The season is changing around here.  Nighttime temps in the fifties, slanted sunlight, and light breezes all herald the return of autumn.

It’s been a terrible year for tomatoes, but the peppers seem happy to pick up the slack.  Pictured (clockwise from top) are bell peppers, jalapeños, serranos, cayenne, tabasco, Thai, some little sweet peppers I’ve forgotten the name of, habanero, and Fresno (which are, in the photo, uncharacteristically red, owing to the fact that I’ve picked them later than normal).

Some of these – the bells, and perhaps a few serranos and  jalapeños – will make it onto the pizza tonight.  The Thais are great in a stir fry, and the cayennes are fantastic dried and ground.  The tabascos I’ve never grown before, so I’ll try them in a few different things to figure out where they belong.  The little sweet ones I might pickle.  The habanero will probably be frozen, and later added to some habanero cornbread.

I’ve been reading about perennializing peppers – basically digging them up before the frost, potting them, and keeping them in a greenhouse or indoors, then planting the plants out next spring.  I’m going to give this a try, as I’ve heard of people keeping their plants around for several years using this technique.

On the food forest front, the blueberry, currant, lingonberry, gojiberry and currant transplants seem to be surviving.  I’ve been giving them a little bit of infrequent water, to help them along until the rain begins in earnest, usually by late October.