Hello again from Eight Gate Farm! We've had several very light frosts this week; not enough to kill anything. And for the first time this season, there were no new/first harvests. But we said goodbye to a lot of crops.
I took all the largest sweet peppers and pulled the plants. These were chopped and frozen. As such, they are very useful for all applications save salads.
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| Final sweet pepper harvest |
I also took the last paprika peppers. This picture illustrates the steps the fruit goes through before turning fully red. We don't need any more paprika (the spice), but I thought these would do well stuffed, having thick walls.
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| 'Alma Paprika' peppers |
I pulled all the tomato plants I grew in my summer-planting experiment, and kept the ripest fruit. Not sure yet what we're going to do with them, but we'll think of something.
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| Last summer-planted determinate tomatoes |
I pulled the last fennel bulb. Although I'm sure it would have been fine over the next few weeks until hard frost, we really didn't want it to get any bigger.
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| Last 'Orazio' hybrid fennel |
The Kitchen Goddess told me to pick all the remaining celery, so I did. The plan here is to make soup base and freeze it.
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| 'Ventura' celery |
She also told me to pick parsley. I thought she meant pick all of it, so that's what I did. Well, she didn't, as you can see why. Oops!
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| Italian flat-leaf parsley |
She gave away some bunches of fresh parsley, and dehydrated the rest. Needless to say, we are well supplied!
Raspberries are still trickling in, but it won't be long before it is finished.
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| Fall raspberries |
TKG went to her community garden plot and returned with two nice petite artichokes.
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| 'Tavor' artichokes |
So all the cold-sensitive crops have been removed. Ironically, it's supposed to warm up this coming week, but no loss, because we have so much of everything. It's nice to get a jump on cleaning out the beds, and not play the frost-watch game. The only things remaining are the cool-tolerant plants, which will continue to grow (maybe not flourish). So I may be on hiatus for Harvest Monday posts for a couple of weeks, unless something dramatic (yeah, right) happens.
Thanks for reading, and we'll see you in a few. Thanks once again to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for his hard work in keeping Harvest Monday going.
That is a LOT of parsley! And a big bulb of fennel. I've never had much luck growing it, or celery for that matter. I'm sure it is great to have the fall raspberries, and I am hoping for some in years to come since I planted a few here.
ReplyDeleteAlways enjoy your garden saga. Wow, that's a lot of celery! (And parsley too). Nice to see you got some determinate tomatoes from your summer planting.
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