WOW, Dawn, that's a lot of hot peppers. This is the time of year when the peppers just seem to go wild. I think it is odd since we have to pamper them so in the Spring, but when they are mature, they seem to love the cooler weather. Of course, you know what I would do with those habs, but that would make a LOT of jelly.

My harvest doesn't sound as good as yours, but I picked two long Zucchetta Squash, enough southern peas for dinner tonight, some green beans, and a lot of peppers. I cooked about 6 or 7 peppers and it didn't look like the stack went down, so I will probably need to freeze some today. I think I also need to pick again. I have a Collective Farm Woman melon that is turning yellow, but I don't know exactly when to pick it. I normally grow melons that slip, and then there is no doubt. These start out looking like little watermelons, dark green with striping, then they start to change color. I have several that are the right size, but only one was changing color yesterday. When I have seen pictures of these, some were green and some were yellow gold, so I think it is kind of a guessing game. I'm going to check around the stem today and see what else is happening. I'll probably pick it to young.

I'm not picking these, but I have a couple of Seminole Pumpkins that are getting big. They are still very dark green and no where near ready, but the biggest one is the size of a large butternut squash. Dawn, I know you grow this, so I need to ask if the vine will support the fruit, or does it need a sling. It looks study and like it will support itself. The largest one is on a trellis and is hanging about four feet above the ground, and has no support except for the vine.

I have Zuchetta on one side of this arched trellis and Seminole on the other side. Of course they both behave badly and are crawling over each other and all over the garden. In one place I have dark green squash and a couple of feet away, I see a light colored Zucchetta. Since they are climbing into the blackeyed peas, the melons, the peppers, and have now found the green bean trellis, I have to wait for the fruit to form to know which is which since the leaves look the same. Squash bugs have attacked one vine that is on the ground, so I had to give up and spray yesterday. That is something that I rarely do, even with organic sprays.

Carol,

It is a lot of peppers. I usually get that big of a harvest in August, but since I wasn't watering much in July and August, the big harvest is a little behind this year.

I think that we get the big pepper harvest in August or September because the root system of each plant is finally big enough to carry that kind of a heavy fruit load. All summer long I used jalapenos in salsa, etc. and used habs in Habanero Gold, and we used a jalapeno here and there in cooking. Mostly, though, I just roasted and froze them sliced in half so we could use them in cooking the rest of the year. I've got at least 20 dozen roasted jalapenos in the freezer, so decided to use these for jelly and relish.

The pepper plants still have a lot of flowers and half-grown peppers, so I hope for at least one more big harvest before the plants freeze. The sweet peppers have a nice bunch of green bells coming along but I am waiting for them to change to their mature color. I've picked a few Yummy orange, but they've really not been happy in the heat so they haven't produced that well this year. At a certain point other bells around them outgrew them and began shading them. I need to remember that when I plant the sweet peppers next year.

Some pepper aficionadoes dig up their pepper plants, pot them up and overwinter them indoors or in a greenhouse or basement. Some keep them leafed out and growing but others basically just keep them dormant and warm enough that they don't freeze. Then, in the spring, they set them out into the ground. This allows a much earlier harvest. I've never tried it because I'm kind of afraid of what would happen if we were having a peak pepper harvest too early when we're already in the middle of the big tomato and peach harvest. It is hard enough at that time of year to find time to get the beans and corn in while dealing with tomatoes and peaches and plums. One year we had a huge jalapeno harvest in June and I gave away most of them because I couldn't find time to process them.

Collective Farm Woman is one of my favorite melons. You can harvest it anytime after most of the rind has turned from dark green to yellowish-gold/orange-gold. There will be some little green patches, but not many. You'll have to try them at different stages to see which stage has the texture and flavor you prefer. I like them when they are mostly yellowish-orange but before they get too deeply orange and begin to soften. If you leave them on the vine until they're fully ripe, they'll slip off. However, I usually pick them just before they're about to slip. I watch for the formation of the abscisison layer to begin, and pick the melons then. I've never had them crack when they fall off the trellis and hit the ground, but you can put them in slings if that is a concern. They'll keep on the kitchen counter for weeks if not months, by the way, so if you get a lot of them at once you don't have to feel compelled to hurry up and eat them all in a hurry. It just so happens that this melon is from the same part of the Ukraine as one of my favorite tomatoes--the island of Krim from which we got the Black Krim tomato.

