Kale Stories

 Kale keeps on growing despite several light frosts. Indeed I've harvested it in January before. Right now the kale bed is just starting to come back from the heat of the summer. Apparently it gets a bit too toasty for it in the stone planter. But meanwhile it doesn't mind the heat of the driveway, growing up through cracks in the pavement!

The white stuff is actually the camera flash off a heavy dew, but the contrast between my carefully cultivated plants and the "wild" plant is pretty comical.

End of the Season

 Well, not exactly the end. Still getting a dribble of tomatoes, and maybe a couple zucchini I could pick now. But the basil is trying to flower, and a lot of it is brown. The dill is yellowing. The oregano looks pretty good though. And the pepper still had a TON of fruit. So today I picked them. 2.011 kg (4.43 lbs) of various peppers. Probably mostly Anaheims.

Today's Haul

So today was cleanup day. I pulled all the cukes, they were mostly dead anyway. I did get one suitable for use in a salad, that was nice.

Current setup

Next worked on bringing in the peppers for overwintering. A titanic task!

Anaheims

Trimmed them down to sticks, pretty much. Was hard to do.

Trimmings

They looked so sad!

The Remnants

The stems were big and woody. One jalapeno was easily as big as a nickel.

Jalapeno Stem

And here's their winter home. Gave them a healthy dose of water and fertilizer with low N. They shouldn't need much attention over the winter, but if I can give them a little dose of water not and then I'm hoping they can hit the ground running in the spring.

28 pepper plants

I will have to come up with a plan to start seeds in the spring, this is usually where I do it. Maybe I will expand things a bit and have some more lights by January.