November 21, 2005

A Small Harvest

I have not been doing much with my gardens this fall, but I suppose that is to be expected. Between being gone due to work and the weather, I tend to not worry about my gardens at this time of year. The rain provides them with moisture and my raised beds seldom have weeds, so all is usually well even with my neglect. I managed to harvest a handful of piquin peppers, three or four habaneros and one red gypsy pepper this morning. I'm going to pop the chiles onto the dehydrator this afternoon to dry overnight while the weather is clear. The gypy pepper will go into my lunch.

One of the nice things about Southern California is that your growing season is long. I can usually harvest peppers all the way until Christmas. However, I'm so busy with work that I'm considering pulling out some of the peppers early and getting my raised bed ready for its winter fallow period. I'm trying to decide if I want to overwinter a few of my pepper plants this year so that I have an early harvest of pods next spring...and don't have to worry about finding the same pepper next season. Overwintered peppers tend to not produce quite as well the second year as the first, but in the case of a few of my chiles, I think that it might be worth the effort.

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