Boy those apples look good!

I'm a lot further south so I'm still getting tomatoes and hot peppers. I have lots of great looking sweet potato vines growing but I don't know what's under there or when to harvest them. I also have arugula everywhere. The stuff reseeded into the grass! Getting ready to plant snow peas, lettuce, rutabaga, carrots, chard, radishes, cilantro, etc.

What do you do with rutabaga? I had it as a teenager in soups and loved it. This will be my first try at growing it. I tried salsify this year but it was just too hot this summer for most things to make it all the way through.

Rutabaga I cube and can, but I like them boiled and mashed like potatoes, or par-boiled and made into "American Fries" but with rutabaga instead of potato. I use them in pasties, a Cornish pasty isn't authentic without rutabaga.

I like them in soup and I like them roasted. I just like them!

Annie

I clipped all the butternuts...4 of them but jumbos..They are laying on the dirt in the "sun" until I figure out who I'm going to share them with.
I have broccoli slowly growing..no flowers though. oooh and greenbeans..but again no flowers...radishes...

Tomatoes....strawberries (one or 2 a day now)..

apples and pears still on the trees..slowly picking those for now as needed for fresh eating.

Well, I'm very sore and achy. We pulled out most of the remains of the garden except for 4 tomato plants still going strong, some onions, the beets, and the pepper plants. They don't know when to quit.

I have about 6 boxes of tomatoes on the patio in various stages of ripeness, onions, shallots, squash and peppers. The Hubbards I've washed and bleached and they're curing. Some Habanero bushes and Cayennes are hanging for drying. The onions and shallots go on screens tomorrow.

Annie, if you're referring to the long yellow "stripy" squashes on the upper right-hand with the green in the indentions, those are Delicata. They're an heirloom squash somewhat like acorn. Very, very good and sweet but not long keepers.

Carol

Ah, Annie, didn't we just plant this stuff? They are calling for a freeze here this weekend with snow ..shudder.. so we pulled the tomatoes off the vines tonight. Some red ones and many green ones. The green beans are finally done for and the red peppers never tuned color, so i just made a big crock pot full of stuffed green peppers for the freezer. I used Marilyns meatball recipe as the filling and it was wonderful for dinner on Monday night.

I still have some collards coming in and some Swiss chards, but since I grew them in pots on the patio, I may just pull those in closer to the house. The sage is still going as are the chives, but the basil and oregano has had it. And the red cabbage was pulled weeks ago and canned up.

Now I need some nice apples for sauce and I will be done until next year.

I've also been pulling in the last of the garden.

Mostly peppers, cucumbers, a few squash and even fewer dinky tiny melons

The onions did okay, these are a mix of reds, whites and ciopillinos

These are my storage reds and yellows

After a horrendous start in which I thought I would get NO fruit, my eggplants did produce some, this is a mix of five varieties

I protect my garden from deer and raccoons with electric fence, but once I bring the produce into the garage, one of my dogs considers it fair game. She did end up stealing those two little bitty melons (but I rescued them with little damage)

She really likes corn

But tomatoes are her favorite (along with apples and strawberries)

We didn't get our first frost yet so when I came home from work yesterday I picked lima beans and dug potatoes for dinner. The bell and hot peppers are still producing (abundantly). The sweet potato plants look healthy. I haven't grown them for more than 20 years. When should I start digging/harvesting them? Do you store them in a cold cellar?

I always have mixed feelings about the end of the garden season - less work but I'll miss getting fresh produce directly from the garden.

We got our first frosts Mon & Tue. Very light, so I covered the last tomato plants and beans (dry) with tarps.
Only the tips of the plants got "bit" where they touched the tarp. I'll be pulling it all on Sunday!
Pimentos never turned red, so I may try potting those up and bringing them inside to ripen.
My one volunteer acorn squash plant has 6 small squash. Not bad for a freebie.

I'll be trying a recipe I found for green tomato bread....
It uses a puree of tomatoes and is a sweet bread.
I'll post it if it turns out tasty! I'm thinking I could freeze green tomato puree if it's really good!! LOL
I already have plenty of relish, pickles, etc. so looking for green tomato ideas (fried is good, but I'm the only one here that likes them).

Deanna

I will be picking all the tomatoes soon since the temps are getting down in the 40's at night. I guess I will be making lots of tomato sauce. There are tons of carrots coming in but they grow all year long here. I have some rutabagas to pick too. I have to clean out most of the beds and pick the seeds of the plants I let go to seed. I will be planting my winter garden soon.

