First off go out and look to see if they have blown away yet LOL.
Were losing daylight fast so that doesnt help any. Put some tin foil or foil pie plates down to reflect what meager light we are getting these days. You will need a larger hoop house to keep them warm. Lots of people take pvc and bend it to make a low tunnel. 1 gallon ziplock bags full of water make cheap and nifty ways to store heat at night.

joe-il Never would have thought of the ziplock idea! I will add them to whatever I come up with. Thanks.

I use the pvc idea on some of my other beds. Unfortunately this one is a lasagne bed over ledge and without sides so there isn't anything to hold the pvc in place. When I put them out originally I used something similar to sheep fence to make a hoop and covered it with plastic, but they have outgrown that and I am using it on another bed. Luckily we have had a good week with warm days, but frost is in the forecast at the end of the week.

The plants are close enough together that I threw sheets over them one night last week when we had a light frost, but that won't work much longer. Money is tight so I need to come up with something using what I have. Where there is will there is a way.

Get some rebar and pound them into the ground around your plants. Leave some sticking up and slide your PVC pipe over it and then do the same to the other end. I guess that you could use 6 to 12 inch long re bar and leave 2 or 3 inches sticking up.

clear water bottles or pop bottles work better than ziplocks. I think you could gather enough on your street on recycling day. Fill almost full with water and surround your plants with them then cover.

You might be able to use the hoops you have if you can get some bigger bottles or coffee cans and fill them with sand or dirt and stick the hoops in them. Then cover in plastic

I am in 5 and new to gardening. We had frost 2 nights one week, then 90 degrees for a week. Then the pattern repeated. This week we will have frost every night all week long. Today I picked peppers and everything I could b/c we might even get some snow by morning. I had covered everything with sheets, blankets and tarps. You need 2 layers b/c the moisture will be on the underside if using tarps. Tonight I covered the zucchini with 3 layers b/c we expect rain turning to snow. Even some plastic sheeting or trash bags might help. I put milk crates in the pepper row to keep the weight of the covers off the plants. I noticed the night of the first frost, that the leaf tops got frosted. Thats when I went to 2 covers and milk crates. Sheets are not enough. I even used some bath towels. I used rocks and clothes pins to secure it all from blowing away.

I spent the day wracking my brain to come up with a way to make this work. Once again you folks have come through for me.

makete we tried a version of the rebar, but it didn't work. We forgot the bed is on ledge.

oilpainter I forgot I have a bunch of 5 gallon pails I could use as you suggested. Thanks a lot!!

growinidaho you just made me realize tomorrow is OCTOBER. Unbelievable. This growing season for us was such a struggle. Sounds like you are as determined as I have been to get through all that Mother Nature has thrown at us this year. Good luck with your garden. SNOW geeze I don't even want to think about it.

Thanks everybody.

I know this was covered in the link you cited, but I thought it was worth mentioning again. After mediocre harvests of peppers from in-ground plants, I tried homemade self-watering containers. I used black 18 gallon totes. My pepper harvest (Serranos and Anaheims) was unbelievable, and we didn't really have warm weather all summer. I think the containers warmed up earlier in the spring, plus I was able to place them in a spot that gets sun all day long. This is the only way I'll grow them from now on.

Well I got them all covered and just in the nick of time. Using the buckets with some rocks worked out great as a place to set the pvc pipe.

kaptainkr would you mind sharing how you made your self-watering containers and where you got the totes.

I tried some peppers in containers, in regular soil and in the lasagna bed and the ones that did best were in the lasagna bed. I think it may have been only because I was able to control their growing environment better.

Hi, never give up. Glad to see you back. Sounds like we had the same conditions all summer. My peppers faired exactly the same. I did get tomatoes, but only after waging war with a near fatal case of late blight that came from? It's pouring outside as I write. Five days of rain this week. At least it's not snow yet! Oh well, there's always next year.

Hi anoid1. We ended up losing all our tomatoes to blight. Happy for you though. No one I know of in my neck of the woods won that war. November here is just like for you. Never ending rain. If this keeps up over the winter and we have as much snow as we had rain this year we'll have to put in a sky light to be able to get out of the house. I'd say LOL, but I am beginning to wonder.................

We managed to squeak out a few more weeks for the peppers. We got quite a few in the freezer. Only a few made it to supermarket size, but a week or so of hard freezes in the forecast was enough to make me pick them all. Good thing I did too.

Like you said, "there's always next year."