Our low temperature yesterday morning was a hard frost at 27F, and we wondered if the hoop greenhouse would be up to the task of keeping plants alive at that temperature. We waited until afternoon when the day had warmed up to a balmy 55F and then ventured down to the garden to see how things fared.
The answer is: 27F is just too cold for a makeshift greenhouse. The tomato plants, melon, and peppers all took exception to that temperature. So, it was time to harvest everything remaining and decommission the greenhouse for the winter.
The one melon plant produced 8 honeydew melons (we couldn't resist trying one melon a couple of weeks ago to see how close it was to being ripe). The remaining seven melons are close to being ripe, but not quite there yet.
But on the other hand we’ve purchased less ripe honeydew melons at the store, at a fairly high cost, and had worse tasting melons. We’re hopeful that another couple of weeks of room temperature will ripen our remaining six melons and then we’ll put them into the pantry for cold storage and enjoy them over the next couple of months.
Green tomatoes ripening on the windowsill. My plan is to tried fried green tomatoes before these get too ripe.
I was going to try that for lunch today but we had to go fill up the gas cans, and we need to move firewood this afternoon, and we want to take a walk, so I guess it will be tomorrow instead of today.
There were more peppers hiding in the plants than we realized. These are just so good, and they will last for several weeks in the fridge.
I also have a bunch of cayenne peppers which need to be plucked off the bush and strung up to complete drying, and then I can grind my own cayenne for a spice.
And we’re already thinking about the garden for next year. A better greenhouse is high on our wish list, built up between the house and the garage. We still have a lot of work left to do in the garden to get it all set up for winter. There is snow on the mountains around us, and by November it will be snowing here, if not sooner.