@MunchkinRedux , how do you know when a cucumber plant is spent?
Then
Now
Newest peppers setting fruit
Beans
Newest peppers setting fruit
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When the plant is dead - withered and brown - and the last few cukes clinging to life on it are small, misshapen and malformed. Lol. If DH had his way, he declare them âdoneâ long before i do. I cling to them until the bitter end.
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Ahhh! Thank you! I was wondering if that was a sign! I was thinking it might have something to do with pollination. A lot fewer bees right now, and there are still flowers.
You know, our entire town didnât get blackberries this year. They grow like weeds, but there was never harvestable fruit this year in any quantity. Just a lot of small, underripe berries, everywhere we looked. Iâm wondering if it wasnât a pollination issue. The bees in our yard came very late this year. 
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I live in NW Montana and this was the weirdest gardening session ever. Every year has been different, but this one really flummoxed me.
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After a year of no apples (poor pollination in 2022 township-wide), I was greedy and left too many apples on our trees this year. Fortunately, weâve had no major windstorms thus far, and the windfall has been minimal. We had one broken branch on one of the Honeycrisp trees, but we patched it back up and it looks like it will graft itself back on.
Shown here is a partial pick of Greensleeves (left), which has the quintessential flavor of âgreen appleâ. If youâve ever eaten a Jolly Rancher green apple candy, this is exactly what these taste like, albeit not as sweet.
Also shown is our hands-down favorite â the Honeycrisp. I never dreamed we could grow apples this big and in such fine shape. They are a terrific baking apple, as well as for eating out of hand.
FYI these all are harvested from micro-dwarf trees (M27 rootstock), none of which are over 6â tall. Makes for easy pruning, thinning, and pest control. The rest of the trees on our property are dwarf (up to 15-16â). We let those go kinda wild, because theyâre too big to micro-manage. The super dwarves (we have six of them), get special love and attention.
If you look closely, under my elbow is The Supervisor.
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Those look DELICIOUS.
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Thank you! I see a 
in my future.
Kindness!
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Lucky stylist!
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Pulled up my san marzano tomato plant today as it was pretty much done. I also pruned the Undesired heirloom cherry tomato plant waaaay back, but I couldnât remove it totally because itâs intertwined with my beloved black cherry plant. Still getting some peppers, and the other tomato plant is still producing as well, although the fruits are smaller and not as tasty.
One of the pint jars of crushed tomatoes I canned the other day didnât seal, so i fridged it. Tonight I scooped some out and heated it through to have it as ersatz stewed tomatoes with my supper. Gosh darn those San marzanos are tasty, even with literally nothing but salt and pepper.
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This season seems to be winding down early at chez small h. The tomatoes got blight, and one died because of overzealous watering by my neighbor. Theyâre still producing, but very slowly. Aphids are impeding the lettuce. I got three peppers, which is actually a good harvest for me! The kale and chard arenât as robust as in years past. But the sorrel, parsley and sage are in very good shape. Kind of a C+ year.
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Winding down here, also. The rain started today and will stick around for the forseeable future. We picked all the tomatoes yesterday - red and green - and brought them indoors.
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I may just be deluding myself, but I am hoping for another small round of tomatoes; it is crazy hot in August, and things get sort of dormant, then wake up again in September.
Usually my best season for ripe peppers.
About to start a the fall/ winter, but first New Orleans!
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Itâs been raining for 30 hours or so. I did my best to harvest any tomato that had broken color before the rain started, but I canât imagine that any of the green ones I left on the vine will do anything other than split irretrievably after all this.
Itâs been such crappy weather I havenât even ventured out to survey the damage.
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Thatâs possible. Setting up some Mason Bee âapartmentsâ might help.
Another possibility is infection with viruses. There are numerous cane-fruit viruses. Some cause lack of fruiting, others cause âcrumble berryâ. Viruses can spread very quickly, via flying insects, leafhoppers and thrips. It would be unusual for a virus to affect an entire town in one season.
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The rains from the latest tropical storm woke up some late sleepers:
They should be ready in a day or two. Poor fungus, they got abandoned in Mushroom town.
The hardy Passionfruits (Passiflora incarnata) are coming in. Todayâs pick-ups:
They drop from the vines when ripe.
Two classic Peruvian chilies, Aji Limo-red, and Aji Panca:
Lots of Aji Limo seed is getting saved. A few peppers will go into ceviche, but the rest pickled for hot sauce. Aji Panca gets dried for use in many Peruvian dishes,
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Those are beautiful!
Would saved seeds from peppers dried in the sun be viable?
Itâs quite possible that peppers which are sun-dried have viable seeds. However, itâs not ideal.
My preferred method of preparing seeds for storage is to cut fully-ripe fresh peppers to extract seeds into a sieve. If the peppers are hot, use thick disposable gloves, at least one on the hand not holding the knife. In the sink, add a little dish soap to the seeds. Away from the sieve, get a thin stream of warm water flowing, maybe half the thickness of a pencil; this is to rinse the seeds and your finger (gloved) later.
Gently mash the seeds around with a fingertip (gloved), scrubbing them with the detergent. After about 20-30 seconds, rinse off the seeds with water and rinse any seeds sticking to your finger into the sieve. Beware, very hot peppers can create an irritating fume as capsaicins are atomized.
Once the seeds have been thoroughly rinsed, let them drain in the sink. Then, put the sieve on a folded paper towel to soak up moisture. After an hour or so, you can spread the seeds out to dry on screen, paper plates, cardboard, etc. Let them dry for a few weeks, in a dark, dry location. Theyâre now ready to pack and store refrigerated, in airtight jars.
The washing is to help remove some germination inhibitors, sugars and oily resins which can cause seeds to stick together or attract moisture. With very hot pepper seeds, it makes them a bit safer to work with.
If the seeds are particularly valuable, itâs a good idea to make sure the sinkâs drain strainer is one of those screen type strainers, and that itâs empty before you begin. That way, if seeds splash out or you drop them, they donât go down the drain.
Often, if pods are dried, you can just shake out the seeds and pack them. This works OK with drier pods such as Cayenne, Chile Arbol, Pequin, Yatsafusa, etc. Again, this isnât ideal and might cause irregular germination rates because germination inhibitors may decompose at different rates.
Though this is a guess: one would suspect that germination inhibitors are stronger in thick-walled, moister types of peppers. Otherwise, seeds might sprout inside the pods.
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