This weekend was a little bit of garden cleanup time.
Yesterday – Saturday – I worked on mulching leaves that were in our yard and the neighbor’s yard. Luckily, the neighbor had someone mow his lawn and his mower has a bag on it – so they just dumped the mulched leaves near the forest area behind the house. That was perfect for me! I’m kind of thinking that may be a good investment – because it would be much faster to simply mow over a big pile of leaves and have them mulched up in a bag – then using the leaf mulcher/blower and do it by hand – which takes hours!
So, the watermelon area and the side garden had a good helping of leaves all mulched in. So far, that is the only area done. I wanted to get the back garden done today. Another neighbor has a huge pile of leaves with a tarp over them. I thought the neighbor was saving them for her kids – but I was told otherwise.
Today, I got all of the basil pulled out of the patio bed. The basil plants were dropping their leaves and the plant was past it’s prime. This year we only got a large spice container full of dehydrated basil – whereas last year, we got the same container filled – plus two or three smaller containers.
Alas, all of the pepper plants were harvested as well (you can see in the photo above that the two Anaheim Pepper plants that were in the blue tote are no longer there). There was only a pound and a half of Anaheim Hot Peppers (total of 28 harvested):
And lastly, there were five California Wonder pepper plants that have always harvested very well in years past. Unfortunately, three died shortly after they were put in the garden so that would have immediately reduced yields by 38%. But, we got much less than that this year. There were a total of 48 peppers that were harvested – totalling only 8 pounds. For the year, that puts the number of California Wonder peppers under 10 pounds. In years past, it seems we at least get around 50 pounds of peppers.
So, all of the peppers were bagged up in freezer bags and put in the freezer. Some were put in the fridge so we would have them fresh.
I’m quite surprised this year. We have not yet had a frost! It has been pretty close (the past two nights were about 34 degrees) – but it has not yet hit the freezing point. So, the garden still has the tomatoes and lettuce plants outside. Some of the tomatoes are still in the process of getting a little bit of color on them. It is always a shame at the end of the year when all you have left are green tomatoes – and it always seems like there is at least 20+ pounds of green tomatoes left. We don’t have any use for green tomatoes. Some folks do fry them up – but we haven’t acquired a taste for that.