I’ve had a terrific harvest of purple jalapeno peppers, though I let most of the peppers ripen to bright red rather than picking them purple. Serious cold in the next two days will quite likely end the pepper season.
October 22, 2013 is nearly done and I’m only now writing my Post Produce post. Life continues to be crazy with periodic travels to Ithaca, but it’s crazier still as the end of gardening season approaches.
Sadly, my tomato plants succumbed to late blight and I lost at least a bushel of tomatoes. While that happened, I harvested and froze beans from my garden, bought grapes from the farmers’ market to make jelly, froze locally-grown sweet corn, canned “bread & butter pickle” pears, put up a few jars of tomato sauce (from tomatoes that hadn’t yet developed blight blemishes), bought tomatoes from a local farmer to make salsa, and seriously enjoyed my pepper harvest.
Peppers Going Strong
My pepper plants have struggled through a rather cool growing season. Still, they’ve managed to grow a reasonable amount of ripe fruit.
I harvested seeds from sweet Italian peppers I’d bought last year at a farmers’ market. I gave away most of the seeds, but started several for myself and grew three plants. Those plants have been prolific, and the peppers are perfect.
To assure I’d have a full batch of red pepper relish to give my mother-in-law, I bought a dozen red bell peppers at a farm market. At the same time, I harvested eight perfectly orange bell peppers from my garden. My mother-in-law gets nine 4oz jars of red pepper relish, and I’ve put away six jars of orange pepper relish. I also made bean salad dressing from the same peppers.
I harvested about a dozen sweet Italian peppers and used most of them in salsa: canned 34 8oz jars of the stuff. I also used about eight red-ripe jalapeno peppers in the salsa.
There are quite a few more peppers to harvest, and nighttime temperatures are pushing into the low 30s this week. I’ll probably harvest the remaining peppers, and there are lots of lima beans I’ll need to pick, ready-or-not.
Now You Post Produce!
What are you harvesting from your kitchen garden? Post about it on your own blog. Then find the linky widget at the end of this post and create a link to your Post Produce post.
Success with orange bell peppers this year has me thinking of growing a bell pepper rainbow next season. I’ll have to do some research: how many colors of bell peppers are available?