer
CRISPY LETTUCE TIPThe secret to crispy lettuce from your garden:If you harvest lettuce from your garden, you may wonder how to make lettuce last longer. Well, here’s the trick to keep it crispy in your fridge for days! No more wilted lettuce.How to preserve lettuce from the garden: Immediately after picking, soak your freshly picked greens in cold water for 20-30 minutes to "crisp" them up for storing longer in the fridge. This will prevent wilting of your lettuces and other greens...
