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It’s time for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. First, a little update. Like I’ve been doing for several years now,  I’ve decided to take a break from the Harvest Monday posts for the winter months, until next February. I’ll be back with Harvest Monday on February 3rd, 2025. Until then, I will post here about other garden news as it happens, and you can always follow my Facebook page  and  Instagram feed for harvests and other garden news. Thanks to all for reading and participating in this celebration of the harvest that has been going since 2009. Now, on to my meager harvests! I got another big harvest of persimmons last week from our little tree. I’ve gotten 14 pounds of them so far this season, and the tree is still loaded. We had friends visiting us last week and I sent a bunch home with them. We also enjoyed persimmon bread and persimmon cookies while they were here. persimmons And I also made a cutting of lett...

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. With frost in the forecast, I dug all the sweet potatoes last week, and as I feared they did not do well at all this year. After a wet spring, we had drought conditions for much of the summer and I didn’t do a great job of keeping the plants irrigated. The ones in the photo are Korean Purple, a white fleshed one that yielded 6.5 pounds total. Beauregard is an orange fleshed one that normally does quite well for me. This year the five hills only yielded less than five pounds total, with two of the hills having no roots at all. Last year the five hills of Beauregard yielded 13 pounds, so it’s easy to see that this year was a disappointment. I’ll share the other sweet potato harvests in a future post. late October harvest Hot peppers are still doing well though. We had our first frost(s) last week as forecasted, and I picked as many of the peppers as I could find beforehand. Aji Rico is one of my f...

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. We’ve been enjoying the summer planted lettuce, and last week I cut a big head of Slobolt leaf lettuce for use in our salads. This is a dependable performer for me here in all seasons, and it has held up well in our recent hotter than usual fall weather. The green leaves are big and tender, and we use it on sandwiches as well as in salads. This variety was  introduced in 1946 by the USDA, and has been a favorite of home gardeners and market growers ever since. Slobolt lettuce Hot peppers are still ripening for me, and I got a good selection of Sugar Rush Peach, Aji Colorado, and Aji Dedo de Moca Yellow. It’s been a good year for hot peppers, and I have harvested over 25 pounds of them so far. assorted hot peppers I dried the Aji Colorados for chile powder. I’ve also been drying the guajillo peppers of late but they were camera shy this week. It does take a lot of peppers to make a decent...

Last month my wife and I made a trip to Moab, UT and today I want to share a few more photos from our trip. We spent three days hiking at Arches N.P., and on the third day we visited the Devil’s Garden Area where several arches are located. Skyline Arch is one of the larger arches we saw, and is so named because of its position on the horizon. We were able to walk to the other side of the arch as well, where the view was just as impressive. trail to Skyline Arch my wife and I at arch other side of Skyline Arch Another arch in the area is the Pine Tree Arch, which was visible on a short hike that led to it plus the Tunnel Arch. Pine Tree Arch Tunnel Arch We spent the next day exploring petroglyphs around the Moab area. Most were fairly easily accessible, and some are thought  to be as old as from 6000 B.C. The more recent ones are likely from the 450-1300 A.D. time frame. ancient petroglyphs more petroglyphs Moonflower Canyon petroglyphs On  our last ...

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. Harvests are definitely slow here this time of year. I got a bit more of the summer planted lettuce last week, this time one head each of Cherokee and Slobolt. Both of these had gotten a bit long in the tooth but were quite edible. We’ve been enjoying the salads lately, though there will be a gap in the harvests since the next round of plants is still quite small. Cherokee and Slobolt lettuce I got another nice harvest of hot peppers, a mix of Aji Rico and Sugar Rush Peach. I’m making hot sauce with the Sugar Rush Peach and pickling the Aji Rico peppers. Aji peppers And I also found a Sweetie Pie pepper to go with the hot ones, though Mad Hatter next to it is actually not hot if you remove the seeds and membrane. The red ones are guajillo peppers I dry for chile powder, and the one Will ( EightGateFarm ) won a blue ribbon for recently. Mine will definitely not win any awards, but they will m...

Last month my wife and I made a trip to Moab, UT to visit Arches N.P. and other sites. We have been planning to go there for years, and it was truly a great trip that we thoroughly enjoyed. We stayed there for seven days, and there was so much to see we could have easily stayed several more days to do more sightseeing. Today I want to share some of the many photos we took of this lovely part of the world. Arches National Park Arches N.P. is using a timed entry system to help control visitor’s traffic, and we had several early morning entry passes for our visits. The Moab weather was cool in the mornings, but it quickly warmed up so we were happy to do our hiking early in the day while it was still cool-ish. We visited Arches three days in a row, and saw a lot of beautiful scenery there. The rock formations are amazing, and many are named attractions like the Three Gossips and the Courthouse Towers. The first part of the park includes those two plus the Park Avenue trail and Balance...