Two weeks later on the 29th, I had taken down the cucumbers, harvested and weeded the potato row, pulled the last of the winter squash, and brought down the tomatillos. I seeded winter rye in all those places, except where the tomatillos were.
Only a few days later on October 2nd, the tomatoes came down, the hoop house went up, the pumpkins went out, the cold frame windows went on.
A few details. Around September 20th, I dug up four pepper plants and put them in pots.
From Left to right: Habanero, Hungarian Wax, Purple Bell, Cayenne. I sprayed them daily with a soapy water solution. This past week we got some rain and then a bigger storm was forecasted with cold temps to follow. I brought them in on Wednesday because I didn't want them water logged when they came in the house. They are sunning themselves in the front windows and so far are doing ok. I'm continuing to spray hping that I don't have aphids with them. I'm hoping to overwinter them.Tomatoes
Here's what the tomato support looked like after 5" of rain. It was worse, the metal props had fallen away and it was leaning even more. I propped it back up so that I could at least cut down the tomatoes.
Here's the after photo from the other side. I haven't weeded it yet, nor seeded it. The bed to the right is where the winter squash were and has been seeded with winter rye.
Here's how the winter rye looks in the potato bed, seeded a week before.
I also planted garlic in the former pumpkin bed. I ordered 6 heads of Red Russian and 3 heads of Music. 
All total it was 60 some cloves planted. It took up half of the bed.
So in all the garden is looking a lot more like fall. Many peppers and eggplant remain in the garden and that's the only thing I'm covering to protect from frost. We had a light frost in the back field again on Saturday night. Each time, it creeps closer to the garden. I'm sure it will get the last of the beans soon.
4 comments:
Your the 2nd blog I've read that is overwintering their pepper plants. My husband and I want to do this to our habanero plant, however the plant is gigantic. Do you think if we pruned it a bit, would it be okay?
I still need to plant garlic. I usually plant around the last week of October around here, which is around my first frost time. But I really don't know when my first frost will be like here. I haven't a clue as to the microclimate that I'm in. It could be weeks different. We are in a lower spot, but we are surrounded by pavement so who knows? I'll learn over time.
meemsync,
I think you could partially prune the habanero plant to bring it in. IT will make it easier to search for aphids/white flies and squish them if there are fewer leaves. I sprayed mine with soapy water for over a week before I brought them in and I still have little aphids. I'm trying to check every other day now and spray to get them under control. Last winter I gave up and got rid of the plants because they were so infested.
We tried overwintering a couple of Naga Jalokia (I'm sure that's not spelled right) plants last winter and ran into the aphid problem as well - my houseplant got very infested. So spraying them for a week before bringing them in is a good idea.
Have you heard of people having good luck with overwintered peppers? I presume the appeal is to have peppers earlier in the season. I wonder if a year-old plant is more productive (or less)... We tried it because the plants are pretty rare and hard to germinate - we had paid like $10 per plant and got zero peppers. Not very cost effective.
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