The Hidden Perils of Peppers?

I was reading through The Complete Chile Pepper Book and came across this useful warning:

Capsaicin, the alkaloid responsible for the heat in chiles, is wonderful for making bland foods interesting, but it is far less welcome in large doses on the skin, or in any amount in your eyes. We urge everyone to who processes chiles in any form to wear gloves when handling them. This is especially important when handling the hotter varieties, because chile burns can be extremely painful and even cause contact dermatitis, redness, and blistering of the skin.

It made me think of the funny segment Jeff Gillman had on The Martha Stewart Show earlier this year. You can watch Martha's laughter-inducing warning here.

Here's another bit from The Complete Chile Pepper Book about what to do if you burn your mouth with a pepper:

When you burn your mouth and tongue, eat a thick dairy product like cream, sour cream, yogurt, or ice cream and swirl it around in your mouth before swallowing. A protein in the dairy product, casein, effectively strips the capsaicin molecules from the capsaicin receptors in your mouth and on your tongue.

After taking in all the above warnings, I think I can safely tackle making this recipe from the book without hurting myself.

Double Trouble Chocolate Truffles

New Mexican red chile is the heat source in this tremendous treat. With the combination of baking chocolate and white chocolate, it’s exceptionally wonderful to munch on. Try substituting 2 teaspoons of cayenne powder for the New Mexican chile to heat the truffles up even more!

Ingredients:
8 ounces baking chocolate
4 ounces white chocolate chips
2 tablespoons sugar (or more to taste)
1 tablespoon ground New Mexican red chile (or more, to taste)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 14-ounce can light sweetened condensed milk
Finely chopped piñon nuts, or substitute pecans

Directions:
Use a double boiler, or fill a 3-quart saucepan three-quarters full of water, and heat until the water is almost boiling.

Place both kinds of chocolate in a smaller saucepan and melt over the hot water, stirring until smooth.

Add the sugar, chile, cinnamon, and milk, mixing until very smooth. Remove the mixture from the heat and let cool until it is shapeable.

Shape the chocolate mixture into 1-inch thick balls, then roll them in the nuts. Chill the candy in the refrigerator in an airtight tin.


Kathryn Juergens, sales and marketing associate
information and recipe from The Complete Chile Pepper Book, available in October

Universal Plant Achievement of All Time!

I have to confess I’m obsessed with Horms™ #4 SUPERthrive 50-in-one. If you’ve ever seen a bottle or ad for this amazing product you’ve never forgotten it. We all see plenty of ads in a given day--“Number 1” “Recommended by four out of five dentists”, etc.--but SUPERthrive beats them all. The ads scream the most amazing claims:

“World’s # 1 Top Plant Supply”
“World Champion”
“Best Stuff or Product in the World.”

I absolutely love these outrageous claims, and I tried the product in the first place because they’ve made such an impression. What is SUPERthrive? It’s a mix of 50 vitamins and hormones you add to your watering can, purportedly decreasing plant stress and increasing survivability of transplants. Any self-respecting academic horticulturist will tell you there is no proof that plants can even metabolize vitamins. My skeptical friend and Timber author Sean Hogan scoffs that SUPERthrive only seems to work because you have to start watering your plants to use it. Nonetheless, most people I know who have tried it swear by it--even as they giggle nervously about the ads. So, do I sound like a hick if I admit I go right for the SUPERthrive bottle when one of my plants looks yellowed or stressed out? I can honestly say I’ve never lost a plant when I’ve used it. You heard me right. I’ve never once used SUPERthrive on a sick plant and didn’t see it recover. Maybe the SUPERthrive ads are the only ones that are really telling the truth. It’s something to think about.

Neal Maillet, publisher

Late Blight of Tomatoes

Home gardeners and commercial tomato producers in the Eastern and Southern US face a potential tomato crop failure this summer. The problem is called late blight and is caused by a fungus.

What are the symptoms?

There are several different fungal diseases of tomatoes, including early blight and septoria leaf spot. But no other fungus has the specific combination of symptoms on leaves, stems, and fruit that identifies late blight. If your tomato plants have all three of the following symptoms you can be sure you are dealing with late blight.

First, determine how big the spots are. Late blight spots are large. They grow rapidly, enlarging to engulf the leaf or stem in just a few days. As long as the leaf tissue is moist, the spots will be very dark, purplish-black. When the tissue dries out the spots become dark brown. The spots generally do not develop yellow haloes. If you see dark brown or purplish-black spots on the leaves that are about the size of a quarter and that get significantly larger (seemingly overnight) you should suspect late blight. Other fungal diseases cause leaf spots that are smaller in size, do not grow as fast as late blight, and are lighter in color.

Second, look for cottony-white mold on the spots, especially on the underside of leaves. In dry weather you may not see this white mold on the plant, so put an infected leaf inside a plastic bag with a piece of moistened paper towel, then seal the bag. Cottony white spores will develop within 12 hours on the tissue inside the plastic bag.

Third, look for greasy-looking, brown, firm patches on the tomato fruit. These can appear on unripe, green tomatoes as well as ripe, red ones. They are often on the stem end of the fruit but can be anywhere.

What does late blight do?

Like many other fungi, late blight fungus (Phytophthora infestans) produces millions of airborne spores that drift on the breeze. When they settle on a susceptible host plant (leaf, stem, or fruit), the spores germinate and the fungus begins to grow down into the plant’s tissues. The fungus digests the cells of the host plant as it grows, first turning them black and then brown as the cells die. The initial spots are small, but they grow larger, quickly engulfing the entire leaf. The leaf wilts and dies, hanging on to the sick plant. Soon, the entire plant dies and the fruit is ruined.

