Strange Growing Season This Year

      With not having hardly any rain here for over 5 months, it's a wonder we got anything at all out of the garden. What watering we were able to do was all by hand from the little amount of water we were getting into the leaky spring house. The cotton crop this year died early on so we didn't even get a Q-tip this season.  Our tomatoes didn't come into production till very late but even then we got a pretty good crop.  We planted a new to us variety this year called a Sausage tomato which is a paste type and we staked them in our usual Florida weave manner but have found them to be a much bushier plant than the Roma's so next year we will have to do something different (and shorter).  Our peppers did pretty good....especially the Thai Dragons and the Jalapenos.  The peppers pictured here are called a Trinidad Scorpion and they were the record holder last year as the hottest pepper grown.  If you want to see "crazy" in action, just go to YouTube and watch people TRY to eat these!  Don't ask me what we are going to do with them....I sure am not brave enough to try one.  I think we will dry them and grind them up and maybe use a GRAIN or two in a pot of chili.  I had seen these in the seed catalog and just had to try them.
      Our beans did well as did our lettuce. We actually got lettuce this year and couldn't begin to guess how many salads we ate.  The watermelons didn't grow at all and the zucchini was rather disappointing but we did get a number of bags in the freezer which we use making chocolate zucchini bread.  Our apple trees didn't produce and neither did our blueberries or the grapes but yesterday was November 1 and we were still getting red raspberries!

     We did get our first strawberries, asparagus, and rhubarb this year so that was a great blessing.  All in all, we have put up enough to keep us through the winter and praying for a BETTER growing season NEXT year!