The Garden has Sighed

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We had our first frost this week and the garden called it quits on most things. I covered our peppers, as they have a ton of fruit on them but aren’t quite ripe yet. It was very cold that night, my husband even saw some frozen water in places! The green beans, tender herbs, and most of the flowers died. My sheets weren’t quite as protective as I had hoped and the tops of some of the peppers were killed off.

    Since the nights are just plain cold now in the 40s and 50s, I think we’re going to pick all the hot peppers-many green still-and try to ripen them a bit inside and then will either dry them in the food dehydrator or chop them up and freeze. We have Trinidad Scorpions, Carolina Reapers, Habanero, and Ghost Peppers. All of which grew surprisingly well in our shorter season. Many of them need 100+ days and we are just over that hump.  Some of the plants have many fruits on them and lots of babies, but they needed a week or so more of heat to fully ripen. I also think having such a cool spring really slowed the growth of the peppers; they could have produced so much more. We will be planting hot peppers in grow bags or pots next year so we can bring them inside when its starts to get cool at night. My Glow F1 OG orange bell peppers from Johnny’s Seeds were amazing plants; nearly 3.5’ tall and some have nearly 20 peppers on them! They’re mostly still green, but I’ll pull those too in hopes they’ll turn orange inside the house. The flavor is super sweet, so well worth the attempt.

    The big, beautiful Color Spectacle Dahlia has also seen its last day, but I will be digging up those tubers to re-plant next year. The plant was over 7’ tall and a prolific bloomer with long stems. I also had some short, bushy dahlias-courtesy of the Aldi variety packs that were offered this year. They are beautiful and only grew to about 2’ tall and 2’ wide. Perfect for garden fillers and edging in front of tall plant varieties.

    I’m ok with the garden shutting down, I’m tired of canning and dealing with all the harvest. I put away my pots and the bin of canning supplies. Now I must work through kale, broccoli shoots and brussels sprouts for the next 2 months. I’ve read you can store your brussels sprouts on their stalk in sand for quite a while, so I’m going to try that this fall. I’ll keep them in the garage until that starts to get too cold, usually in December. I’m not a huge fan of frozen brussels sprouts, but I guess I’ll learn to like them if I can’t eat them all fresh!