The Final Buzzer

 Well, it's official, the 2022 season is over. Tuesday morning (11/15) we had a hard frost. We'd had some light ones, but the basil held on, though not flourishing. I did a final pick of basil a couple weeks ago and had some pesto. But this frost turned all the remaining plants to mush. Except kale. KALE DON'T CARE. Actually the dill looked ok, too. Funny, I grew dill but never picked or used any. I brought the oregano inside, along with the peppers.

In the end, I brought in 28 pepper plants on 10/16. The basement seedling tables are packed with peppers now. If I can get them through the winter I will have a huge head start next year.

Peppers for overwintering!

They seem pretty happy with their situation despite the absolutely savage cutting back of the plants and removing all their leaves. But in the last month they have blown up, and they almost all have an explosive growth of new leaves on the remaining sticks.

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.