I've never put slings on Seminole and I've never had one come off the vine prematurely or break the vine. Keep in mind that in the Everglades, where these melons are natives, the Native Americans let the vines climb way up into the trees. I have done the same thing in some years. This year they are more in the middle of the garden away from the trees, so they climbed their 4' tall trellis and then grew sideways, attaching themselves to the cantaloupe trellis which is 6' tall and 30' long and then growing from one tomato cage to another. It is sort of a ridiculous mess of a jungle, but it is a jungle that will give us a lot of Seminole pumpkins. When they climb the trees, I don't harvest until the vines are about dead. Then I stand under the tree and pull and tug, bringing down the vine and pumpkins together. You don't have to worry they'll break because their rind is very tough. You practically have to use a machete or chainsaw to cut that rind.

I love your description of the winter squash as 'behaving badly'. lol That is what we want them to do, isn't it? We want them to grow like crazy and produce a wonderful harvest. If I didn't think Tim would balk at the idea, I'd hang a trellis all around the house, which is two stories tall, and let the Seminole vines climb the trellis and shade the whole house. I bet they'd climb to the top of the trellis and keep climbing up right over the roof. A well-known horticulturalist in Texas, when asked how tall trumpet creeper vine would climb, said it would climb 6 or 8' higher than the nearest support. Well, that's what I think Seminole would do as well, and I bet all the winter squash would be just fine and wouldn't need slings either.

Dawn

I haven't got much lately. I never thought this summer was going to end. I did pick about 2 dozen jalapenos today. I have one lonely bell little bell pepper and i'm really not sure if it will be ready before things freeze over. Tomatoes are slowly maturing and I should have some ready to pick in the next two weeks hopefully.

I do have some lettuce im trying to grow in a couple of containers so i can bring it inside this winter and they are looking beautiful! Hopefully I can get some greens this winter. My DW thinks im crazy for how excited i'm getting over just some lettuce in pots, but I just can't help it.

Josh

Josh, I have a big tub of lettuce growing right now and it is too big to bring inside. I will put a row cover over it soon and get everything ready so I can put plastic over it later. I have grown greens as late as mid-December in a container outside with no cover except for a blanket thrown over the top on nights that were going to get very cold. I don't have a greenhouse, but enjoy experimenting with crops. There are several that can endure some pretty cold temperatures with just a little help. Don't forget to plant spinach also.

I don't have anything to harvest, but I have some peppers coming in, they are wee small now!

My zuchettas are behaving badly too! They are EVERYWHERE. I have to sneak into my neighbor's yard to pick them! But as rampant as they are, my passionvine is worse.

I have been harvesting a decent amount of zuchettas, they are starting to fully produce now in the cooler weather. I have enough for me and Sharon and her daughter without being overwhelmed! Yet!

I have to say I love this squash. No bug problems, sailed through the drought, and it tastes pretty good too. This last week I chunked up some of it and put it with tortellini and covered it with alfredo sauce. Yummy!

Next year though, I think I'm sharing some of the seeds instead of planting the whole pack!

Lisa

Josh,

For what it is worth, we've been married 29 years and I still don't think my DH really "gets" how excited I am to have something green and growing in winter. I just think that non-gardeners don't understand the 'joy' part of it. I can grow lettuce all winter long in big flat but shallow tubs that sit on my seed-starting light shelves in the spare room. I usually can keep it going outside most all winter long with the use of frost-blanket weight floating row covers placed over EMT or PVC hoops. I have better luck in containers in winter than in the ground because I am in a very rural area with abundant wildlife. Lettuce in the ground in winter seems to be fair game for every field mouse, vole, insect, rabbit and bird that can get into the garden. Not many rabbits find a way under the fence, but when they do, they can wipe out the plants in no time at all.

For fall/winter lettuce and greens, I have several different containers planted. Some have the same lettuce I use in late winter for a spring/early summer harvest, but others are winter varieties that hold up a little better to colder winter temperatures. One of my favorite cool-season lettuces is Winter Density, which is a romaine. I planted dozens of seeds of Winter Density. Right now they all have floating row cover over them. Otherwise, the lettuce and greens I'm growing are Grasshopper Chow.

Ezzirah, Our plants have a lot of baby peppers too. I am hoping for a long, mild fall so they can size up nicely. FYI, I have covered up peppers with floating row cover to keep frost off the leaves and have been able to keep harvesting from them into December and sometimes even in January if the weather is not too brutal. The only problem with fall peppers is they tend to size up and mature a lot more slowly than summer peppers because the number of hours of daylight is progressively shorter, and the sunlight also is less intense.

