Harvest time!

Yesterday, I started the garden harvest and took a good look at what I have remaining in the garden proper.

There were enough peas and beans for a number of meals, and tonight it all gets blanched and vaccum sealed. I found a dozen and a half peppers on my super bushy plants (buried in the foliage) and I will be keeping at least one for seeds. The carmine pepper did well, and I have one of those set aside for seeds as well.

I saved three large tomatoes from the heirloom plants, they are perfectly ripe and I will save back seeds from those too-they performed exceptionally well and were just loaded with fruits-mostly unripe but then we've been eating them for months, lol 14 more cucumbers in the fridge, and about 40 pounds of green tomatoes are now nestled in newspaper to ripen in the garage where it's cooler.

From there, I took a careful inventory of the garden. It looks like I will have plenty of large zucchini to make relish with (yay!!) and to eat also, lots of babies coming on. There is still some broccoli to pull, amidst the forest of blossoms on the plants, lol The cabbages are getting some serious size and I will definitely need to locate a good crock to make another batch of sauerkrout this fall. As usual, the brussel sprouts are coming on very slowly-I have a hunch that they require rather more food than the rest-or an earlier start perhaps? At any rate, they are pretty small but since I have nearly a month to go, I snapped off some lower leaves to help with growth.

My biggest triumph is a personal one. I have been trying for many years to grow a decent pumpkin. Earlier last month I found one that was already turning golden, under a bushy vine. I assumed this was the only one I had and I steeled myself for yet another disappointment.....but yesterday I found a big one! A real, pumpkin sized pumpkin! The plants are sugar type, great for pies, and I carefully removed some foliage around the fruit so it can get some sun to ripen on the vine a bit more. It's easily the size of a basketball, and if I am lucky I will find a few more. I am sure you are thinking-what the heck, doesn't she know whats growing out there? Well, honestly I am not sure....the pumpkin vines are *everywhere* throughout the garden and it's a bit of a challenge just walking around without trampling it, lol Note to self: Do not plant pumpkins anywhere but edge of garden in the future!

Of course we won't go there on the astounding amount of weeds all over, heehee, even through the plastic mulch. I yanked up some chiogga beets on a whim, and those are doing very well too, much to my great surprise. There may be some carrots in that row too, but I'll wait on those to start digging around. Tonight I will go ahead and pull the dill plants and get them hung up in the garage to dry.

So I guess while some things were a bust (peas and beans) other things did very well indeed. My freezer contains easily three times as much broccoli and cauliflower as in previous years, and I still have a bunch to put up. I did not root around to check the spuds-I'll wait until my husband gets home for that-we both love fresh potatoes, roasted with a bit of olive oil and garlic....yum! My wonderful neighbor called over the weekend and they are about to start harvesting their very large patch of spuds. I am delighted to get several hundred pounds of those wonderful Alaska red eyes to can this fall, woohoo! Of course this means I am going to be busy canning for several weeks for sure. Now that it has cooled off it will be time to process the salmon in the freezer too, now that I think about it.

So if you don't hear from me over the next month or so, it will be because I am in the kitchen, canning like a crazy person :)