Another sign of Fall: the wild turkeys are getting nice and fat. You can see one of my abandoned raised beds in the picture, slowly being engulfed by the forest in the back. I gave up the fight and got a plot in the community gardens. The picture is fuzzy because the camera was on full optical zoom.
The last of my red onions are now drying in the garage. I don’t know what variety these are, I just bought a pot of seedlings at the farm stand. I think I will plant a lot more onions next year and I already have my garlic on order.
This year I had too much perishable produce (lettuce, chard, beans, etc.) all at once, so I wound up giving away a lot or actually losing it. I might as well plant things I can easily store and reduce the amount of perishable produce to what we can easily consume. Forget freezing. We seem to have a week-long power outage about every year now. All the frantic tree trimming done by the power company and the town doesn't help when the whole tree goes over in a freak October snow storm.
More beets, Red Ace and Bull’s Blood (with the red leaves).
Bush beans on the left and Fortex pole beans on the right. The pile on the left was made into stewed beans for the community garden pot luck dinner Sunday night. I didn’t have a Jalapeno so I used three tiny Thai chiles. That lit it up pretty good. Those things are hot! The pole beans are going in to a bowl of South African Green Beans for dinner tonight.
The two tomatoes lower right are my first Striped Roman tomatoes. In the close up you can sort of see the orange stripes down the tomato. When they are green, the stripes are a darker green than the rest of the tomato, which makes them very attractive even when green.
To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, out host for Harvest Monday.
Power going out for atleast a week! That would certainly make a mess of things, but then the idea of growing less perishables isn't a bad one either. I have never tried growing onions as we don't have somewhere to store them properly, but I just might give it a try especially after having seen some gardeners making onion braids.
ReplyDeleteStorage is the big question, of course. You just need a cool, dry place. I'm going to keep mine in the basement in a mesh bag and see how it goes.
Deleteyou sure are getting some decent beans still. I wish mine would keep on pumping, but I am afraid they are mostly done. We'll see. Those two little teeny peppers sure are cute ;)
ReplyDeleteThose little red peppers are cute but that's my entire harvest from two plants, plus one of them even split! My tomatoes will split after a rain but never a pepper. Bad year for peppers for me.
DeleteI like your idea of growing more plants with less perishable produce. I have planted some onions for fall and hope to plant more. I hope I have a good harvest. Everything looks really good.
ReplyDeleteOnions are pretty easy to grow and, around here at least, pretty pest and disease free. Good luck with them.
DeleteWe're doing the same - onions and potatoes and garlic. Those should all last. Love those stripey tomatoes - do they taste good?
ReplyDeleteI haven't sliced one yet. I picked them still a little unripe because I didn't want them to split from the rains. I read some reviews before I decided on these and everyone was enthusiastic, so I hope they are good.
Deletemmmm yummy turkey! I decided this year that instead of canning so much I wanted to eat fresh from the garden every day and have pretty much accomplished that. My longterm goal is for all my fruit and veg to come from the garden. Veggies are easy; fruit not so much, most berries do not like it here, especially acid lovers like blueberries. Tree fruits are pretty iffy with late spring surprise snow storms after weeks of 75-80 degree days. But I'll be putting in a lot of new trees this winter; some years it will be too much and other years, hopefully just enough.
ReplyDeleteI just caught sight of the neighborhood flock of turkeys the other day, they roam far and wide around here so I don't see them often. They are some funny birds.
ReplyDeleteHow frustrating it must be to not be able to keep a stock of veggies in the freezer. I try to minimize the amount of preserved veggies but have to admit that the freezer is my number once choice when there's extras to be taken care of.
We have alot of turkeys here as well now. Your harvest looks really nice and colorful. And you're right about planting more storage varieties - we'll be increasing our onion and garlic plantation as well.
ReplyDeleteYou have your Thanksgiving dinner right in your backyard.
ReplyDeleteLovely and varied harvest. I don't know what I would do without a freezer. I so prefer freezing to canning.
My mum preserves green beans in a vinegar and olive oil type mixture - they are refrigerator pickles but they work remarkably well and would probably survived your outages pretty well. Might be worth considering. Your produce looks great - I am particularly taken with your long skinny cukes.
ReplyDeleteI have heard that a refrigerator pickle brine can also be used for green tomatoes and green beans. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have to look into it. The cucumber is Summer Dance. It grows longer rather than fatter when left on the vine and the seed pocket remains small. It's a great and prolific cucumber. I've never had this kind of luck with the usual "American" cukes (Marketmore, Sweet Succes, etc.) I've tried in the past.
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