Harvesting Green Tomatoes, Peppers, Corn, and Squash

The vast majority of this year's tomatoes stubbornly refused to ripen on the vine. I coaxed and pleaded with them, all to no avail. Their fate was set in stone when spring declined her initial invitation and showed up late for the party. If I could have tossed a lasso around the sun and pulled it closer to our garden perhaps that would have helped...but alas I have no such magic.

So, with the rainy cool weather pushing the last of summer aside we made the decision to pick all but our cherry tomatoes rather than risk the possibility of dampness or even frost stealing away our crop in the next couple of days. Most, if not all, of these tomatoes were fully formed and should slowly ripen inside over the next few weeks. We've had to pick our tomatoes green many times in years past but never this many. I am happy though as I was somewhat concerned for a while that we would not even see the fruits fully develop this year.

All the tomatoes were removed from the buckets, wiped clean of water (we picked them in the rain) and placed in cardboard boxes on our porch. We will bring them into the house a few boxes at a time to help speed up the ripening process and slowly convert them into salsa, sauce, and such.

I believe this box contains a few German Strawberry, Kellog's Breakfast, and (hybrid) Margherita's. They all have such a pretty green hue to them don't you think.:)

Yesterday I picked sweet (green) peppers from all but the potted pepper plants which were brought back into the greenhouse, I am hoping that they will ripen up a bit more. We will probably pull the remaining hot pepper plants and hang them upside down, this often helps them to finish ripening and hopefully "heat" up a bit as most are lacking in that department.

My hots aren't hot and the Paprika has no color.:(

While our popping corn is still outside trying to finish forming we were able to harvest our Painted Mountain and Blue Jade corn. We didn't spare much space for corn in the garden this year as there is still an abundance left over from the previous season. Once the kernels have shriveled enough to be removed from the cob they will be put on a screen in front of our wood or pellet stove to finish hardening because they have a propensity to become moldy if they are not cured properly in a warm dry environment. We do the same with our sunflower seeds. All of our corn is dried, stored in gallon jars, and will be ground into cornmeal as needed.

I love the color variance that we get with these varieties of corn.

And then there is the squash. A dismal harvest, perhaps our worst ever. I left many squashes outside on the vine to finish growing but with this cold rainy weather I hold little hope for them unless a couple more weeks of warm dry weather shows itself. Thank goodness for large hubbards, sugar pie pumkins, and gold nuggets. All three of which struggled mightily but at least gave us a few mature specimens to be used sparingly throughout the winter.

Normally at this time of year the vines have begun to die back and the rind has hardened to the point that it can no longer be easily pierced by a thumbnail. I leave a couple inches of stem on the squash as they perspire through their stems, any without may begin to rot. Those that lack stems or have soft spots are always used first and are usually the ones we steam and freeze to be used as soup or in mashed squash dishes. Unblemished squash is allowed to cure on our porch for a couple weeks or until the temperature drops below 50° at which point it is brought inside and kept cool and dry, right around 50-65°

All of that said, I am very excited to harvest our root veggies as I think they will be our summer's shining star. We hope to begin harvesting beets, carrots, potatoes, and parsnips as soon as we are afforded a couple of dry days in which to work.

Onion Harvest

Spring came, summer went, fall and winter are quickly approaching. The change in seasons finds us scurrying to procure all that we can from the gardens. Timing is key. If we wait too long the cold and wet will take its toll, too soon and the produce will not store well.

Recently we pulled most of our storage onions as a few days of wet weather is soon to be upon us and with the cooler nights I don't want them to succumb to rot. They were close to being ready, not as close as I would have liked under better conditions but they should cure up good enough nonetheless. While not as big as they could have been given a longer gardening year they were not too bad, not bad at all. I planted Borettana, Juane Paille de Vertus, and my favorite Yellow of Parma. All of the mentioned varieties grow well from seed and store for a long time for us...although I did struggle to get our Borettana's to germinate properly this spring. Anyway, once pulled I laid the onions out on our porch -

and patio to finish drying before removing the stalks about an inch from the bulb.
In a normal year I would have waited to pull these Yellow of Parma↓ until after the green stalks had withered away and then laid them out on the porch to cure for a few weeks before putting them in airy baskets for storage in a cool dry area...our basement works good for this.