Also will harvest all the squash and put it in the shed. Kabocha needs to cure a month before eating to let the starches turn into sugar."When kabocha is just harvested, it is still growing. It should be fully matured first, in order to become flavorful. First, kabocha is ripened in a warm place (77°F) for 13 days, during which some of the starch converts to carbohydrate content. Then it's transferred to a cool place (50°F) and stored for about a month in order to increase its carbohydrate content. In this way the just-harvested, dry, bland-tasting kabocha is transformed into smooth, sweet kabocha. Fully ripened, succulent kabocha will have reddish-yellow flesh and a hard skin with a dry, corky stem. It reaches the peak of ripeness about 1.5~3 months after it's harvested." "Most winter squash benefits from a curing stage; the exceptions are acorn, sweet dumpling and delicata. Curing is simply holding the squash at room temperature (about 70 degrees) for 10 to 20 days."

I had forgotten about this and I have been growing squash for many years. I had always just let them sit because there were too many to eat at once. LOL
Clare

We haven't had a frost yet, but due to my incompetent gardening, I'm pretty much at the tail end too. I've got an almost ripe tomato though!!

this was my first real vegetable garden. We had to put it in so late, though, a lot of stuff never came in. Now there are still blossoms and tiny fruit on the peppers and eggplants, as well as some green tomatoes, but it won't get warm enough for any more to mature, will it? (I'm in Columbus, zone 6, but I think our walled yard is a slightly warmer microclimate).

The peppers (1 gold, one purple) are especially frustrating, because I got ONE small gold pepper, period, all summer -- but now both have lots of little starters on them.

Can I dig up the peppers and eggplants and put them in pots inside? We have a big glass sunroom; I can get most of my herbs to limp through the winter in there.

Next question: I have turnips and parsnips out there. How do I know when they are ready to dig?

Last question: our ornamental quince tree has a couple dozen quinces on it. I read they aren't ready to pick until they are lemon yellow. Is that ever going to happen?! If not, can I pick them before frost and let them ripen inside?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Nice garden Annie! That frost finally did in my tomato vines. Until last week they were still putting out flowers and little green tomatoes. Most of my tomatoes went into the freezer... happy to get some of the yellow ones I can't buy in the store. A few still on my window sill turning red. My squash fell victim to the vine disease... lots of local people lost gardens to the rains early and then were hit with the virus late. I was again lucky to plant several varieties of tomato so while my roma/amish pasta died the others kept on going... don't even know what did well as it was a variety package of seeds.

Peas I planted early gave a bumper crop while later peas were attacked by deer and didn't have a chance. It got pretty dry mid-summer and I didn't have time to water anything. Stupid deer mowed down the sunflowers as they came up so no bird seed this fall. Hit one of the stupid things Sunday... no real damage. The deer got up and ran away so no venison... next time I won't hit the brakes so hard.

My vegtables are done. I need to gather up the tomatos cages and till everything under. My black tarp to hold heat and moisture while killing weeds worked very well. Next year the whole tomato patch is going to be tarped. My largest and best producing vine was easy 7-8ft across.

I have Tuesday as vacation and plan to do some hunting in my garden area. Tons of rabbits and the deer ignore Dolly. The garden should produce a few rabbits and with luck a deer for the freezer.... fresh organic deer raised on peas, tomatoes, and sunflowers.

: )
lyra

Lyra, shoot an extra deer for me, will you? Rats on hooves, I just hate the darned things, they are just big vermin as far as I'm concerned. Of course, a vehicle was always my weapon of choice. I'm glad you're OK. Here the salmon as just starting their run, I might give that a shot next week.

Thanks, Carol, delicata. I knew I'd seen them, so now I'll eat them first.

gellchom, the turnips you can just dig around with your finger and find how big they are, they should be ready, I pulled most of mine a month or so ago. Parsnips need to stay in the ground for a couple of hard freezes to get sweet. Grandpa used to tell me to leave them in the ground all winter and dig as I needed them. That would work except it froze so hard I couldn't dig them until spring, when they were still sweet and firm. They have a taste that Elery says is like "ammonia" if they aren't allowed to sweeten with the cold. I had discounted this a bit, then I saw it on Alton Brown! LOL

You can try digging the peppers and eggplant but I'm not optimistic, plants that big often don't like to be disturbed, especially when they are fruiting.

Ann, the WonderWeiner also loved tomatoes, I just had to smile at the guilty look on that dog's face. (grin) Nice batch of onions, mine didn't do that well this year. I think too many kids walked on them, but I'm going to blame the weather anyway...

Peppi, I've dug sage and collards right out of the snow. And here we have a tremendous apple crop, my store still has those $6.99 a bushel MacIntosh apples. It's a long darned drive to get apples though, LOL.

