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The cars slept on the street last night... It got down to about 27F outside. Nights should be in the 40s-50s for the next week though.
Picked a nice 3oz fig before the frost.
Yacon died back from the frost so it was time to harvest.
Top producing plant had 13 lbs of tubers and a 2lb crown. This one was a smaller plant that I was able to dig out in one go - it had 8 lbs of tubers.
Yacons, pumpkin and squash.
Decided to do a proper display for all the peppers I picked this week.
From left to right
First row: Roulette, Aji Dulce Sweet Rollo Yellow, St Croix, Biquinho, Jimmy Nardello, a mish mash of odd mans outs (Gypsy, Holy Italian, Chocolate Cake, Orange You Sweet), Corbaci and Aji Santa Cruz
^above are sweet or mild
Second Row: Aji Fantasy White, Urfa Biber (the fruits looked different depending which of the two plants they were from, but taste is about the same), Tabasco, Time Bomb (cherry), Targu Mures
^above are mild to hot
Third Row: Aji Fantasy White, "Red Scotch Bonnet"*, "Orange Scotch Bonnet"*, "Red Habanero"*, "Carrot"*, Jalapeno M, Hatvani Eros
^above are mild to hot
*I don't know what these four varieties are. The supplier seems to have mixed up the seeds since they were supposed to be something else. These are just the names I'm giving them.
Harvested some more peppers, I was finally able to get one of each kind (except Gypsy of which there are no more).
from top to bottom
Left column: Time Bomb, Unknown Carrot, Jalapeno M, Targu Mures, Tabasco, Red Scotch Bonnet (slightly under-ripe causing it to be orange), Orange Habanero, Red Habanero, Rocoto
Middle column: Ancho (ripe Poblano), Hatvani Eros, Urfa Biber, Aji Dulce Sweet Rollo Yellow, Aji Fantasy White, Biquinho Yellow, St Croix, Roulette, Greek Pepperoncini, red Shi****o, green Shi****o, Sweet Black Hungarian, Datil Sweet
Left column: Early CalWonder, Holy Italian, Shepherd, Jimmy Nardello, Orange You Sweet, Corbaci, Chocolate Cake, Criola de Cocina, Aji Santa Cruz.
The Datil Sweet ripened after the frost... which I saved it from by bringing into the garage. That was the first one from the plant, took long enough. I wouldn't exactly say it's sweet either, but not as hot as a standard datil - I'd say in between a red jalapeno and cayenne, maybe 15,000 SHU or so?
Close-up of Datil Sweet
Picked the biggest watermelon just before Monday's frost. It was 19lbs and delicious.
I haven’t had a garden fresh melon in over 30 years- that looks awesome! I miss Maryland Eastern shore cantaloupes. One of the best tasting melons on the planet..,
Awesome Pepper variety. Time Bomb??? I don't even wanna know how hot that is. lol
Awesome Watermelon! Lucky!
Just think.... In just 4-5 short months we start the seeds the again.
Time Bomb is a cherry pepper. Those aren't supposed to be too hot, and this hybrid is supposed to be significantly lower heat. But it's not. It's pretty hot actually... Probably on par with cayennes.
I'm hoping my first Violette de Bordeaux fig can ripen in the garage. It looks like it needed just 2 more days of warm weather... I haven't had a chance to taste that variety yet, it seems to be fairly late. But it's only on it's second year, many figs only hit their stride on their 3rd year, so we'll see how 2024 goes. The fig that it's trying to ripen now is main crop, and this variety can have decent breba crop. So hopefully 2024 produces something whether that's breba or main...
Now I gotta figure out what to do with all those hot peppers. Habaneros, Scotch Bonnets and Time Bomb have already gone in the freezer.
Jalapenos are gonna go into tomatillo salsa and pickled.
Milder green ones I'll probably grill and freeze (poblano, Hatvani, Urfa).
I didn't plan on growing tabascos (mislabelled seeds) but I guess I can make tabasco sauce out of the red ones.
I have the mystery orange variety (mislabelled seeds) and green tabasco, rocoto and Targu Mures that I still have to figure out what to do with though.
