More cleaning up today... pulled out all the pepper plants and harvested the remaining peppers. I think we can safely say that I not only planted too many tomatoes, but WAY too many peppers, particularly hot peppers, as well! This was just such a crazy good summer for us, the pepper plants grew like weeds. Some of my plants, especially the Biggie Chiles, were over 4 feet tall and had trunks a good inch in diameter. Some of the plants were still flowering... I picked quite a few jalapenos, and those I'll cut in half and remove the seeds and freeze, to use to make baked poppers later on. And some of my smaller, hotter peppers I'll put into the dehydrator, to make crushed red peppers. Some of the others will get cut up and frozen, to use for cooking. And I unexpectedly got a fair number of pepperoncini peppers and should be able to pickle at least a few more jars of those (I think I only did 4 pints previously this year). I know I won't be able to use all of them, but I'm going to try to use as many as I can!
Meanwhile, DH used the Sawzall with a hacksaw blade to cut the screws that are holding the old greenhouse to the base, so now it's sitting there "loose." Hopefully we won't get any major wind storms in the next couple of days... Our plan is to move everything out and then (attempt to) move the GH off the base and over to the side a little ways... then we can move things back inside, to keep them out of the weather while we construct the new hoop house. Or, if the GH ends up falling apart when we try to move it... as I think it is quite likely to do... then plan B calls for storing everything in the small hoop house. Hopefully we will have the new big HH done to where things can all go back in there for the winter, even if not in their exact final configuration.
We already have some of the materials that we need for the new HH, tomorrow we're going to get the remainder as Menards has an "11% off everything" rebate deal going on.