We also had a fairly good garlic harvest this season. Again, the cloves were a bit on the small side but numerous...bring forth the fidlyness.:) I had to replace quite a few this spring because they had rotted in the ground over winter as we had almost no snow for protection...a first for us, we normally have plenty of snow cover. The spring planted replacements were just as large as those garlics planted the previous fall so, in the end, other than the wasted garlic, it really made no difference.

These garlics are for eating and the ones with tags on them in the second picture will be replanted for next years crop ~ and so continues the cycle...

An Apple A Day

Yellow Transparent ↑ “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” ~ Martin Luther

Well it has been a long time coming but after planting some of our first 3-4 year old semi-dwarf apple trees a few years back we are just now finally reaping the rewards of our first real apple harvest. It will be so nice to use some of our very own apples rather than having to rely on foraging the wild forgotten orchards for them...although we will be doing that again this year too.

We started planting apple trees in 2007 and every year thereafter have added more trees to our collection, all told we now have 18 different varieties of the semi dwarf, of which four produced fruits for us this year, and many other standard varieties that I have grown from seed.

If I could go back in time the very first thing I would do before even thinking of starting any type of garden is to first focus on the planting of fruit & nut trees and berry bushes as many of them take so very long to begin producing.

Akane - An excellent tart flavored dessert and juice apple that is supposed to store well.

Spitzenburg (I think, we might have mixed this one up with our Wagener apple?) - Very sweet, and a good eating apple. Some of these were falling off the tree ripe so we picked a few ripe and unripe ones and I canned up some deliciously tart apple sauce...and Mrs. H baked a few turnovers of course.:)

Someday, as and old man, perhaps good fortune will find me sitting under one of these same trees drinking a pint of hard cider and fondly reminiscing about the adventures of my youth.:)

Cucurbits, Flowers, and Pickles

While this gardening year was off to a very slow start we are quickly making up time heading toward the finish line. The above picture depicts one of our first (Janice Brown) daylilies sent to us from a friend in Virginia...they are beautiful.:)

Not only are some of our flowers "finally" starting to bloom but we have also been harvesting ample amounts of zucchini for a couple weeks now. This has also been a trial of patience for me. Of course, where there is one there is a dozen all ripening at the same time. I guess I know what we will be incorporating into every meal possible for the next month or so. I am very grateful though because we do love cooking with zucchini and I am glad that it is such a steady producer as we have been waiting a long time for them. Just the other morning I put on a pot of rice while we took the dog for a walk and upon returning threw together a nice stir fry full of garden veggies, including summer squash, for breakfast.

Our squash, planted in various locations, is coming along fairly well. Yesterday I noticed a few pumpkins, spaghetti, hubbard, and others of notable size. Not a lot of fruits yet, but I do see some. The papaya pear summer squash are also looking good even though they lost their shape many years ago, perhaps a sorted affair with a crookneck or, heaven forbid, a zucchini.

Sugar Pie pumpkin

My favorite golden nugget plants do not appear to have had any of the pollination issues that have been worrying me and are loading up with little ones. They are such a nice compact plant taking up no more room than a zucchini, early to fruit, and they store well too.

I am growing these two golden nugget plants separately from any other squash to assure that I retain pure seed.

The cucumbers have started to produce steadily and we have been canning them in small batches as they come on. I know that it is not considered safe according to the USDA but I would be very interested to hear from any rebels that can their pickles in the oven and what they think of that method especially from a pickle crunchiness standpoint. I am aware that refrigerator and lacto-fermented pickles hold their crunch but am curious about any methods that will allow me to have a longer term storage option.

Now here is an interesting blunder on my part. I thought it would be a neat trick to grow a few rattlesnake beans on the same fence as some of our tomatillos. My thoughts being that the beans would help tie the tomatillos to the fence, that aspect of it all seems to be working like a charm. Unfortunately, I also planted a few squash in the same area and miscalculated how much room our hubbards and pumpkins would consume, forgetting to diligently trail the vines in the other direction. So now I am faced with a few issues when it comes time to gather beans and tomatillos, both of which will be ready before the squash...oops, no room for me.:) Looks like I might even have to pick a couple squash off the barn roof this year.

Harvesting Fava Beans

We harvested a few rows of fava beans and are quite happy with how well they filled out this season. For the most part we use these as dried beans in soups, bean dishes, and their subtle flavor makes them great for re-fried beans. After shelling they are placed on racks in the sun to dry, once dried they are stored away in glass gallon jars until needed. Of course a bucket of the nicest looking pods are always shelled separately for next year's seed. Because of their extremely cold hardy nature they are our absolute favorite bean to grow and the remaining debris are an excellent amendment for the soil in our gardens.

