Sunday, October 23, 2011

Final garden harvest

It's forecasted to get down into the 30's at night this week, so I needed to harvest all the remaining produce out in the garden.  It always makes me sad to see the end of all my hard work (and yet, I'm looking forward to the rest!). 

My 12 little tomato plants really outdid themselves this year.  This is the first year we've produced more than a couple tomatoes, I think I brought in about 200 pounds of fruit. 



I have 4 large boxes filled with totally green tomatoes in layers, 2 filled with slightly orange ones (hopefully they'll all survive after the baby gets done touching them all).  I'm looking up recipes for pickled green cherry tomatoes. 

We've been busy canning them and making spaghetti sauce.  Since our wind generator died again 2 weeks after we got it fixed, I haven't been able to dehydrate the peels as I did before, so I'm saving them in freezer bags for when I can run the dehydrator again. 

I picked a bunch of zucchini, which I plan to shred, then freeze to make into bread in the coming months.  My other plan was to dehydrate those as well, and 'spike' our meals with the yummy goodness, but that is also on hold.


We still need to go pick our pumpkins.  I planted a 'giant pumpkin' plant, and got exactly 1 large pumpkin from it and a lumina pumpkin plant, which grew 4 small pumpkins.  Perfect for our family of 5!  Next year, I hope that we can grow more, since we all love roasted seeds.  My hubby loves pumpkin pie, so maybe I'll plant some sugar pumpkins, too.

My corn never did well, the heritage popcorn did the best, and I'm able to harvest a couple ears to save and plant next year. 

My watermelon plant finally produced 2 melons.  I left them outside to ripen as long as possible and they are very sweet. 


The greenhouse still is growing beets, leeks, cabbage, pickling cucumbers and carrots, the frost shouldn't affect them, so I have some time left before I need to process those!

I'm participating in the Homestead Barn Hop.  Feel free to peruse other blogs, I know this is my favorite part of the week.

4 comments:

  1. What a huge garden harvest...and that is the tail end of your season. will have to go back and see how the rest of your summer garden went...my first visit here...great blog.

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  2. What a beautiful harvest..such a blessing. We are just putting in our fall garden here in the south. Your pictures remind me of my prairie home from my growing up years.

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  3. Isn't it wonderful to get all that harvest from your own garden? Our garden didn't produce much at all this year, it was pretty sad.
    Would you please share your spaghetti sauce recipe? I have yet to find one to can that we like.
    Thanks,
    Christi
    fillhardfarm at ymail dot com

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  4. Your photos are just beautiful and I too would love to find out what your spaghetti recipe is as well! Thanks!

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