Yesterday I harvested about 30 more pecans, four small bell peppers, a serrano pepper, two satsuma tangerines, and another serving of green beans. Weighed each homegrown produce item separately, and added the numbers to the Garden Logbook.

I had already eaten one satsuma and one bell pepper before the pic was taken. Most of the pecans shown in the basket were freshly hulled over the last week or two, washed in rainwater, and still not dry yet.



The lime shown has been in the frig since September and was still fine. It's gone now. I used it in some frozen margaritas as well as raw.

A pumpkin out in the garden (starting to turn yellow) will not fit on that scale! I'll have to weigh the pumpkin in sections. Still no freeze forecast for the next 10 days... Looks like the first frost is late this year.

This morning I checked the digital thermometer that I placed out on the chainlink fence by the garden which had been set to record the max/min temperature last night. 32.8F was the overnight low. I had covered part of the garden with some sunshade cloth and also set up and burned some wood in the chimenea near the garden in an attempt to impede Jack Frost's first kiss of death for the season.
I think it worked for the most part.
A few of the pumpkin and green bean leaves were slightly frostbit, but not too bad. The peppers looked fine, so it looks like I'll be able to transplant them into pots for overwintering.

Picked another 124 grams of gbs, two mutant carrots, another small bell pepper and I think the last cherry tomato of the season this evening:



More satsuma and another mutant strawberry are almost ready.

Can any more-experienced gardeners tell us why the carrots shown above turned out like that? I think I will make another veggie smiley and take another silly picture...meant to bring a little humor to these threads... This one will have legs!


<--still trying to get nominated in the Garden Pictures Contest thread...

btw, the carrots weighed in at 448 grams, 0.99 lb. as shown.

Edited to add a very, very silly picture:



"...as they head towards the rotating knives..."

--Monty Python

Coldest temp here so far has been 25F. I heard it was cold down in Texas.. We dropped to 32F last night.

I'm picking my broccoli/cabbage tomorrow.

Extended the garden some more today and got two loads of leaf compost... Need another 2 loads and probably 2 loads of wood chips which i hope to get before next week. Its going to be one monster veggie bed then.

Today I planted a few bush green bean seeds in a planter box in the greenhouse (gh). This is just an experiment to see if I can grow gbs in the gh over winter. The potted russet potato sprouts seem to like the conditions in the gh so far.

Edit to add chart of gbs harvested this year (this fall):



If I had planted four times as many gb plants late this summer, I may have had enough for canning some to last until spring.

The learning process continues...

PO-

The plan here is to construct a plastic hoophouse over my main garden bed, which would house mainly tomatoes, but possibly eggplants, peppers... Would like to build it out of metal so it lasts. The cost of buying a structure online is pretty high for what i think i could build it for. Still researching, but it is the way i want to go. No more waiting until August, September for a crop!

Picked last of the carrots today. Only a few pounds and most were small. Very sweet because of the temps being so cold. Really need to dedicate more space for carrots, onions, and potatoes (YUKON GOLD..we love them)...

This past weekend finally finished transplanting the herbs from the 64-sqft old herb bed to the new (and 3-4X larger ones) by the house:
herb list:
alum root
bergamot, lavender
bergamot, red
echinacea
horehound
lavender, Munstead English
lemon balm
lemon verboena
lovage
mugwort, common
mugwort, western
oregano, true Greek
sage
St John's Wort
thyme
wormwood
yarrow, coastal
yarrow, official

indoor herb list:
hibiscus sabdariffa
jiaogulan
lemon grass
patchouli
stevia

OOOH NOOOOEEES

Too rich a diet/nitrogen and you have heavy soil the carrots
are fighting thru. MY SWAG

lol, the image does imitate the humor of those old Mr. Bill sketches on Saturday Night Live of years past.


I think you may be right about the heavy soil those carrots were grown in. Other carrots I grew in a small space that had more fresh sandy loam and loosened soil were single straight roots. Perhaps the carrot with legs hit a rock or a root from another plant. (?)

I cooked those carrots tonight, btw, ate some of them, and they were delicious, mutant or not.
The carrot peels would make excellent chicken scrap food. hmmm

The leftover cooked carrots will go into a soup or chicken casserole very soon.

Today I will finish transplanting the remaining pepper plants from the garden into pots for overwintering in the house next to some sunny windows.

The 4+ ft tall bell pepper plant really took a beating from the heat and drought this last Summer (as most of the rest of the garden) and it's looking very scraggly. It lost some height this Summer. This oldest pepper plant is going on four years old too. Time will tell if it makes it till Spring.

I transferred two potted tomato plants into the greenhouse today. They look terrible, but their small damaged fruit may provide seeds for next Spring.

The pumpkins are still mostly green. Hope they ripen quickly since Jack Frost is coming again very soon. Perhaps tonight. I bought a 10' x 20' garden blanket yesterday for some additional protection from light frosts. The pole green beans are still putting out a few blossoms and there's more to harvest.

While I was tending the garden today, I spotted about 4-5 garlic sprouts where I had planted some cloves earlier this year. It's about time they sprouted! Now there's about a dozen garlic plants in the garden. That's about all I need.

I need to get more onion seeds going!

Here's a picture of the largest pumpkin in my garden:



The smiley will be added when the pumpkin is next to the scale...


Too late for Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, but perhaps not too late for the Christmas pumpkin pie.

Today I harvested 332g (0.73 lb) green beans before the sub-freezing temps hit here in a day or so.

Brought in three more of the taller potted citrus trees into the house. The others will go under some blankets and the mini-hoophouse right next to the house on the front porch. Winter has almost arrived.

The potted strawberries were moved into the greenhouse. There are three berries forming.

Meanwhile, the recently-transplanted satsuma tangerine tree is about to be temporarily covered with a wooden shipping crate which already has some insulation attached on the inside. I haven't had time to assemble the aluminum framing for the semi-permanent greenhouse enclosure yet.

Well, it's supposed to snow here tomorrow morning (a rare event) so I brought in the pumpkin tonight and covered the citrus on the porch.

I hope the pumpkin finishes ripening before Christmas. The freeze last night killed the pumpkin leaves.

After a few freezes, the bananas are looking a little sickly on top, but the basal "pups" are still doing fine, green and growing. We'll see after tomorrow - snow, temps in the 30s all day. I put extra mulch on them today.

I had one sad broccoli plant still going in the garden.. so i cut it. Pretty amazing it was still going with how late in the year it is. Still some carrots in the ground.. probably dig them out this weekend.

Put tarps over the sweet cherry trees. Going to see if that does anything to save some fruit buds.

We're getting beautiful snow flurries!