Happy Thanksgiving to all of us Canadian gardeners, eh!
And holy peppers! With a risk of frost expected Monday morning, I spent some time Sunday harvesting anything I could find that might be damaged, including 10 pounds of peppers! I was waiting as long as I could to harvest these as most should have ripened to red or yellow and I'm not a huge fan of green peppers. But I wasn't about to take a chance of losing them. I've had such a great year for peppers as the weather was consistently hot through most of the summer.
This latest batch (shown above from top left) includes: Gypsy, a single Super Red Pimiento, jalapenos, a big bunch of King of the North bell peppers and finally some Ancho.
And had some of the largest jalapenos I've ever grown!
It was just as well that I harvested the peppers. Even if there was no frost, the temperatures are now below 15 degrees C on a regular basis so unlikely they were going to mature much more. And the critters (most likely voles) have been doing plenty of damage so quite a few ended up in the compost.
This riper batch, mainly Feher Ozon, was picked earlier in the week from the greenhouse (where I still have a dozen plants in containers).
I harvested a batch of both ripe and green chocolate cherry tomatoes earlier in the week and did a final sweep after seeing the frost warning.
And grabbed the last few beans.
A bit of a surprise harvest was this rhubarb. The plants had quite a revival in recent weeks once the weather cooled off. I don't think I've ever harvested rhubarb after June but it looked so good I thought I'd freeze some.
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| Sweet potato plant in a fabric grow bag |
With the frost warning, I knew it was time to finally harvest the sweet potatoes. Definitely not worth the effort for me considering the yield (and having spent months babying those darn slips all spring). I had three slips planted into a fabric grow bag and another three plants in a small plot - and this is all I ended up with!
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| Sweet potatoes and the last of the beets |
Nice to have a few and I'm very much looking forward to eating them but I don't expect I'll grow those again. But I will grow celery again! This was my first try and I'm pretty happy with the results (a few loose spears on the left and the rest of the plant on the right).
I am linking in to Harvest Monday hosted by Our Happy Acres. I look forward to seeing what other gardeners have on the go this week!
Nice haul of peppers. The ripe Feher Ozon show what a difference the greenhouse makes for heat sensitive plants. Too bad you are getting frost already. I had to go check the forecast and we look OK for this week, but still chilly nights are here.
ReplyDeleteJust arrived home after being at friends and definitely got hit with frost last night. Guess I'll see what's left in the daylight tomorrow. Ah well ... life in the North.
DeleteToo bad about the sweet potato yield but I guess you never know until you try. It looks like it has been a great year for your peppers though, and with more to come in the greenhouse!
ReplyDeleteYes, I've had an abundance of peppers for sure. First time I've ever had enough to even worry about how to store them (thinking mostly freezing them).
DeleteHappy Thanksgiving! That's a lot of peppers. It looks like you've had a great year for peppers. That's a shame about the sweet potato production. Did they not have time to produce well or did they just not grow well?
ReplyDeleteIt could have been the garden bed I used ... probably not loose enough soil for a root veggie. The plants never flowered at all, so not sure what else it could have been.
DeleteWow - that is one big haul of peppers! I haven't pulled mine up yet. They weathered the frost on Sunday night ok and I was going to be pulling them yesterday, but got sidetracked so I just covered up the plants with plastic and will be going through the patch today.
ReplyDeleteThat's too bad about the sweet potatoes - I just pulled mine up yesterday and had pretty much the same results...not that great. But I'm not ready to give up just yet as I have a couple more ideas to try.
I was surprised my marigolds made it through the frost, so good for your peppers too! Your ideas had me thinking just for a minute, but I'm pretty sure I'm giving up on the sweet potatoes!
DeleteThe critter damage to your peppers is exactly what the rats do to my peppers, they don't want the flesh so much as they want the seeds. I'm with you on the sweet potatoes, I doubt that there's much of anything in my pots, the plants never got very big so I can't imagine that the roots got big as well.
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