Each of the spots on leaves and stems produce millions of microscopic spores that look like cottony white fuzz. Each tiny spore is a potential new infection that can devour healthy tissue. These spores are carried to healthy plants by wind, wind-driven rain, irrigation water, tools, and people. If the weather is cool and moist, the disease spreads rapidly through many plants in the nightshade family (Solanaceae: tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplants, for example).

What is the solution?

Prevention is the only effective way to protect your plants from late blight. This disease spreads quickly, so vigilance is called for. Check your tomato plants (and their relatives) frequently for symptoms. If your plants are not sick, and late blight is in your area, protect your plants with a spray that is certified for use on organic food crops. Remember that you intend to eat the fruit of these plants. Preventive treatments include Neem oil, copper, or sulfur. Read the labels to learn how to use each product. Choose the product that best suits your circumstances.

These products create conditions on the surface of leaves, stems, and fruit that prevent late blight spores from germinating and infecting your plants. As such, they protect healthy plants. They cannot cure sick plants. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet; not even modern synthetic fungicides can cure a plant with late blight.

If your plants are only slightly infected--with only a few lesions (spots) on leaves or stems--you must protect the remaining healthy tissue. To do so, spray Neem oil, copper, or sulfur, allow the plants’ foliage to dry, then sanitize. To sanitize means to remove infected tissue from the plants, the ground, and your entire garden. Put all the infected material into a plastic bag, seal it, and discard it in the trash. Do not compost it. You will have to be vigilant and search for new infections every day. You will also need to apply the spray again, especially if rain washes the material off your plants.

If your plants are already seriously ill with late blight you should pull up the infected plants, roots and all. Put them in a plastic bag and seal the bag tightly. Put the bag in the sun for a couple of days. The sunlight and the heat will help kill the spores. Then discard the plants, with the bag, in a landfill. Do not compost the sick plants. Get rid of them. The fungus can live in your compost pile and will be a source of new infections.

Late blight fungus can live in the soil and may even overwinter. Next year put unrelated plants where your tomatoes and their relatives are this year. Plant corn, cabbage, or squash in that location and move your tomatoes to a completely new spot. You may have a disappointing tomato crop this year, but look forward to a bumper crop next year.

David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What's Wrong with My Plant (And How Do I Fix It?), available in November

Threatened Tomato Crops

If you grow tomatoes in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic region, you need to read Friday's New York Times article on late blight. It's scary to think that a fungus can spread so quickly from garden center to home garden. Even scarier? A strain of the same disease is what caused the Irish potato famine.

The article includes tips on what to look for and how to remove affected plants. It also recommends using the fungicide chlorothalonil (a synthetic protectant that prevents disease by blocking its entry into the surface of the plant) to protect tomatoes not yet affected. Which brings is to the question of chemicals...

I looked up chlorothalonil in Jeff Gillman's The Truth About Organic Gardening. After an explanation of the difference between the three types of synthetic chemicals used for disease control (plant activators, systemics, and protectants), he lists what he sees as the benefits and drawbacks of using synthetic protecants. I'll let you decide what is the right choice for you and your garden.

BENEFITS: Few diseases have developed a great deal of resistance to protectants. Synthetic protectants tend to be quite effective at controlling disease if used properly and can generally be expected to work as well as or better than most of the organic fungicides, with less chance of damaging your crops. Also, less of these products usually needs to be applied.

DRAWBACKS: Protectants have a wide range of degrees of safety for both humans and the environment. Some are considered relatively safe and some aren't. Because they don't get into the plant's vascular system, they don't provide complete control over the disease.

Kathryn Juergens, sales and marketing associate
Information taken from The Truth About Organic Gardening

Urban gardening and 4-legged pests

I’ve been gardening in the city for the past 3 years now, and have formed a strong opinion on squirrels, cats, dogs, and their, ahem, “relationship” with my garden. (I have opinions on bugs and slugs too, but those are easier to trap with beer.)

Let’s start with squirrels (who seem unaffected by beer – bummer.) Our esteemed next door neighbor has a squirrel feeder, which provides them with a constant supply of peanuts – and me with a constant supply of squirrels burying peanuts in my garden. It’s like a video game – squirrel gets peanut, squirrel comes over fence to bury said peanut, garden owner must chase squirrel off before it succeeds. Extra points for hitting squirrel with a jet of water! I wish I could designate a squirrel digging area – DIG HERE, AVOID SEEDLINGS. On the other hand, my husband enjoys laughing at my outrage, so there’s that.

Then there are cats. Honestly, I think cats are worse than squirrels. I prefer what squirrels bury to what cats bury. Coming across a peanut in the dirt? No biggy. Cat by-product? Yuck! We have two lazy indoor cats, who posture amusingly on windowsills when they see the outdoor interlopers. I encourage them to act as “guard cats”, but so far, chicken wire over my garden beds has proven to be more effective. It gives me a whole new appreciation for indoor cats – I think everyone should have them. Think of the gardens!

Lastly, though this is a rare problem, there is our neighbor’s dog. He’s usually very good, and doesn’t come dashing into my garden much. But he is large. And enthusiastic. And – well – there goes the lettuce, replaced by a filthy, squeaky toy. Sigh.

I can count my blessings, though. I have yet to see deer or rabbits. And I don’t live near a bar.

Chani West-Foyle, Marketing Associate

On Slugs

In Forest Park, here in Portland, there are a number of banana slugs. They are fascinating critters, yellow with brown spots, you can see where the “banana” came from. Plus, according to Wikipedia , banana slugs can reach up to 9.8 inches in length!

I can appreciate the banana slug. Especially because they know their place---Forest Park. The small brown garden slugs that don’t know their place (far away!), and have eaten all my carrot seedlings for the third time? I can’t muster any enthusiasm for them. I can muster some beer traps, though.

Chani West-Foyle, marketing associate