Cold Weather, Soup Beans, Hot Sauce and Tomatoes

Lemon Drop, Jalapeno, Sugar Rush Peach, Pepperoncini and Cayenne peppers

We had our first light frost this week. It came as a bit of a shock since it was in the mid 70's a couple of days before, and it was a full 6 weeks earlier than expected. I hope such an early frost isn't a harbinger of an unusually cold winter though I fear it may be. I'm still picking a few things here and there but it's slowed down so much. Mostly, I'm just waiting around for things to finish ripening up.

Here is the garden this week

Colder temperatures and damper weather were making it difficult for the Rio Zape beans to dry in the garden, so I pulled up the whole patch and put them in the greenhouse to dry

So far this year I've picked and dried three quarts of soup beans. Along with the Rio Zapes in the greenhouse, there are still thousands of pods on the bean trellis that are not fully dry. There will be plenty to provide meals all winter and have choice pick for planting next year

The peppers that I picked this week were blended together with a head of garlic and an onion to make a batch of hot sauce. It needs to ferment for a few weeks to develop the flavor before it is put through the food mill and bottled

I still have lots of tomatoes from the community garden plot ripening up on my kitchen table. The frost we had was so light that these weren't affected by it, being at a much lower elevation than our home. There are still quite a lot of green fruits on the plants so I expect I'll be able to pick for several more weeks

Weekly Harvest: 

18 pounds 12 ounces tomatoes 

1 pound 5 ounces soup beans 

1 pound 4 ounces peppers 

Yearly Total: 

837 pounds 1 ounce