I haven’t had a garden fresh melon in over 30 years- that looks awesome! I miss Maryland Eastern shore cantaloupes. One of the best tasting melons on the planet..,
Yup, really happy with the 19 pounder. Variety was Sugar Baby - from seeds that came out of a grocery store watermelon. It works out to 16 solid portions of watermelon. Actually - I still have about 3-4 portions left. Not bad for soil temps in the low 60s and no plastic mulch. The same plant also gave me a little 2 pounder - that was on a vine that got damage so I guess that's why it couldn't grow to full size, but it still ripened.
The Black Beauty watermelon at post #127 was 5 pounds. https://www.city-data.com/forum/65987384-post127.html
There was a second Black Beauty plant with a 2 pound melon too. The 2 pounder plant was maybe bordering on part-shade, and the 5 pounder plant was started later, so I'm not writing off the variety completely, but I grew it in 2021 and 2022 too and it was a bit underwhelming then too (but also in part-shade). But I'm still leaning towards growing only Sugar Baby next time.
The melons haven't done as well. This year, they struggled with transplant shock (alkaline soil? cool soil? not sure), were green for about a month and then started getting mildews in mid August... I got 2.5 lbs from 5 plants. Out of the three varieties, only Montreal Melon produced a half decent melon. But only half decent since 2 lbs is rather small - that variety is supposed to produce fairly large melons. I've yet to have more than mediocre results with melons.
What's left? Oakville squash and container peppers I saved from the frost mostly. Plus a couple figs and passionfruit. Maybe raspberries too if they're able to keep producing after the frost.
There's also the cold hardy veg (leaf and root veg) but I'm not weighing those.
Final update on harvest weighings
60.1lbs (+0.0 lbs) of eggplants
13.8 lbs (+0.0 lbs) of tomatillos
56.8 lbs (+0.0 lbs) of cherry tomatoes
121.8 lbs (+0.0 lbs) of slicer tomatoes
65.3 lbs (+0.0 lbs) of green tomatoes 243.9 lbs (+0.0 lbs) tomatoes overall
65.3 lbs (+9.0 lbs) of red/orange peppers
13.4 lbs (+0.7 lbs ) of white peppers
36.6 lbs (+6.7 lbs) of green peppers 115.4 lbs (+16.5 lbs) peppers overall
23.6 lbs (+0.0 lbs) of zucchini
25.7 lbs (+13.4 lbs) of vegetable marrow
12.2 lbs (+0.0 lbs) of yellow squash 61.5 lbs (+13.4 lbs) summer squash overall
Still have the cold hardy vegetables outside - kale, lettuce, carrots, cilantro, mache, radish, arugula, bok choy, mizuna. And I'm trying to ripen the passionfruits in a south facing window.
Maypop (p. incarnata) that will has fruits on it. Gonna see if I can get a couple to ripen in this SE facing window... Although we only heat the house to about 20C, with all the sunny weather we've had this November, this SE facing space has probably spent many mornings more around 25C. It's bookended by two p. ligularis plants.
These fruits were from a maypop vine that broke off while I was removing the plants from the outdoor trellis, they're unripe. Not really sour or bitter so much as tasteless at this stage.
P. edulis plants in another SE window. Many of my plants are wrapped around tomato cages so give them a tidier shape.
P. manicata and p. tripartita in a NE window
P. caerulea in a SE window in the attic, where it's colder (lately, it's been ranging from -5C to 12C). Might have to move it onto of there in a month when winter starts hitting harder.
P. caerulea and p. incarnata in the garage. It's mostly 6-10C there and fairly dim, so they're basically dormant, but look ok.
Compost pile is firing up. I shredded the leaves and that caused the temperature to jump from 55-60F (~15C) to 150F+ (65-70C).
Compost pile is firing up. I shredded the leaves and that caused the temperature to jump from 55-60F (~15C) to 150F+ (65-70C).
Very cool! But I only achieved that compost temp in the summer in full sun. Sometimes I feel like we're living on different planets. lol
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I only achieved that compost temp in the summer in full sun. 
Sometimes I feel like we're living on different planets. lol