One winter I grew winter peppers in containers I dragged into the garage at night, and those peppers grew so slowly that it really wasn't worth the effort. They were flowering and setting fruit in December-February, but it grew incredibly slow. The advantage was, though, that I had big plants in 1, 2 or 3 gallon pots that I could transplant into the ground in April or May as opposed to much younger, smaller plants.

Lisa, Good for them! Let them continue behaving badly and you'll have squash to get you through the whole winter! I wouldn't plant the entire packet of seed either.....unless I wanted to bury the whole house and yard underneath the plants. They are great if you need to shade a patio or something. Zuchetta is virtually unstoppable, and in our climate, that's a wonderful thing because the heat, drought and pests stop lots of other things that we like.

Dawn

Lisa, You planted the whole pack???? LOL I use one pack about every three years. Bugs will bother them, but it is usually their last choice. I am having a bug problem with mine right now, but so far it is just on a couple of branches that chose to grow across the ground and into the melon patch. I like to cut it in 'sticks' about 1-1/2" and stir-fry with onions and peppers. I cut them in disks and lay them on an oiled cookie sheet, add salt and my favorite spices and just bake them. Of course, you can bread and fry or batter and fry. We also like the squash casserole that's made with Ritz Crakers and cheese, etc. Actually they are easier to cook with than most squash because they are firm.

I planted both Zuchetta and Seminole Pumpkin close together without knowing that the leaves look alike. They also mis-behave the same way. Although they are across a sidewalk from each other and growing on an arched cattle panel, they didn't stop with just the 8 foot tall arch and are growing on the black-eyed pea trellis, the pepper cages, the bean trellis and across the ground into the melons. It is now impossible to walk on the sidewalk because of melons and squash, and I have a couple of branches I have to keep moving so I can get through the garden at all. They are both monsters and I have to wait to see the small fruit forming before I know which squash plant it is.

I have two very long squash on my kitchen cabinet right now which are probably going to become squash casserole. I went wandering through the vines and didn't see anymore ready to pick today, so that's a good thing. Of course, you know they grow very fast.

This is my first year to grow Seminole. It's not my first year to try, but in the past I have had problems with them germinating. I am amazed at how fast the squash grows. I have one that is far bigger than I thought they would get, and several others that aren't far behind and are the size of butternut squash, and none have started to change color.

I am looking forward to trying the Seminole. Al likes almost every food (except cranberry sauce), so I was surprised to find that he didn't like winter squash. Actually he loves spaghetti squash, and pumpkin pie, but not the rest. He thinks winter squash are all too sweet to be a vegetable. Men! Go figure.

In the fall when fresh cranberries are available, I make cranberry muffins, using the recipe for blueberry muffins, but first cut the cranberries in half and mix the cranberries, and the sugar from the recipe, together and let them set for awhile before maker the rest of the batter. Sometimes I add pecans. Al loves those, so I think it is the consistency of cranberry sauce that he doesn't like. Sometimes after the holidays, I buy bags of cranberries on sale and just toss them in the freezer. They work fine for muffins.

I would be delighted if he likes the Seminole, because it looks like I am going to have a lot of them, if we don't have an early frost or freeze. If he doesn't like them, then I guess I will have to find some creative ways to hide them in his food. LOL

I am picking peppers too and pickling them. I am also going to make hot pepper jelly for gifts. Everyone loved it last year. also picking radishes. Funny the 2 things I dont eat are coming in abundance LOL
Kim

Yes, we too picked a Peck Of Peppers! We are cooking them many ways and storing them in many ways... we have very mild to very hot chillies. We are roasting, pasting, frying, drying, stuffing, etc. Mom is making some unique pickles... recipe is so simple and but yummy and crunchy.. here how she does... slit chillies length wise, fill it with mixture of salt, sugar, pinch of turmeric and cumin powder and add few garlic cloves and then squeeze 3-4 lemons and closed the lid and keep it for few days, that's it. Another recipe for longer storage butter milk chillies, you can google it for recipes.

Thanks to Jay and Folks for sending me all those wonderful chilly pepper seeds.

Jay, you got Chance to look at some pf chillies, i just wonder when you harvest them and how you use them and cook them and store them... especially these two types shown below;

See rest of the chillies from following link forward from 10-17

Here is a link that might be useful: Chillies