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.

Harvests

Lest you think my garden brings me nothing but trouble, here are some of the things I've harvested over the last month or so. Mmmm!

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.