Late Harvest

Here is sort of a last harvest bowl of the year. I picked pretty much all the lima beans and chili and jalapeno peppers, plus one small green pepper. I would have been tempted to leave the green pepper, but the squirrels picked a whole bunch of them for me last month and ruined a plant in the process. Plus they grow pretty slowly this time of year.

I seeded and dried the peppers that had gone red by laying them on a baking rack that I set on top of a kitchen cabinet. (This works much better in the fall than the summer!) I froze the green chilis and put a couple green jalapenos in the fridge. We ate the limas....mmmmm!

Some Late-Summer Holdouts

Here are a few of the summer plants still struggling to finish up in this unusually chilly fall we've been having.

Eggplant

Chili Pepper

Lima Beans

Jalapenos

The jalapenos were very prolific - I made several batches of salsa, although I didn't try to can any because I was so busy this fall - and two have gone red on the plant waiting for me to pick them. I think I'll save the seeds from them and try to plant them in the spring.

Many of my summer plants didn't really get going until late July, I think because I didn't do a very good job fertilizing when I installed the new garden bed. Next year I'll do better, I hope.

Peppers

Check out this great chili pepper! (And the littler jalapeno in the back ground!) I was so surprised when I went out and saw this a few days ago; it seemed like it just came out of nowhere. This plant was in its little peat pot for a long time waiting for me to transplant it, so I wasn't sure if it would even make it, and now here it is with this big, long pepper on it! It's even ahead of my bell peppers:


I think maybe they aren't getting quite enough sun on that end of the garden.