Annie

I'm still in planting mode. This is the time when I plant cilantro and dill, since they don't do well in the summer. I still have a lot of basil, as well as some new basil plants. My apples are just now beginning to get ripe, but I find them very boring. I bought a new Meyer lemon tree last week-end and planted it in a wine barrel planter, where I think it will be happy for at least a couple of years, or until I am ready to put it into the ground. I was going to buy a Bearss lime tree, but the tag said that it would get to 20 feet high, and that's higher than I can reach. I do want a new lime tree, however, as I miss my old one very much, and it only got to be 5' high, although it was very prolific.

It's hard to believe that you've had a frost already, although we have had our temps dip down to 56° this week, which means that I had to close the windows at night. Finally I don't have to run the air conditioner, and so I'm glad for the cooler weather, but it's still in the mid 70s during the day. I think that's warm enough to start the dill and cilantro. If I had more planters, I might grow some winter lettuce, but that takes a lot of water. I planted a new hibiscus in the front yard also, and it has orange flowers with a magenta center - I like that combination - and it is in full bloom right now. Later I want to plant another silk floss tree in the front yard, to replace the one I left in Venice. The hibiscus makes good tea.

Lars

lars, I seldom eat apples, or even bake apple pie, I much prefer the berries that I can get here in season. Apples ARE kind of boring, actually, but I make a bunch of applesauce to use in baking in place of some fats, and the grandkids love the stuff. I make apple butter for toast and I press cider and freeze it because it makes a great marinade for pork roast.

Frankly, I much prefer pears for eating and I love lemons for dessert, but there's no place to grow a lemon tree here. Maybe when I move to the farm, I'll build a greenhouse, then I could plant a Meyer lemon and have lettuce and greens all winter.

Annie

Ack! We have a heat wave going on right now. It hit a high of 95° yesterday...send some cool weather down here to Florida!

My tomatoes are getting big, so we're just starting a growing season down here. Need to replant some basil and get some more tomato seedlings started so we have a longer harvest.

Citrus is filling out and we will have Meyers Lemons in about 2 months, along with the other winter citrus.

Amen Gardengrl! I keep wating for the heat to break so I can get some yard work done. It is still too hot to get any major trimming done. I am trying veggies from seed for the first time this year. Wish me luck. I don't have the slightest clue what I am doing. My citrus is still young but I have too many bananas to deal with. Yesterday I discovered a big bunch of bananas ripened on the tree. Yikes! It has been too hot to even walk the yard. I can't believe I never noticed them turning yellow. I guess I will be baking banana treats this weekend.

As per usual I am about 2 weeks behind everyone! I hope you know that green tomatoes make awesome pickles and you can wrap them in newspaper and store them in a cool dark place and they will ripen. Can also hang on the vines after you pull them and some will ripen. Don't get that much flavor though. I tried it one year. Meh.

My end of the season garden harvest was a couple of measly tomatoes and some anemic basil. I made pesto with that. Not really enough to freeze but I've been eating it on awesome pasta all week. Lots of mint which I don't know what to do with since I never used the stuff I dried from last year. I don't like mint tea.

The big news is I am into making liqueur this year! I sort of haphazardly made apricot brandy last year and I had the last of it mixed in with wine and a cinnamon stick and it was so good I decided to get serious about it. So I harvested the last of my lemon thyme to make apricot lemon thyme liqueur with vodka and brandy. It has to steep for a month so I'll report back. I hope to start some pear ginger later next week, and I'm toying with the idea of raspberry mint. I have raspberries in the freezer and of course tons of mint. But I don't like mint! I'm thinking it might be good in hot cocoa though. I dunno. The pear ginger I am going to try for sure.

Wow you got a good amount of canning to do there! I have almost an acre of land and we planted a pretty good size garden that is done for summer, but I would like to plant a winter garden as the water is free....we don't that much rain in so. calif. in the summer :( I just got some awesome cookware but I need to get a bigger pressure cooker that will fit qt bottles...that's where the savings comes in when you can can your own vegies :D

Well, we didn't plant anything!

Annie, I am glad you had such a great harvest. The cold and four letter word beginning with "S" chased us south, so neither you, or Nancy got a phone call. We are home as of 3:30 this afternoon! We left the UP in a hurry, after hearing that Copper Harbor could possibly get 4" of lake effect snow! Only to get to Houghton Lake to the campground and eat dinner watching it snow! It didn't stick, but it sure was cold. The motor home and I don't like cold!

Glad you all got great harvests.

Tami