The Autumnal Equinox is just 5 days away. We have days of cool fall like weather (today) and days of Hades hot (like yesterday). The days are shorter by about 2 minutes each day, the trees are beginning to color, some leaves are falling. The shorter days and cooler nights are when the peppers produce like there will be no tomorrow. The pumpkins that I feared wouldn’t do anything have taken over the entire lower edge of the garden and the blueberry bed and there are green pumpkins that will ultimately turn tan as Seminole pumpkins do.
Yesterday I posted that I harvested apples and pears upon my return home. Later in the afternoon, I picked a whole basket of peppers and enough beans to cook with dinner. The second planting of beans all came from the same seed package, however the beans growing are two different varieties.
The peppers were tackled as dinner was being prepared and 5 quarts of Jalapenos were pickled, the red ones set aside to make more Sriracha style sauce, and the rest cut in half and seeded to dry. They sat overnight in a basket and this afternoon were put in a very low oven to finish drying.
The Anchos are beginning to develop and turn red. One of the plants didn’t survive to develop, so there won’t be too many of them this year. They are going to be solar dried for enchilada sauce. Also this afternoon the bucket of fruit was addressed with a batch of Pear Orange Marmalade made and canned.
That is my favorite of the sweet preserves that I make and it hardly put a dent in the number of pears picked yesterday. Tomorrow I will address the apples, making applesauce and then will decide what to do with more pears.
I didn’t think the deer ate the pears, but all of yesterday’s windfall were gone this morning, so I shook the tree to bring down more for them to clean up tonight.
Fall also brings delivery of the Alliums to be fall planted. Yesterday I got a notice that they had been shipped and today they were in the mailbox.
Outside the chicken pen some volunteers sprouted a while back. At first I thought it was corn, but as it developed, I realized that the volunteers were actually sorghum. The heads were cut to dry this morning so that the seed can be added to birdfeed for the wild birds this winter.
The Alliums will have to wait for another few weeks before they can be planted here. In the meantime, they will be stored and the bed for them enriched with compost and prepared for the planting.
I love the produce of fall, but hate that it signals the upcoming cold and short days.