Cayenne! It's hot, hot, hot!

I have an abundance of cayenne peppers this year!  I've already dried this amount, and am starting this second batch today.  I hereby promise myself not to grow this variety for a very long time, because this amount will last me forever!


Last night I loaded the dehydrator with basil, garlic chives, Cajun Belle peppers, and some more tomatoes.  Those little Cajun Belle peppers are sweet but spicy, too.  Not as bad as a true hot pepper, but they have a little kick.  Mine grew small, about 2 inches long, but started to turn red, so I knew they were ready to pick.  I'll use those in chili this winter.


The time has arrived to start preparing for the fall garden, at least that's what I've been reading.  There are some plants to start now in seed pots, about 6 weeks before they go in the ground, which will bring us to about mid-August.

I'm actually a little skeptical about that, this being Texas and all.  It's the hottest part of the summer here in August, so I think I'm going to wait it out about two more weeks before starting these seeds.  Meanwhile I'm going to start clearing out the plants as they come to the end of their cycle and let the beds rest a few weeks before starting over.  I found that the first expected frost date for our area of Texas is November 6th, an easy date for me to remember!


The last picture here is KT and I working on the dried parsley the other day.  She wasn't really "into" pulling leaves off of stems (she was more into the cheese goldfish), but she was a great little cheerleader for me!  I use parsley a lot, it just seems to go in everything.