Harvesting Peas with Gimpy

With a little help from one of my trusty assistants "Gimpy" I began harvesting peas yesterday afternoon. Gimpy has a re-occurring leg injury and has been allowed to follow me around the gardens of late in order to get a little break from her mean sisters. She is also a member of a small party of "well behaved" chickens that are involved in my experimental currant fly/maggot eradication program. Currant flies emerge from the soil in April - May and lay their eggs in the fruit. When the fruit drops, the maggots enter the soil and so the vicious cycle begins anew. My thoughts are that if the chickens eat the fallen berries and any maggots that have already entered the soil it should help control the numbers of these nasty little bugs going forward.

Anyway, we harvested a nice little haul of Afilia peas and kale out of this bed and replanted more Afilia peas and fast maturing Roma bush beans in their place that will both hopefully be ready around the first part of September. I did leave a 6' section of peas at the far end of the bed to dry on the vine for next year's seed supply. While my bush peas have been planted, harvested, and replanted a small patch of our pretty purple podded pole peas (try saying that really fast) are just now in full bloom. With any luck the weather will be favorable for the next couple of months and another fine crop will be had.

Preserved and Preserving

It's almost mid-July and the summer gardens are off to a fair albeit rocky start. We have had to take some pretty drastic measures to assure a good harvest for this season...more on that in a subsequent post. Some things are going quite well for us though. For instance, we are still eating and enjoying last year's squash,

beets, potatoes and carrots. The carrots are starting to taste a bit bland but everything else has retained it's flavor quite well.

Micki just finished sorting through our garlic and she came up with more than enough good cloves to see us through until our August harvest. We also have plenty of canned goods left in the pantry although we are out of pickles. I miss my pickles and hope to have the chance to can many more this fall than I did previously.

We have been busy harvesting kale, bunches of kale. Each one of these large ugly orange tubs, bought on sale after Halloween last year for almost nothing, equates to only 3 quarts of blanched and frozen greens, hard to believe, but true. So far we have 15 quarts frozen and will be satisfied once we harvest about 5 more. Mostly, we use these greens for kale and potato soup during the winter months when the fresh ones are harder to come by and I think this winter is going to be a doozy so we are putting up a bit extra. Which reminds me that I will need even more than that as it is also a vital ingredient in our homemade dog food.

Kale is an excellent green for freezing. We blanch them for a couple-three minutes, cool in ice water, wring them out like a rag, spread out on a towel to dry a bit more, mix with a hint of olive oil and pack into freezer bags.

Yesterday I picked a good gallon and half of strawberries which we also froze. Most of our plants have been thinned out and transplanted this year to various locations throughout the garden, considering all the abuse they have received I am happy to see them all starting to fill out with berries...lots of berries. We grow an extremely hardy ever bearing plant that needs no winter cover and on a good year will provide three crops of berries the last two being smaller in number than the first but with much bigger berries. I suspect that these particular strawberries are actually a "day-neutral " variety that, unlike prolific June-bearing strawberries, will continuously produce fruit anytime the temperatures are above freezing and the sun is still shining, often well into October. Lack of water and weeds are their primary enemies.

Our walking onions are filling out with nice little clusters of bulblets on top of their stems. Either end can be eaten but normally the bulblets are used for new onions and the in-ground bulbs for eating. They are often called "Egyptian" walking onions because they tend to become top heavy, fall over, and replant themselves. Honestly, I'm still not sure what any of this has to do with Egypt? Ever since a friend sent us some a couple years ago we have been busy growing them out in order to enlarge our patch. I can't begin to explain how fascinating I find this particular type of crazy allium, sometimes I just sit there and look at them shaking my head in wonder.


Last but not least our strawberry spinach plants are doing quite well, they seem to flourish come hell or high water, growing and producing regardless of the weather. Although the little "Malt-O Meal" flavored berries are much sweeter if they have adequate water and sunlight. The flavorless leaves on this plant are high in vitamins (especially C and A) and along with the the berries are a great addition to any salad. Be aware that once planted they do tend to readily and vigorously re-seed themselves. I would love to know more about the nutritional benefits of the berries themselves if anyone ever runs across any information?