Fall Photos on Wordless Wednesday

Mondays Harvest Post

Here goes the first harvest post of fall and boy was it a fall day, cool, windy & rainy all day long. If you would like to see more harvest post check out Daphne's page for the full list.

Sept 25th harvest: I harvested all the broccoli heads that were ready. There is a few tiny heads left that I am hoping will grow into more large heads in a few weeks. I am also still picked a few tomatoes even with all the blight problems this season. In the basket is a bunch of Jersey Devil paste tomatoes & a Hillbilly Potato Loaf tomato. The photo just above shows how large the jersey devils grow, pretty fat paste toms for sure!

Sept 28 harvest: The first thing I harvested today was all the Jimmy Nardello Peppers, they are a sweet Italian frying pepper that I will make salsa with. There also was a few more Jersey Devil tomatoes ready and the first Sungold cherry of the season.

Late Crop Round Up!

*It is now fall, Tuesday Sept 22 at 7:18pm*

After having such a pitiful harvest last week I though I should go out and asses my crop situation. Being that I am a veggie garden blogger of course I will take y'all for the outing. Lets start with Granny's Purple Peppers shall we:

Here is one of the purple peppers in the garden. The seed for these beauties was shared by Annies Kitchen Garden. They had a slow start but are now bulking up nicely. About three weeks ago I had a purple peppers that was huge and just about ready for harvest and of course the squirrels harvested it before me! I hope I get to harvest the last of them.

The french melons have really started to come in now even through the vines look half dead. The four above are about harvest size and there are a few others that are pretty small still. The three striped ones are Savor F1 and the funny shaped green/grey one is Petite Gris.

My fall broccoli is ready for harvest any day now. At first I thought they would produce tiny heads but they have really started to grow in the last few days. Although these heads are not as big as the spring ones they are still pretty respectable. Encase there is inquiring minds out there, I seeded these broccoli in cell packs June 1st and planted them in the soil June 29th. I am hopeful for addition side shoots off these plants as well, frost is still about a month off and my broccoli last year was alive well into November.

Red Kuri squash that is also ready for harvest any day now. Only this large one and one small one developed this year. Next year I am growing butternut as they are more productive.

Here is the larger two of the four delicata squash in the garden, the seed for these was shared by Skippy's Vegetable Garden. I can't wait to try these, it will be a first.

I have a bumper crop of Jimmy Nardello peppers. These taste awful fresh but will make for some nice salsa when my paste tomatoes ripen. Any one have any other ideas to use these Italian frying peppers ???

There is a few small Rosa Bianca eggplants out there that I hope will size up before frost. My eggplants went the way of the purple peppers, the squirrels harvested the first large ones. Who knew squirrels like veggies so much.

I am going to have one more Hillbilly Potato Loaf tomato this season, that brings me up to a whooping two tomatoes, thanks blight! I love these tomatoes so I am happy to have one more ripening.

There is a nice large clutch of Purple Calabash that are unscaved by blight, this plant actually was the most blight resistant plant in the garden. The seed for this tomato was also shared by Skippy's Vegetable Garden.

The Jersey Devil paste tomatoes are finally starting to ripen. I will be making salsa with them but by the looks of it I will be supplementing some farm grown paste tomatoes as well. I think there is only about 10 fruit on the plants.

My sungold's that I started in June have two clutches of cherries on them. I can't wait to try these for the first time. You may notice in the top right that the plant has blight.

Lastly here is a future seed harvest. I am all out of Double Yield cucumber seed so I have left a few cukes on for seed production. The seed saving process for these is much like tomato seed saving and I will do a post on the process once I harvest the seed.

Mondays Harvest

Here is my wee harvest for the entire week, all 1lb 4oz worth. For veg selection this week we have the last few chioggia beets, a pink berkley tie dye tomato (seed from Judy's SFG), a variegated(leafed) tomato in front and a bunch of velvet red tomatoes (seed from The Conservative Gardener).

There are a few things left in the garden that will be a bulky harvest but I am afraid this is how this will be looking for a while. The garden is definitely in a lull between summer and falls crops now. I'm not complaining though as I have lots of things that need attention and it is nice to have a bit of a reprieve from garden chores.

If you would like to share your harvests of the week, pop over to Daphne's page and share your link!

Finally some gardening!

I woke up at the crack of 8:30 and my first thought was I need to get my veggie garden work done already. I've been putting off thinning the fall crops and planting my fall starts due to paint work & overall defeat from the blight. So I finally had time, energy & a victorious fall planting attitude to get things done! But first.......

morning coffee in the garden. Fresh ground strong coffee with two cream & three sugar, breakfast of champions.

The first garden task that was tackled was thinning the parsnips. They looked so nice before ripping half of them out but it will help them in the long run. Not sure how these will do this fall, maybe they will be an early spring harvest?

The second thing to thin was the four radish rows I seeded on Aug 1st. This particular row is Easter Egg. I am also growing Long Black Spanish and China Rose radishes this fall.

I then planted out the rest of the cedar poly tunnel. I have already planted red celery, black & china rose radishes & transplanted green onions into the tunnel. This morning I planted out the rest of the tunnel with Wong Bok(napa cabbage), Sugarloaf Chicory & Mizuna that were all growing in cell packs for about 1.5 months now. Being that the squirrels have been little bastards lately(pardon my french) I think I am going to put the cover on to protect my little seedlings.

After planting the poly tunnel I quickly realized I started about double the amount of plant material that will fit in the poly tunnel so I planted some lettuce in this enamel pot. It is planted out with 'Merlot' lettuce & 'Little Gem' romaine. It will be placed on the a/c unit, not much need for that this season, as it receives good light. Now on cold evenings I can just pop them in the shed.

Here I have planted a row of 'Little Gem' Romaine & Full Heart Batavian. This raised bed is full of fall crops and if they grow well I may put an inexpensive low tunnel over this raised bed to extend the harvest.

The last thing to be planted today was a row of Australian Yellowleaf lettuce. I still have bok choi & tatsoi (from Daphne ) growing in cell packs. My plans for them is to plant them in the half barrel that the 'Jersey Devil' tomatoes are currently growing in. They are just starting to turn colour so they should be able to take their place soon.

I will end the post with this bumble bee that was sunning her? self this morning on my banana plants. It was a chilly night, 6c(43f), I image it was enjoying the warmth after such a cool night.