The autumnal equinox has come and gone. Deer have been eating our pea vines, butter bean vines, and actually nibbling on some pepper plants, so I sprayed deer repellant in the area, and the predations have ceased for the moment.
Tabasco Peppers
It’s been Six weeks and no accumulation of rain. Weather reports say that it is gonna rain a lot starting. … oh 12 hours ago, so I guess I’ll believe it when I see it. Some friends of ours up in Stokes county however, got 3 inches of rain in one night – one of those instances when the cure is nearly as bad as the disease.
Somehow we're still getting Cucumbers
The moon & stars watermelon we picked last week wasn’t ripe. I have no idea why not. And some critter ate a whole charentais melon, once again a day or so before we were gonna pick it.
Butternut in situ
This morning we pulled up the eggplants. We got a reliable 1 eggplant a week average on the ones we planted, and so we were happy with the production this year, which is a great increase over last where where we got no eggplants and only 1 plant that grew higher than a foot tall. We also pulled up the tomatillos plants.
We harvested the big butternut-type squash (we noticed the seed packet actually says “Butternut rogosa Violina “Gioia” Winter Squash”, and noticed that one moon&stars had dropped from its vine. It had darn well better be ripe.
Squash & Melon
We harvested lots of ancho peppers this week. I dried almost 30 of them. And the rest of the peppers keep tumbling in as well. I guess I’ll make some more hot pepper jelly in the next five days or so.
Anchos!
Dried Ancho Peppers
We also picked butter beans, field peas, greens beans (3 times this week), and we have some greens ready to harvest already.
Field Peas
Butter Beans
Dutch Half-runners just keep on producing
While I write this, the other one is outside planting radishes, lettuces, carrots, beets, and more kale.
Growing under Cover
This week has had a minor revelation. While we were gone last week, we were unable to eat the quantity and variety of vegetables that we have become accustomed this year, and it was a great relief to return home where we can partake of such bounty. Times where we have needed to eat processed food (traveling can do that to you) we have noticed that it gave us a variety of symptoms, mostly feeling logy, or lethargic, or slightly sick, or gave us headaches, or made our skin “feel funny”. I drank a regular soda with high fructose corn syrup and regretted it all afternoon one day. One begins to wonder if our national “couch-potatoness” is not in some degree a side effect of what we’re eating rather than how much we’re eating.
Garden 1
Garden 2
Garden 3
Covered boxes
Happy Lemongrass
Peppers
Everlasting Basil
Tags: Garden, Gardening, Kitchen Garden, North Carolina, Orange County, Southern, Victory Garden
Food Garden Kitchen 
September 28, 2010 at 9:27 am |
Beautiful peppers on that plant! So festive looking. Amen on the food away from home comment. I was traveling for several days over the past weekend and was eating out the whole time, was aching for some real food and particularly fresh veggies only a day into the travel. I am absolutely positive that what we as a nation eat is very damaging. It’s one of the main reasons I strive to grow my own food as much as is practical.
Garden looks great!
September 28, 2010 at 2:12 pm |
What a nice variety! I agree with you regarding the food eaten away from home. Once you get used to your own produce it is hard to eat anything of lesser quality.
September 28, 2010 at 3:05 pm |
I loooove the way you build your raised beds – long and slim! This way you can surely reach everything and no zucchini remains unspotted until the size of a leg 😉 Basil is huge! How do you make hot pepper jelly – and how to use it? I’m not familiar with it as you see, but would love to know, as me and my parents have incredible amount of hot peppers coming in right now.
September 28, 2010 at 5:00 pm |
the Ball Blue Book of Preserving has official recipes for putting up almost everything, including Jalapeno Jelly.
Most recipes you will find out there for preserved foods are variations on these tried and true recipes.
As an example, with my hot pepper jelly I use the same proportions of cider vinegar, sugar, and pectin as they do, I just vary which peppers I use. I like to use half sweet peppers and half hot peppers, like fresh pimientos and habaneros. The one thing I learned this past time is either completely deseed them if you want *chunks* of pepper, or puree the lot and put it through a strainer (to make the jelly chunk free) — the seeds show up pretty clearly in the jelly when you’re done otherwise.
September 29, 2010 at 1:03 am |
I just love your garden updates. I’m looking into using row covers in my garden, so I was very happy to see some pictures of them in your garden. Beautiful beans and peppers!
September 29, 2010 at 5:13 pm |
I love those peppers. I would love to make my own chili powder with things from the garden. I tried growing cumin this year, but the seedlings died from neglect since I wasn’t living here yet. They needed more water early on than I could give them at the time. Next year I’m trying again. And of course I need to dry some chilies to powder.