Finally Fall

The tree leaves are finally starting to color and it's beginning to look a little more like fall around these parts. The color change is two or three weeks behind schedule which seems to be the case in most of the rest of the country. Some claim that the color change is governed more by day length than by temperature. I cannot believe that. Our days have been getting shorter right on schedule as they do every year. It's the cooler temperatures that are lagging behind.

Finally Fall

Pepper Harvest

We've only experienced the very lightest of frosts so far this fall, with only the most tender of vegetation getting a little leaf burn. However, the weather forecast called for temperatures at or near freezing Thursday night. It was time to harvest what remained out in the garden or risk losing it.

Peppers were the main crop we had to harvest. Various hot peppers (jalapeño, poblano, salsa) went into plastic bags and directly into the freezer. They'll be fine for cooking. I'll eat a lot of fresh bell peppers for a week or so. I don't particularly like them cooked and Jo doesn't like them at all. The cayenne peppers I'm drying and will grind into pepper flakes.

Jo also picked all the tomatoes that were still on the vines. Some will go ahead and ripen, many will end up back out in the garden compost and we will probably have some fried green tomatoes.

(Note: The weather forecast was wrong. Imagine that! The temperature never dropped below 40º. Oh, well. Picking all the peppers was a job that needed to be done and we had a nice, sunny day for that chore.)

Pepper Harvest

Sweet Potato Harvest Disappointing

This year's sweet potato harvest was a disappointment. The bunch pictured above was the best we got in terms of size and quantity. All totaled, we only dug 39 pounds of potatoes. I was expecting a lot more from this year's crop because we've kept the vines from being eaten and the plants got plenty of water. This isn't the worst production we've ever gotten from a row of sweet potatoes, but I was hoping we'd come a lot closer to our record production of around ninety pounds.

These potatoes weren't easy to dig either. Our procedure is for me to work a spading fork under a bunch of potatoes and pry up while Jo tugs gently on the vines. The bunch of potatoes comes out of the ground and most of the dirt falls off. However, this year's sweet potato bed was on the outside of the garden. Roots from a nearby sweet gum tree had invaded the bed and prevented me from being able to pry up. The competition from those tree feeder roots may also be why our production wasn't up to expectations. I dunno.

Our sweet potato harvest is now curing in the basement. It will be about a month before they're ready to eat because you've got to give them time to convert starches into sugars. The basement isn't the best place for curing sweet potatoes, but it's all we've got. Ideally, curing should take place in a less humid environment.

Sweet Potato Harvest Disappointing