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storage First Hard Freeze Tonight... Last Harvest 2018

The temperature is supposed to dip down to 29F tonight.
Purged the irrigation lines and then did the last harvest  :cry:
On the bright side, 2018 has been a great year in the garden for peppers.
 
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Nice harvest, OP.
 
Always a tough night when the season ends.
 
Even tougher when the dip is for just a night or three . . . after which, weeks' more of outdoor growing could be had . . . if the plants could be adequately protected.  So many green pods, man, and the plants have not looked better. 
 
It's too hot for months of the summer—deactivated pollen and dropped blooms—so, an extended period sans freeze is not necessarily a "long growing season".  The attenuated time between Hades and the Ice Age feels pretty brief.
 
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I gotta say my grow has been uneventful for the past month. Not a thing has progressed in color or grew at all really. It's been kind of like the plants are frozen in time. Can't say it's been worth worrying about a freeze. Just pulled mine up after a freeze last night.
 
Yep, fought all season to keep pods on plants with extended heat waves and monsoons, worse season ever for me. Then October came and thought I had a fighting chance. Several plants bloomed and produced pods but before most could ripen here comes good old Mr. Freeze.
 
But I had a plan. I crammed all plants in my 20 foot shaded hoop house and covered it with heavy plastic and filled several barrels of water to help thermoregulate. Problem is I did it all the night before the freeze with my wife in 20 mile an hour winds.
 
You should have seen us fight that plastic in that wind, it was throwing us everywhere like rag dolls, and my wife kept using some very choice words to describe my procrastination. I told her that’s what she gets for not letting me bring all my plants inside like last year. After 2 hours of fighting the wind and each other we finally got the plastic secured. The next morning most everything froze despite our best efforts.
 
Oh well Arizona has beat me for the second year in a row. Before moving here, I was so spoiled with my So Cal weather, so I really had no idea how hard it was to grow in other parts of the country. My hats off to all you growers who fight these constant irregular weather patterns and still somehow manage to have a harvest.
 
 
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